Tastycake Stadium

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Tastykake Stadium (also known as The Oven) is the home ballpark of the Philly Pies.

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The remainder of this article contains lore created collaboratively by the Blaseball community.

Overview

The Pies' home ballpark gets its nickname from both its variety of award-winning pastry shops and concession stands and the natural formation it was built around: a large metal deposit resembling a pie tin (referred to as “The Tin”) and the underlying hypocrust which provides heat to the stadium (often called “The Underhot”). Memorable features of the stadium include the intricate opening gate with “CRUST THE PROCESS” inscribed into it, a jumbotron that always displays the away team’s information in comic sans, the various attractions and exhibits within the stadium, and the thousands of crows that live in the rafters, which descend upon fans screeching “J’EAT?” (“Did you eat?”) and occasionally blot out the sun in a single flock shaped like an enormous goose (frequently referred to as the Wawaiathan).

Stadium Features

The Piebrary

Deep in the winding corridors of the stadium lies the Piebrary, an extensive collection of pie recipes spanning hundreds of shelves. It is rumored that the collection contains every pie recipe written over the course of history from both this world and others. Supporting these rumors are the recipes in the old books collections, including many rescued from the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Contemporary copies of many of these recipes cannot be found anywhere else in the world, lending credibility to claims that the Piebrary is the only authoritative source on Pie Theory, the study of what is and is not a pie. This knowledge has been compiled into the Pies’ Bible. Despite this, vitriolic debates in the field of Pie Theory rage on.

The current head piebrarian is Doc Anice.

When games are not being played, it is possible to catch a glimpse of the Philadelphia Philling prancing merrily through the stacks of the Piebrary.

The Pienetentiary

Tastykake Stadium formerly housed one of the league's only in-stadium jails, the Pienitentiary, but the Philly Pies have embraced the prison abolition movement and the jail has since been converted into a community center featuring rooms available to rent for local organization meetings and youth groups. A small portion of the Pienitentiary has been preserved as an exhibit space for tours of stadium history.

Concessions

Tastycake stadium is known for its concessions, run by the contestants of celebrity pastry chef Hoagie Schuykill’s Nletflix cooking competition, “Pie Coach.” Along with the contestants’ weekly creations, the concession stands also sell pie flavored Wooder Ice and Memorial Pies.  Memorial pies commemorate the lives of incinerated pie players by recreating their favorite flavors and incorporating small amounts of the players’ ashes.  Once a player’s ashes run out, synthetic ashes are used.

The Piep Organ

The Oven has the world's only surviving steam powered organs, which is hooked up to the exhaust of all the ovens in Philadelphia, known as the Piep Organ. The organist is Arnold Ringrust, a musician of middling-at-best talent, though he has the job for life as he is the only person willing to risk playing the infernal thing. He's managed to get away with only minor scaldings and the loss of a kidney. He was given the name Phantom of the Oven by Lang Richardson, who believes it to be his real name and is constantly attempting to find the Organ, but never can, because it's in the one place he would never look. Ringrust, for his part, hates the nickname but can't seem to shake it off. He is reportedly also "fed up with [Richardson] repeatedly accusing [him] of sabotaging The Oven and demanding special seating", though the Pies' HR department has done nothing to resolve the complaint.  Ringrust also receives free concessions, which are delivered by a pulley-lift system that seems to defy the laws of physical space and time.

Renovations and Natural Formations

Wooder Ice Buckets

The Oven serves many pie-related flavors of water ice as concessions, which are manufactured on-site behind the outfield wall in large containers. When Jaxon Buckley hit a home run into one of these buckets, instead of throwing out the batch, the staff converted it into an extra run (in keeping with the stadium’s zero food waste policy), creating a new stadium tradition. Now, an extra run is awarded to any batter in The Oven who hits a home run into a bucket of any kind, not just the wooder ice buckets. Previous buckets include empty pie tins, trash cans, fans’ drinks, and a shoe that a Charleston Shoe Thieves fan tried (unsuccessfully) to remove from the premises.

The Tin and Elongation

The pie tin-like metal deposit underneath the stadium, now called The Tin, was unearthed during a recent attempt to “deepen” the Oven, at the request of the Philadelphia Tourism Board.  When asked why the Board would proceed with such a plan, despite the stadium’s General Manager’s protests to “stop mucking up [her] field,” the Board simply responded, “More deep! More flans! More pies!” The discovery of The Tin halted the deepening of the stadium, but led to an unintended elongation of the field. The sloped edges of the deposit make the base lines longer and more difficult to traverse, lending a disadvantage to teams that rely on baserunning for their offensive capabilities.

The general scientific consensus is that The Tin predates any known human presence in the area, although there is hot debate whether this, or the extreme improbability of such a formation occurring naturally is more reliable in determining the nature of The Oven.

Aviary and Complications

The William Penn Aviary Tower Megaplex is included in the original plans for Tastycake Stadium, but it has been delayed by a zoning dispute that has expanded to include every lawyer in the greater Philadelphia area. No one knows if or when the variance will be granted, but if built it will be the tallest and loudest structure in the city.  Frustrated with the lack of progress on the Aviary as of Season 16, flans have taken it upon themselves to try to bait birds into coming to the stadium.  Many have decided to throw leftover crumbs at away teams’ players in an attempt to lure the birds into attacking them.  The net effect has been a slight overall increase in bird weather and a major decrease in cleanliness in the stadium.

The Underhot

Beneath the stadium lies a hypocrust which channels heat up from below the ground, known as The Underhot. Much like The Tin, it is a matter of contention just how much of The Underhot existed before human intervention. The upper levels are distinctly shaped and expanded by human hands and show many varying architectural styles. The lower levels, however, twist in ways that make no logical sense from a human perspective and are formed from the rock itself. In the lowest level is a vast and fathomless hole, one hundred feet across, dubbed “The Pie Hole”. No attempt to discern a bottom to this hole has succeeded, and lights sent down fade in the distance into darkness. From whatever depths the hole reaches, a faint smell of pastries emerges.  Whether this is evidence of natural forces creating the tunnels, or they were designed and the purpose is as of yet undiscovered, is unknown.

Few who enter The Underhot ever return, and those who do are often reluctant to share their experiences. Because of this, it has been cordoned off. Nevertheless, a "game" has emerged among teens within driving distance of Philadelphia called the "Philly Challenge," which involves driving to Tastykake Stadium after a school day has started, entering the hypocrust, and returning to school before the final bell rings. The Philly Challenge has never been successfully completed.

The Philling was first discovered in The Underhot, during the renovations that initially revealed the hypocrust. It seems to reside in the deep recesses when games are inactive.