As the Arizona Diamondbacks hustled through their season, fans perched atop the upper deck at Chase Field found themselves mired in a sweat-drenched ordeal of tropical proportions. One such patron, Joey Fraley, described the sweltering experience to FOX 10 Phoenix, "I was here Saturday and yesterday and both times I felt like it was a jungle. There was no A/C. It was sold out, and it was all crowded." Complaints are flying as the in-stadium mercury hovers around the mid-70s, a far cry from the low 70s target temperature Diamondbacks management aims for during game nights.
Playing a role behind this in-game sauna is a cooling system antiquated enough to run for president, if cooling systems could run for president - that is, it's over a quarter-century old. According to FOX 10 Phoenix, the system which also cools numerous downtown buildings has been cited by the club's president and CEO Derrick Hall, "It's the same system that also cools many of the buildings downtown. So what happens is, they chill water, they actually freeze it, and then those cubes go back into the building, and it comes in at a very low temperature, like the 30s, but we can't go over 12–15 hours of having it on so we have to really map it out in a very technical way."
Not exclusive to fan discomfort, even Diamondbacks pitcher Jordan Montgomery weighed in on the climatic challenges, as he articulated to FOX 10 Phoenix, "It's like pitching in the jungle here sometimes. I don't know how it gets so humid. I swear it's less humid in St. Louis in the summer than here. Just got to battle through it." Season ticket holders also expressed their dismay.
As the team's director of facility engineering, Alan Sokolsky, is tasked with the daily grind of alerting Cordia, the service provider in charge of the frigid lifeline of liquid that cools the air coursing through Chase Field's veins. Onlookers may be unaware, turning the chilled water into refreshing breezes is an engineering ballet, with each of the ballpark's air handlers boasting eight water coils, a seemingly simple arrangement that's anything but. Mike Rock, the Diamondbacks' vice president of ballpark operations, cited to Arizona Central, "The length of time that you run it can determine how cool you can keep it near the end (of the game). You can't just run it for 15 hours and maintain that 75 degrees. At some point, the coils and all the frozen water on the coils runs out and the chilled water temperature that we get goes from 34 degrees to 45 degrees or warmer."
