Two Ballparks, One Franchise

The closing of the 2008 MLB spring training season. The opening of the 2008 MLB regular season. And, tied into both events, we see the 50 year history of the Los Angeles Dodgers neatly tied together.

When the Dodgers first absconded from Brooklyn, it took a while for them to evict the Mexicans living in Chavez Ravine, which was the planned location for their new West Coast palace. So, over their first four seasons in the Western Time Zone, the Dodgers called the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum their home. Built in the late 20s for the 1932 Olympics, the Coliseum is ideal for track meets, football games, and location shooting for "24." It is not a baseball park. Yet, the Dodgers were forced to use it and even won a World Series in 1959 with it as their home base.

So, to honor the Dodgers' 50 years in Los Angeles, the current ownership decided that it would be nifty to stage a charity exhibition game at the Coliseum versus the Red Sox last Saturday night. They spent several hundred thousand greenbacks to turn the Coliseum back into the alleged baseball park it was back when. Over 100,000 fans bought tickets and that made lots of money to cure cancer. There was a lot of curiosity and gleeful anticipation. And, as a Dodger season ticket, I was accorded two damn good seats.

Oh, God, I hope they never do that again.

The fact that the Dodgers played even one game, let alone four years, in this dump is one of the great mysteries of the last two centuries. While the exhibition admittedly had its fun elements, it should be an isolated moment in time that is neatly tucked away in history. And never ever repeated. If the Dodgers want to raise a bucket of money for their Think Cure charity, I would suggest a telethon hosted by Alyssa Milano. With or without clothes.

The Coliseum game on Saturday was the equivalent of a baseball Woodstock. The only thing missing was Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young smoking your way down the Marrakesh Express. I had never been inside the Coliseum before. I once walked around it when it was empty and it looked very much like a vacated eyesore you might find somewhere around the Grand Concourse and 158th Street. And, essentially, what I saw on Saturday was the same pile of decrepit cement. Except, this time, there were people. A lot of people. A whole freakin' lot of people.
Since a price reduction at In N' Out Burger is often enough to create a traffic frenzy in Los Angeles, I was envisioning gridlock that would snarl every driver west of Las Vegas. But, by parking on the USC campus, we were able to circumvent all of that. Except we were about two zip codes away from the game. The tour of the campus was wonderful and I probably saw more of USC than you do on freshman orientation weekend. When I started to smell onions frying, I knew we were getting close to the Coliseum. Indeed, the area around the stadium looked like a street vendor convention and had the same feel as that Moroccan marketplace where Peter Lorre is chased during "Casablanca." Apparently, in Los Angeles, all it takes to be entrepreneurial is a portable grill, some sausage, and a bottle of tabasco sauce. Everybody was selling food. Lots of people were buying food. I was trying to figure out I could quickly set up a Zantac counter. There was tons of tailgating which is usually illegal on the Dodger Stadium premises. Some of the people had been there since 7AM. And hammered by noon. Cerveza mucho Budweiser.

Once past the front gate, you saw the same street fair you might find during Cesar Chavez Day in Tijuana. One series of kiosks selling Louisiana hot sausage featured a big poster of a fat Black woman with a chili-laden hot dog protruding from her mouth. I wondered out loud if these guys were the intended recipients of Obama's big speech on race two weeks ago. You could buy ribs, funnel cakes, chicken wings, pizza, and churros. And there probably wasn't a legal food vending license within 20 miles.

Perhaps the Coliseum was state-of-the-art in 1932. But that honor probably expired by 1933. I knew how bad the place looked outside. It was even worse inside. If you love climbing long, long flights of stairs, this would be your ultimate theme park. And, indeed, the construction code back in the day had to be a little looser as there were some steps considerably higher than others. I suppose Black and Decker didn't manufacture a leveling tool immediately after the Depression. As for the stands, it is readily apparent that people were a lot shorter and much less wider in 1928. The effect of sitting in the middle of a row was akin to doing a sit-up and holding the position for three hours. Most of the seats around me were broken. But, with a lot of liquor in them, most of the people around me didn't notice.

