We have waited for baseball season to start since the fall and once January gets here, Opening Day can’t come soon enough. Jeff and I take every chance we can GET to get out to the Ballpark in Arlington. The Rangers are something we kind of bond over. We actually have great conversations about baseball and the dynamics of our beloved team. (Did you know we even got engaged at a Ranger game?? Sure did.)

This past Tuesday, we actually got to get a little date night in!

{Please excuse all of the iPhone pictures. There was no way I was hauling my big camera around.}

Jeff’s mom took care of our babies while we hightailed it to Arlington, hoping to get there before they ran out of Yu Darvish t-shirts. They were only giving them to the first 30,000 fans that night.

We just barely made it in time and they still had some t-shirts left!

We can never have enough Ranger gear.

Before we headed to our seats we were pretty caught off guard by all of the changes at the park, at least in the concourse area. (I don’t even know if that’s the correct word for it, but it’s where all of the food is.)

Especially where we sit, behind home plate, it looked COMPLETELY different!

The entire area leading in to the seats behing home plate is opened up. There are a few more food stands and these cute little tables are all over the place.

I want one at our house. It would fit in. I mean, we do have a stadium seat from the old stadium on display in our living room.

Yes, that IS Nolan Ryan’s signature. We’re HUGE fans!

The other thing that caught my eye was this concession stand. {Of course I didn’t get a picture of it until we were leaving and they were all shut down.

But, after I saw this place, it was literally all I could think about. I wanted to eat something from there and kind of made it my mission. There was just one problem. It was expensive. Maybe in concession stand terms it wasn’t, especially since they are serving steak, but $15 for a sandwich and some chips is just a lot to me.

Jeff and I decided to split this yummy goodness and oh my word was it good!

I would pay $15 again for that sandwich. It was really THAT good!

To be honest, I noticed a LOT of new concession stands around there and they all seemed pricey!

The biggest surprise was the new hot dog stand, which is WAY more than a stand. It is built in the middle of the concourse (again, is that the word?) and is definitely not like the little kiosk looking stands. This is an actual building inside of the ballpark. You can get their humungous 3 foot long hot dogs there. I saw several guys carrying them around, but it’s just not for me.

I’ll stick with my giant steak sandwich!

Another big change we found was in what used to be called the Cuervo Club, an enclosed bar/restaurant behind home plate. Because our tickets gave us access in to the club, we would ALWAYS go to the bathroom in there. They are much cleaner and no one is in there.

So, not only have they changed the name to the Capital One Club and made it bigger, but now we can’t go in there until after the 3rd inning. It’s not really a big deal, but I can’t really imagine telling that to my 38 week pregnant self who went to a game in July last year and waited in line for 45 minutes before the game just to be able to sit in the air conditioning for the game.

It’s fun to see all of the improvements they make at the ballpark every year. It’s always better for the fans and it still has the same great feel it always had, even with the changes.

Oh yeah, and the team’s pretty good, too!