Payson Roundup

John Dryer’s first trip to an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game in Chase Field is one he won’t soon forget.

“The whole thing was absolutely overwhelming,” he said. “The stadium is both gigantic and amazing.”

His ducat to the professional baseball game, which pitted the D-backs against Florida, arrived courtesy of the Arizona Department of Transportation.

It seems ADOT wanted to reward some of the longtime volunteers in its Adopt-a-Highway clean-up program.

Dryer, a longtime resident of Tonto Basin, has for the past 18 years volunteered setting up Adopt-a-Highway sponsors in the area.

“ADOT invited about 30 people to the game, most of them had been volunteering for more than 20 years,” Dyer said.

What stunned the Tonto Basin man when he arrived at Chase was that the invitees were being put up in a swanky suite located just above the ballpark’s swimming pool at a spot where fans had a bird’s-eye view of the carefully manicured field.

But before arriving in the suite, Dryer and the others were puzzled where they were being sent.

“We were escorted by a security guard up an elevator and down a hall, we didn’t know where we were going,” he said. “It wasn’t like we were in a baseball park.”

Rendering the pro baseball experience ever more amazing was that the suite was catered with a vast array of scrumptious appetizers, snacks and beverages.

The chairs were also comfortable theater-style recliners rather than the rock-hard bleachers some watch baseball games from.

For almost three hours, Dryer and his fellow volunteers kicked back and enjoyed the Diamondbacks 5-1 victory from a prestigious vantage point most baseball fans will never enjoy.

“For my first professional baseball game (in Chase Field), it was quite an experience, unforgettable,” Dryer said.