Ballpark: Dodger Stadium

On Friday, May 10, my uncle and I went to the Dodgers vs. Marlins game at Dodger Stadium. Since I forgot the details of the game in my last post and included them in an update, I will start this post with the game summary. In true Dodger fan form, we arived to the game in the bottom of the first. After a single and a walk, Adrian Gonzalez hit a home run to right to give the Dodgers an early 3-0 lead. The Marlins lineup, which is terrible since Giancarlo Stanton is hurt, didn't pose a threat to score until Derek Dietrich hit a no doubt home run to right to tie the game. A couple of innings later, the Marlins extended their lead to 5-3 after a double to right put runners on second and third with no outs. Matt Kemp did his best to get the Dodgers back into the game by singling, stealing second, and scoring a run in the 8th inning but it wasn't enough as Steve Cishek closed out the 5-4 Marlins victory. This was the Dodgers 8th straight loss which is surprising considering the talent in the Dodger lineup. On to my thoughts of Dodger Stadium. A couple of years ago I watched an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on Fernando Valenzuela and Fernandomania in Los Angeles. Prior to Fernandomania, there was some hostility towards the Dodger organization due to the building of Dodger Stadium in Chavez Revine, a low income housing area for many Mexican American immigrants. When Dodger Stadium was built, the low income housing was knocked down and many families were displaced. Fernandomania helped relieved the tension between the Hispanic community and the Dodger organization. At the game, about 75% of the Dodger fans were hispanic.

Dodger Stadium is by itself with only the parking lot and jungle-like vegitation surrounding it. This made parking easy but it also made the stadium very isolated from the city, especially compared to the Staples Center which I drove by earlier. Our seats were in the upper deck near the left field foul pole. These seats were not too great but we were definitely able to follow the game. After about 4 innings we went and got food. The lines were long but they moved reasonable fast. I got a Dodger dog and a pop in a souvenir cup, making me now 1 for 3 getting souvenir cups. After getting our food, we upgraded to seats closer to the on-deck circle but still in the upperdeck. At these seats we had a better view of the game and the two video boards in the outfield. The aspect of Dodger Stadium that I really enjoyed was the classic baseball feel, a good change from Chase Field. Another unique feature of Dodger Stadium is that it is built on a hill. Overall, I like hill but it had a major drawback: you entered the stadium by area you had a ticket for. That is, we had tickets for the upper deck so we could only enter the stadium though the gate that served the upperdeck, making it impossible to move down close to the field either before the game or near the end of the game.

My take-away from Dodger Stadium is that it has the classic baseball feeling but it lacks the nice features of the better ballparks in the league. Dodger Satdium is in many ways in its own class as it is the only major league ballpark still around from the 1950s.