For several months, I had a planned business trip to Los Angeles. It wasn't until a couple days before my departure this week that I realized my hometown team, the Philadelphia Phillies, would be at Dodger Stadium that same week. With an itinerary already chocked full of meetings morning, noon and night, it was obvious I was not going to have the leisure time to see a game. But I resolved that if I finished my business early enough, I'd make the short cab ride to catch at least a couple innings.
So on Thursday evening, I finished up my final meeting of the trip around 8:30pm. A phone call from my brother advised me that with the Phils facing a 7-0 deficit after five innings, a trip to the stadium was probably not worth the effort. Well, I'm 3,000 miles from home, I've just worked hard for two days without rest and I'm jet-lagged. I was making the trip over to the park no matter what the score.
I hopped in a cab. "Dodger Stadium, please," I told the driver.
"Dodger Stadium?" he asked in a thick Russian accent.
"Yes, Dodger Stadium."
"You mean baseball game, no? Dodger Stadium?"
"Yes. Baseball game. Thank you."
It was about a ten minute ride to the park. The driver conveniently left me at the ticket office located just beyond the left field wall. Except with the game entering the 6th inning those booths were all closed. So I headed to the gate. A large family was walking in through the turnstiles. I tried to blend in and push my way through, but the security guard grabbed me. I guess blending in with a Latino family is not as easy for me as I thought. I was instructed to go to the upper box office to buy a ticket. "They will still be open," he promised, as he directed me to a flight of steps.
The thing about Dodger Stadium is that it's built into the side of a mountain. So if you enter from the outfield side of the stadium, you walk in at field level. But as you walk around the outside of the stadium, you're actually climbing approximately 4,297 concrete steps to the top of the ballpark. At the top of the steps was the box office. It's probably the only baseball stadium in the world where an entrance is located above the top row of the upper deck.
By the time I climbed to the top, it was now the seventh inning. The Phils were still down 7-0. I breathlessly asked the teller for a ticket and some oxygen. Sweaty and still wearing a blue blazer and slacks from my meetings, I must have looked like a young Willy Loman who had just climbed approximately 4, 297 steps. The gentleman behind the thick glass window explained that he was no longer selling tickets for tonight's game. The security guard, he said, would have to agree to let me in and could call an ambulance if needed. So I gathered myself and went to work convincing the security guard that I had to get into the park to assist my handicapped 98-year-old step-uncle. He waved me in.
Walking in through the gate, I found myself standing above the top row of the upper deck behind home plate. It's quite a view. And an unusual place to enter a ballpark. The seventh inning stretch had just ended. The Phils were still down 7-0. I walked down several rows and grabbed a seat.
I would have tried moving into seats lower down, but the stadium is cleverly designed. Unless you like to scale down fences or can survive a 50-foot drop onto concrete, there's no way down from that top deck. So I sat back, enjoyed the cool evening breeze blowing through the ravine, and waited for a big late-inning rally from my boys in red.
I felt surprisingly at home in Dodger Stadium. It's a beautiful park in a remarkable setting. And the fans are amazing. Dodger fans are my kind of people.
Philly fans are always derided as being the meanest fans outside professional wrestling arenas. And there's some truth to it. Philly fans will boo a small child who drops a foul ball. They will boo a pitcher who hits only 99mph on the radar gun. And, yes, they booed Santa Claus. It's true, even though he deserved it.
Dodger fans, in my opinion, are equally nasty. With the Dodgers still ahead by seven runs heading to the bottom of the 8th, the stadium began to ring out with the chants of, "Phillies suck!" In most places, this would be considered gloating. A group of Philly fans sitting down the first baseline became the focus of some ugly not-so-family-friendly slurs as well.
Now, Dodger fans also have the reputation of leaving games after the 7th inning. So I wondered why the stadium was still nearly full after eight full innings. That's when the crowd shifted from verbally bullying a 6-year-old in a Phillies cap to chanting for Eric Gagne.
Gagne, the Dodger's star closer, had just been reactivated after being on the DL for nearly a year and a half. The fans wanted to see him in the game. "We want Gagne! We want Gagne!" they chanted. But with a seven-run lead, it seemed unlikely the Dodgers would bring him in.
In the ninth, the Phils actually put together a small rally scoring two quick runs. Now with the lead cut to five and two runners on-base, number 38 jumped up in the bullpen and started to throw. The crowd went wild. Chants of "Gagne, Gagne!" grew deafening. These folks had stuck around to see their man pitch, and now he was prepping himself for some game time.
If another run scored, the tieing run would move into the on-deck circle. It would be a save situation and a likely opportunity to bring in Gagne. Abraham Nunez, the Phillies pinch hitter came to the plate with two on and one out. He hit a tailor-made double play grounder to shortstop. But the relay throw got past the firstbaseman keeping the game alive. E-4. The crowd went wild. They cheered an error made by one of their own players! After all, the game was still going and there might still be a chance to see Gagne.
Jimmy Rollins, the Phils' shortstop then came to bat. In typical fashion, he swung at the first pitch and popped it weakly to first base. The fans yelled at the firstbaseman to drop the ball. He didn't. He made the catch. The game was over. The fans all booed. Their team just won 7-2 and they booed. Those are my kind of fans.
