Dodger Stadium
Home of the Los Angeles Dodgers
Los Angeles, California

Date of Visit:   May 25, 2008

Who Played:   St. Louis Cardinals vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

This would be the first park in a three-park road trip that I took with a friend in the 2008 season. We would knock out Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium, and Petco Park in one fell swoop in three days, and then bolt for the desert, and gamble our wallets dry in Las Vegas.

This trip was planned very carefully to be able to do something like this - most cities/states with multiple teams generally attempt to keep their counterpart happy by having home games at different times. For the case of the Angels and Dodgers, it had to be seen as a time to catch one team at the end of a home-stand, so that the other would be beginning a home-stand the day after. For the Dodgers, we caught them at the finale with a three-game set with the Cardinals, and then the Angels would be playing the Tigers the following night. Perfect timing.

So no more after an hour after landing in LAX on an unseasonably chilly Sunday morning in Los Angeles, I picked up my rental car, and went straight to the Chavez Ravine to see the historic Dodger Stadium. Maybe because it was a Sunday, but the traffic was relatively light, and I was able to get there without any real difficulty. The geographic location of Dodger Stadium was really cool being on top of the hill, and to pretty much be able to look down at the rest of the city, but the flip side was that the outside face of the park is pretty drab, kinda unimpressive, but it was easily excuseable.

I love the palm trees everywhere. It's evidently something that I don't get to see on a regular basis, and more than likely something I'm not going to see at the major of the other ballparks in the country.

After entering the park, it was a quest to try the famous Dodger Dogs. I picked up a "Super" grilled Dodger Dog, with onions, relish, ketchup and mustard. Not too shabby, but not being a huge hot dog connossieur to begin with, it's nothing memory-everlasting about it.

The walkways in Dodger Stadium are kind of cramped and narrow, but keeping in consideration was the fact that it was one of the more older parks in the country. The seats were even more cramped, and despite the initial comfort of sitting down, as the game went on, I found that the seats were uncomfortable, and left me a little achy afterwards.

While walking around, and taking in the sights of the entire place, I couldn't help but look back at parts of the field, that I easily recognized from television. Looking at the outfield walls, I always thought about how they looked on television, compared to looking at them in person. I envisioned images of Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit home run into the right field bleachers, and my eyes went to those seats. A year prior, Chipper Jones hit his 372nd home run in Dodger Stadium, to become the all-time Braves leader in home runs, and I sought out the spot in right-center where the ball landed just beyond the leaping Juan Pierre's glove. There was just something surreal about being at a place that's only been seen prior on the television - either way, I found it very entertaining.

Something else of note was the kind of cultural difference at this park, compared to all the others I'd been to thusfar. Southern California, with its large hispanic demographic, it was a little different to me to see such a gigantic hispanic turnout at Dodger Stadium. Furthermore, the Dodgers pretty much are known for their Dodger Blue; so pretty much all I could see was just a sea of blue everywhere, which I found admirable. The Braves have changed their team colors several times throughout their history, and furthermore, they continue to market all generations of memorabilia, so despite seeing crowds at Turner Field, there is still a big mish-mash of colors and logos from different generations - the Dodgers have no such thing, except for the original Brooklyn "B" emblem on the same blue hats.

Noteable performance(s):   This game was the debut of Dodgers rookie phenom, Clayton Kershaw. Admittedly, I didn't know a thing about him prior to coming to the game, but I did a brief check on some of his minor league numbers prior to leaving for California. He had something like 43 strikeouts in like 35 innings or something like that, and the general buzz around the city was that they were really, really looking forward to the debut. Although he didn't get a decision, he still went 6.0 innings, with two earned runs (a quality-start) and struck out seven batters. Most definitely not shabby, and most certainly a noteable performance. And one of those earned runs came off of Albert Pujols' bat, and he's pretty much done that to everyone in baseball.

Game Result:   Los Angeles 4, St. Louis 3. It took ten innings, but Andre Ethier drove in Juan Pierre in the bottom of the 10th with a base hit to right field, to end the game.

Most Braves fans don't really care much for Andruw Jones anymore, but I do remember all the good memories he left with the team for the 11 years he put in for us. It hurt to see him go, yeah, but with his 2007 performance, he had changed a lot of minds prior to bolting.

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