Chase Field

Bank One Ballpark The BOB
Facility Statistics
Location	401 East Jefferson Street Phoenix, Arizona 85001
Broke Ground	November 16, 1995
Opened	March 31, 1998
Surface	Kentucky Blue Grass
Owner	Maricopa County Stadium District
Construction Cost	$349 million USD
Architect	Ellerbe Becket
Tenants
Arizona Diamondbacks	1998-present
Seating Capacity
1998	48,569
Dimensions
Left Field	330 ft / 100.5 m
Left-Center	374 ft / 114 m
Left-Center (deep)	413 ft / 126 m
Center Field	407 ft / 124 m
Right-Center (deep)	413 ft / 126 m
Right-Center	374 ft / 114 m
Right Field	334 ft / 102 m

Bank One Ballpark, also known as The BOB, is a stadium located in Phoenix, Arizona. It is across the street from the America West Arena, used by the Phoenix Suns.

Bank One Ballpark's main concern is with baseball, being home of Major League Baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks. The park began to be constructed in 1996, and was finished just before the Diamondbacks' first season began, in 1998. It has a retractable roof, one of only a few stadiums in the United States to have one (others are in Houston, Texas, Seattle, Washington and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with another under construction in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale). It also has a swimming pool, which is rented to patrons.

In 2001, the park saw a historical moment when the Diamondbacks won Game 7 of the World Series against the New York Yankees. Down two runs to one in the bottom of the ninth, former Chicago Cubs star Mark Grace started a rally with a single. A couple of at-bats later, Tony Womack ripped a double down the right field line off of Yankees super-closer Mariano Rivera, scoring Midre Cummings to tie the game at two. After Craig Counsell was hit by a pitch, another former Cub, Luis Gonzalez, hit a bloop single that scored Jay Bell, giving the Diamondbacks the world championship and putting a screeching halt to the Yankee dynasty. (One could say their most recent success string had been 'BOBbed').

This was one year when many fans outside of New York City either rooted or felt for the Yankees and their fans, because of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which truly shocked the world. After losing the first two here, the Yankees won three in a row in the Bronx in dramatic fashion. But their magic evaporated in the Arizona heat, as the D'backs pummeled the Yankees 15-2 in Game 6. This set the stage for the drama of Game 7, in which the previous day's winner Randy Johnson came on in relief to choke off a Yankees rally in the eighth inning. That was a scene reminiscent to historians of Game 7 of the 1926 World Series, and it kept the game close to give the Diamondbacks a chance in the ninth.

A more trivial historical note connected with the 2001 Series concerns the "Ex-Cubs Factor". This was the first time since 1960, and only the second time since the Cubs' last pennant in 1945, that a team with 3 or more ex-Cubs (the third one being Mike Morgan) had won a World Series. And oddly enough, both of those Series ended in sudden-victory fashion against the Yankees. As if paying penance to the baseball gods for this blasphemy, the D'backs have since come to resemble an entire team of ex-Cubs... a fate that also befell the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates.

Bank One Ballpark is named after Bank One of Chicago, Illinois, although with their merger with New York City-based Chase, a name change is expected to occur sometime during the 2005 baseball season. It is also host to many concerts and other sports events each year. One of the events it holds annually is the Insight Bowl, a college football bowl game.