Take me out to the ballpark, but don’t put me on a metal bench

It was Opening Day at Cashman Field early last month, and Las Vegas 51s fans Keith Dunn and his wife, Laura Dunn, arrived early for the Thursday evening ballgame.

It was still about an hour before the game was scheduled to start, yet it already was tight quarters to navigate through a crowd on the main concourse behind home plate, near several concession stand lines and a separate dollar beer line.

“We got here, and there’s not a lot of fans in the ballpark, and we’re already bumping shoulders,” said Keith Dunn, a 28-year-old union welder from Las Vegas.

The Dunns had taken their seat on the metal bench in Section 17, Row Q along the first base side, and Keith Dunn also lamented sitting on high school football stadium-like metal benches, where 20 people are packed to a row. About 6,000 seats in the ballpark with capacity to hold 9,300 are on metal benches.

It’s an unpleasant fan experience to be stuck in the middle of the metal bench, Dunn said.

“When you have to go to the bathroom, it’s a nightmare,” Dunn said between bites of a hot dog. “It’s miserable. I always get stuck in between a bunch of kids.”

The shortcomings of 31-year-old Cashman Field are no mystery to the new owners of the Las Vegas 51s — the Pacific Coast League Triple-A affiliate of the New York Mets.

The owners, a combination of Dallas-based Summerlin developer Howard Hughes Corp. and local investors Steve Mack, Bart Wear and Chris Kaempfer, quietly have talked with local political leaders in hopes of garnering public dollars for a new $65 million ballpark of 8,000 to 9,000 seats in Summerlin near Red Rock Resort.

The team has complained for years about Cashman Field’s lack of modern amenities for both players and fans. Team management has talked about the lack of indoor batting cages and high-end amenities that are available in modern ballparks throughout the Pacific Coast League.

SPACE AT A PREMIUM

While team officials have discussed the ballpark’s problems, the Las Vegas Review-Journal caught up with fans this season to hear their gripes. Their comments focused on two issues — a narrow concourse that is only 10 to 15 feet wide at some points that causes pedestrian gridlock before and even during games and uncomfortable metal benches that heat up in the summer and force cramped fans to sit like sardines.

Warren, 66, and Aggie Farina, 65, visited Cashman Field for the first time on Opening Day and were not pleased about sitting on metal benches when a row of individual seats were only three rows in front of them.

“I said, ‘OK what do we have to do to get a real seat?’ ” Aggie Farina said.

The couple considered trading in their tickets so that they could sit in regular seats but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.

In the same section, Evan Miranda, 30, of Las Vegas, sat on the metal bench and put it simply, “It’s a back breaker and a butt breaker.”

He sat in a group that included Brandy Moushey, 21, of Las Vegas, who didn’t like walking the concourse because it was packed.

“It’s really crowded and makes you feel claustrophobic,” said Moushey, a University of Phoenix student.

Another fan, Paul Ehlers, 49, of Las Vegas, was waiting on a dollar beer line on the concourse and muttered, “It gets tight in here.”

SOME REAL SEATS, PLEASE

Ehlers said that as a taxpayer he would be willing to contribute to the cost of building a ballpark.

“The metal benches? We don’t want them. We’d rather have seats,” Ehlers said. “I want a new ballpark. I’m a taxpayer, and I’m willing to kick in for it.”

The Review-Journal contacted 51s co-owner Howard Hughes Corp. and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the landlord at Cashman Field, about fans’ complaints about the narrow concourse and metal benches.

Neither responded specifically to those issues and offered only general responses.

“We are well aware of the shortcomings of Cashman Field,” Howard Hughes spokesman Thomas Warden said.

“Given the constraints of Cashman’s obsolete design, the LVCVA does an excellent job of running the facility, however the only cost-effective solution to these structural challenges is a new state-of-the-art stadium,” Warden said.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority also did not specifically address the narrow concourse and uncomfortable metal bench issues raised by fans.

But the authority did say it evaluates projects on an ongoing basis.

”Cashman Field is approved by the Pacific Coast League as a venue to host Triple-A baseball games, and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is committed to providing guests with the best possible experience at the facility. Year after year, attendance for Las Vegas 51s games has been consistent, and the annual Big League Weekend continues to sell out as fans pack the stadium,” the authority said in a statement.

“In recent years, the LVCVA has made a number of improvements to Cashman to enhance the experience, and we continue to evaluate additional projects on an ongoing basis,” the statement said.

Contact reporter Alan Snel at 702-387-5273 or asnel@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BicycleManSnel on Twitter.