The Arizona D-backs’ ballpark, Chase Field, ranked 13 out of 30 in the UFE (Urine Feces Everywhere) rating for cleanliness, with a rank of 1 being the worst. The Chicago Cubs are ranked #1 (dirtiest) – finally # 1 in something!
Chicago Cubs player Mark Grace may have muddied this field’s water in 2007. Grace hit the very first home run ball over the right center field fence into the Chase Field pool. That’s right, not only does this park have the Daktronics magnificent LED video score board, a newly updated sound system, the largest of its kind, a 1,119 foot LED ribbon display, retractable roof, air conditioning, but it also has a pool! Could this event have possibly cursed the park with a much less than perfect UFE cleanliness score? To make matters worse, Grace later joined the Arizona D-backs for 3 years as their first baseman. Just playing with you Cubs fans, even a newly renovated, high tech park can rank lower than 50% for park sanitation.
The UFE Team found fault with the design of the restrooms. The entire restroom bottlenecks at the sinks, located at the washroom exit. This caused a pile up of people where there were far too few sinks to accommodate the many toilets available, and congestion in a washroom invariably leads to lower percentage of hand washing. Also, the UFE Team noted two concession employees leaving the restroom without washing their hands. Chase Field is an awesome spectator viewing park and has enough food concession varieties to accommodate the most finicky of fans. It is hard to imagine that Chase Field falls into the “Middle of the Pack” group with its UFE rating of unlucky 13.
To view the ratings of the remaining MLB Parks click here.
The opening statement is incorrect: "The Arizona Diamondbacks tried to clean up their act with a 354 million dollar renovation of their old park … "
The $354M is not a renovation cost and there was no "old park". The expansion Diamondbacks began play in the Bank One Ballpark in 1998, which cost $354M to build. There was a name change to Chase Field in 2006 after JP Morgan/Chase merged with Bank One.
My bad. You are right. Renovations should not have been in there. It was the cost of the park in total. Too many parks in not enough time. We wanted to get our results out before the season was over. Thanks for your input.
This is exactly the type of information I’ve been looking for. Thank you for posting this article for readers. We can all learn from this.