Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles (Love It AND Hate It)

 

I have a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles in general, and Dodger Stadium in particular.

Whenever I fly into Los Angeles, I’m struck by two things. One is how beautiful the surroundings are, with the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. The other is how ugly the city is. There are some beautiful things about the city (I think Dodger Stadium is one of them, but more on that later), but much of it has a worn-out feel. I’ve been in airports that seem grungier than LAX in third world countries, but I’m not sure I have been in in the U.S., Europe, Australia,, New Zealand, …

And it’s nice that LA has freeways everywhere, but those freeways frequently are just slow-moving parking lots. Maybe I’m just getting older, but it seems like it’s getting worse over the years. Tonight, Google Maps tried not once, but twice, to take us on freeways whose  on-ramps were closed, and we ended up driving over the Angeles Crest Scenic Highway (I’m sure it’s scenic in the daytime).

Dodger Stadium is one of the things that I love (mostly) about the city. I’ve always thought the view over the centerfield wall into the hills and the San Gabriel Mountains beyond is one of the very best in baseball, competing with the Oracle Park view of San Francisco Bay. Because it’s a normal MLB park, laid out with home plate in the southwest part of the field, you only see the sunset from the right field corner, but if it’s a good sunset, the hills turn golden and pink. Incidentally, if you’re wondering why MLB parks are all laid out in the same direction, it has to do with sun angles, and is the topic of a blog from last year, about why left-handed pitchers are called southpaws.

Dodger Stadium is built into a hillside, which means that there are entrances at the level of most of the decks, which is good. However, if you park in the vicinity of the lower deck, it’s mostly stairs, not ramps or escalators, to get to the top deck (it was built 75 years ago, remember). But those stairs are outdoors, which is nice.

Their food concessions stands are well-oiled machines. Like most stadiums, they have the Disneyland-style barriers to get the line to efficiently wind back and forth. Unlike any other stadium I recall, they have a worker just outside the concession stand who hustles the first person in line to the whichever window opens up, as soon as it happens.

Like many stadiums from its era (opened in 1962, third oldest stadium in the majors), it is surrounded by acres of parking lots, some of which you can see from the upper levels, though you really don’t notice them. The parking lots are the thing I hate about Dodger Stadium. The team actually does a good job of directing cars to spots as you’re coming into the stadium. But when you leave, it’s absolute chaos. As we left our lot last night, I counted seven lines of vehicles converging on a one-vehicle-wide exit, somehow reminding me of trying to put all the streams of water back into the sprinkler head -- at the same time. A lot of it is a game of chicken, as everyone tries to nose in front of everyone else. Having an automatic transmission is essential, particularly in the areas that are hilly. The  last time Kerry drove in the Dodger Stadium parking lot was in 1985, when we had tickets to a playoff game involving the Cardinals. That time, Kerry had the added advantage of being in a rental car, but she was driving our car this trip, so wasn’t quite as aggressive. Tonight, we left before the post-game fireworks, so it felt like getting out of a normal post-game parking lot.

Maybe that’s why the crowd heads for the exits in the 7^th inning, even if it’s a close game.

There are only three or four roads out of the parking lots, and the freeways that they connect with can be challenging. I remember attending a game when I was at a meeting in the Pasadena area, and driving back on the Pasadena Freeway. That’s a road that’s old enough to be on the National Register of Historic Places, which means that it is narrow, the turns are tight, and the entrance ramps (as in the Dodger Stadium area) feel like they’re only slightly longer than a mid-size SUV.

Incidentally, I pointed out last night that, contrary to our expectations, most of the crowd were in their seats for the first pitch. But I spoke too soon. Tonight, I paid attention to our row, and the two rows in front of us. At first pitch, 19 people had arrived. By the 5^th inning, there were more than 40 (although most stayed for the fireworks, so they didn’t leave early).

The Dodgers’ cap and jersey are iconic. Many sports teams at all levels are associated with the team colors, but only a few have a strong enough connection that the color is associated with the team. “Dodger blue”  is distinct from “navy blue” or “royal blue.” Actually, the only other teams I can think of with that kind of association are also shades of blue, those of the Duke Blue Devils and Kentucky Wildcats. Yes, Tennessee is associated with orange, but is it a different orange than that of Texas? The Celtics are associated with green, but I’ve never heard a reference to “Celtic green.” And the Dodger-blue script “Dodgers” or “Los Angeles” or “Brooklyn” (depending on the year) with red numbers under it looks good. I find fan-based websites amusing to read, and you can get a very detailed history of the minutiae of Dodger uniforms on theirs. Bottom line, I love the Dodger uniforms – along with the Cardinals’ birds-on-the-bat and the Yankees’ pinstripes.

When MLB decided to bring in their “city connect” jerseys a few years ago, celebrating local community and culture, the Dodgers felt obligated to get into the game. That’s appropriate. Los Angeles is a multi-cultural city, and they’ve had stars from Mexico (Fernando Valenzuela), Korea (Chan Ho Park), and Japan (Shohei Ohtani), to name just a few countries. In addition, Jackie Robinson played for the Dodgers in Brooklyn, and went to high school and college in Los Angeles. So what did they do? They took the regular Dodger jersey and added “Los” in the same script and color in front of it. That’s it. Were they even trying? They’re going to unveil their next attempt at a city connect jersey this summer.

I often count how much gear I see of which team as I walk the concourse. Tonight, of the first 200 people I saw with gear from a baseball team, 195 had gear from the Dodgers (I’m not sure I’ve ever see such a high percentage), 4 from the Kansas City Royals (tonight’s competition), and 1 from the Angels (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a low percentage from non-combatant teams). But of those 195, and several hundred more tonight and last night, I think I only saw one Dodgers city connect jersey. I even saw a KC city connect jersey. For a team so good at branding and marketing, the city connect jerseys were a complete flop for LA. They’re introducing new ones next week – maybe those will be better.

Finally, there’s the competition aspect. I understand the concept of capitalism, and don’t begrudge the Dodgers paying the amount of money for players that they do, since they can afford it. Nor do I begrudge the players getting paid as much as they can. In the mid- to late 20^th century, only the New York Yankees had the kind of money that allowed them to buy any player they wanted, but the Dodgers seem to be richer than the Yankees these days. Not surprisingly, they win far more games than they lose every season during the regular season. I feel duty-bound to root against the Dodgers, just as I feel duty-bound to root against the Yankees, even while I admire their ability to (generally) spend their fortune wisely.

Perhaps surprisingly, their success in the post-season is mediocre, at best, having won one World Series and lost two in the last 34 years. A part of it could be that the most expensive players are older, so the Dodgers have a fairly old lineup. In last night’s game, they used 16 players, only five under the age of 29. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the only World Series they’ve won since the 1980s was in the COVID year of 2020, when they played only 60 regular season games instead of 162, so that bodies hadn’t worn down so much by October.

Bottom line: I enjoy going to games at Dodger Stadium, although there are parts of the evening (particularly those involving leaving the stadium) that I dread.

The game:

It was a close game throughout. The two starting pitchers, LA’s Gavin Stone and KC’s Cole Ragans, each pitched seven innings, each allowed three runs in one of the innings they pitched, and shut out the opposition the rest of the time. So it went into the 8^th inning tied at 3. LA’s Mookie Betts got a hit, went to second on a wild pickoff throw, and scored on a single by Freddie Freeman.

The whole game last one minute over two hours, again lowering the length of the shortest game we’ve seen this season (and, I think, this century).