The dimensions of the playing field were a joke. Back when the Dodgers first played there, the distance to the left field wall was an intimate 270 feet. But now, with extra seats added several years ago, Saturday night's left field wall was only 201 feet away. This resulted in the Dodgers using leftfielder Andre Ethier as a roving outfielder and centerfielder Andruw Jones wound up covering second base on an attempted stolen base. Normal short fly balls in any regular ball park wound up bouncing off the wall and it was all like a pinball game in O'Brien's Tavern on Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx. The dugouts were not existent. They instead erected tents that looked like they were straight from the prop department that did the movie "Elmer Gantry." The dugout bench consisted of folding chairs and both Joe Torre and guest manager Tommy Lasorda looked like they were sitting on the stag line at the St. Brendan's senior dance.

Of course, the pre-game festivities had all the historical pomp and circumstance that befitted the occasion. Vin Scully was honored with a plaque, but should have also been given an oxygen tank so he could get up to the press box, which was located in the flight pattern to Burbank Airport. As a matter of fact, the fire helicopter fly-over was so low that I thought it was a re-staging of a scene from "Apocalypse Now."

There was plenty of ridiculous plays created by the bizarre contour of the field. But, no one cared. As a matter of fact, more attention was generally paid to the numerous fights that sprang up all over as the Miller Light started to kick in. Around the eight inning, most people started looking to re-connect with their sherpas so they could begin the long trek out.

This is not to say that the whole evening was a bad case of poison ivy. Amid all the goofiness and annoyance, there was one overriding sensation. Nostalgia. Of course, the oldtime Dodgers had plenty. Before the game, Don Newcombe went on and on about the celebrities who used to show up at the Coliseum. He remembered seeing Humphrey Bogart on multiple occasions, which must have been a neat trick since Bogie died about a year before the Dodgers got to Los Angeles. But, nevertheless, the memories (albeit fuzzy) were rich.

The Dodger season ticket holders were pretty much segregated together in a section (you see my view in the picture at top). And I got to speak at length with most of them. One guy had been on the mailing list for season tickets before the team left Brooklyn. I heard tales of Wally Moon shots and Drysdale shutouts and Coliseum day games which apparently introduced the wonders of skin cancer to this country. For these folks, this day was golden. Forget the walk and the climb and the traffic and the parking space in El Monte. They were back in the Coliseum and that was enough.

As challenging as the Coliseum game was, Opening Day at Chavez Ravine on Monday was a breeze. The Dodgers celebrated their 50th Anniversary in Los Angeles with a 5-0 win over the Giants who should be relegated to a beer league for the bulk of the summer. In his first game back in the National League, Joe Torre looked like a genius and he even got to return to his NY roots by making Scott Proctor his first bullpen call. After last year's Opening Day gridlock, which did not clear up until Flag Day, the parking in 2008 was smooth as silk. The weather was pristine. The team looked marvelous. The Dodger Dog was especially juicy. And, unlike other openers, the crowd was not peppered with the usual non-fan that shows up just to get out of work early as the Senior Vice President of Paper Clips and Jelly Beans supposedly "entertains" a client. Nope, there were true Dodger fans all around me. And they were rewarded.

To kick off the 50th Anniversary celebration, the Dodgers staged a pre-game ceremony that rivaled the Yankees' oldtimer days for pomp and circumstance. Wordlessly, almost 40 different Los Angeles Dodgers from the past 50 years made individual entrances from either the bullpens, the dugouts, or the centerfield gate and slowly marched to their position on the field. Field of Dreams without the corn stalks. None were introduced except for their name showing up on Diamondvision. It was celebratory, solemn, and beautiful all at once. And it wasn't just the likes of Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, Steve Garvey, and Ron Cey. There were names I could barely recall. Don Demeter. Jim Gentile. Bobby Castillo. Even recently retired Steve Finley, who spent one half season a Dodger season but will always be remembered for hitting a walk-off grand slam against the Giants that propelled his team into the playoffs. After you got to appearances by Valenzuela and Lasorda, you figured it was done. Nope, one last surprise from the dugout. Sandy Koufax.

Even though I grew up rooting for another team 3000 miles away, I had a lump in my throat. I suddenly got it. Those guys I met in the Coliseum were right.

This was enough.

Dinner last night: Chicken sandwich and salad.