Friday, April 2, 1995 —

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NEWS ENTERTAINMENT & STYLE GUIDE

Starr Samuelson photo

The Kingdome looms in the distance as Safeco Field takes shape. Seattle’s new $498-million ballpark will have 47,000 seats when it opens July 45. The Kingdome will be demolished early next year.

Diamond in the rough

Grand opening of Seattle’s new Safeco Field scheduled for July 15

Bob Mackin

Contributing Writer

The Seattle Mariners will have two opening days this season.

The first is Monday when the Chicago White Sox come to the Kingdome. All-time home-run king Hank Aaron will throw the cer- emonial first pitch.

The second is July 15 when the San Diego Padres visit.

The VIP throwing the first pitch that night is a closely guarded secret, That's because ic will be the grand opening of Sateco Field, Scartle’s new ballpark with a natural turf field and a retractable roof.

Hit’s not raining, it will be the first meaningful Major League Baseball game played in fresh Northwest air in almost 30 years. The last one was Oct. 2, 1969 at Sick’s Stadium when the Seattle Filots finished their one and only season before flying to Milwaukee and becoming the Brewe

If Mother Nature doesn’t co-operate, the game will go on under a roof and history will have to wait for another day

After Toronto’s SkyDome and Phoenix’s Bank One Ballpark, Sateco Field will be the third big league facility with a moveable roof. Safeco Field's $100-million broilv-like big top will cover — but not enclose — the 47,000 seats and grass field.

Take away the lid and it has some of the same retro charm that draws baseball purists to Baltimore’s Camden Yards and Denver's Coors Field.

Safeco Field has a red and white brick facade and is riddled with exposed steel trusses, painted the same dark hue of green as the seats. Each row begins and ends with a cast-iron rendering of Fred Hutchinson, Seattle's first homegrown baseball star. The pre-World War II pitching ace graduated from the Pacific Coast League’s Seattle Rainiers to the Detroit Tigers. Between the bullpens and left field foul pale will be a Feaway Park-seyle hand-operated scoreboard —a clever foil for a cosy pub.

But there will be enough high-tech gadgetry to balance the man- ufactured nostalgia

The last components are being installed in the tri-panelled roof, which nests east of the stadium above Burlington Northern railroad tracks. Like the trains, the roof is motorized and moves on tracks. It will open or close in 10 to 20 minures at the push of a butron.

On May 3, crews will begin to install 9,540 square metres of Washington-grown sod over 1,820 tonnes of pea yravel and 4,550 tonnes of sand. The grass will do just fine for up fo : closed roof. Year-round growth is possible, thanks to hot w:

through buried coils of 2.5-centimetre plastic ho

going to make the grass think it’s springtime,” explains M's public information director Rebecca Hale. “We'll bring up the soil temperature to about 62 degrees (Fahrenheit), and that means the grass will be lovely, lush and green starting in April, instead of June when it normally thinks it’s time to start growing.”

If there’s a downpour while the roof is open, and the operator

See Stearty page 19

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