By Ed Piper
I have partly refrained from chronicling my exploits at the Dodgers' postseason games this month in deference to my non-Dodger-fan readers. But I figure, with my ticket for game three of the World Series Sat., Oct. 27, waiting to be scanned, I need to plunge in and share my experiences so as not to pass them by.
For those of you who don't know my history, I gave years of my life to the Padres. But, as I have told many people, the Pads will break your heart. They broke my heart year-after-year, from the time I first got my (then future) wife Dianna to attend games--she had never seen a baseball game in person before I met her. (For accuracy, her first game was for my birthday party, the year before we got engaged and married.)
So, my point is not that I'm indifferent to those majority Padres fans here in San Diego. It's just that I had to move on, and I'm back to enjoying my boyhood favorites the last several years. Who's not going to enjoy the playoffs, and now the World Series, such a rare opportunity?
Last year I sprung for a ticket for a friend, and took him with me to game two of the Dodgers-Astros World Series, which Houston won in seven games. On the day Jim and I pulled up in the Chavez Ravine parking lot, my car thermometer read 104 degrees outside. That was at 3 p.m. Two hours later, at game time, the official temperature was 94, setting a record for the World Series.
We both speak Spanish, so we had a blast talking and joking with all the Dodger fans around us in nosebleed seats down the left field line, way up top in the Reserved section. Each ticket was a couple of hundred dollars through Stubhub, so fees were what bumped the prices that much higher.
This year, going solo, I bought a ticket (same area, the cheapest) for game two of the National League Division Series against the Braves. The Dodgers won in a shutout. They played well. The temperature was perfect, not too cold, but not too hot, either. The ducat through Stubhub was relatively inexpensive, and with discount parking online through MLB.com, the total cost for that part of the trip from San Diego was under $100. Wow. That is affordable.
Plus I was able to do the drive in two and a half hours, which really makes it doable. Construction that used to have San Clemente, Irvine, and other areas torn up has finally been (mostly) completed after years of road markers and orange warning signs. What a difference that makes.
I've said this before, but to go to a park (unlike Petco) where everyone is decked out in the home team's gear is such a shot in the arm. You're not outnumbered by fans cheering for the opposing team (which happens frequently at Padres' games).
I stayed for the entire 13 innings of the Dodgers' 2-1 win over the Brewers on Cory Bellinger's base hit last Tuesday (Oct. 16). Barely. I had to substitute-teach the following morning at 7:30 a.m. in San Diego, so at about 10:45 p.m., as the game continued without either team scoring again, I started to watch the clock and calculate my bedtime (two-hour drive home late at night from Dodger Stadium via the I-5, no traffic).
After 11 p.m., I started to think "exit", so as the Dodgers put a runner on in the 13th, I moved from where I was hanging out on the field level (I had spent the first six innings keeping score of the game in my scorebook in my paid seat on the Reserved level) in right field toward where my car was parked outside the left field gate.
Eventually, Bellinger, the left-hander, wapped a scoring hit into right field. So the moment I saw that, at about 11:23 p.m., I darted for the exit and my car.
I didn't even see his teammates chase him into left field and rip his jersey off--I had to hear his interview on radio from somewhere down the I-5 near Irvine. (I got just over three hours of sleep before having to get up to sub.)
It has been a lot of fun.
Stay tuned for World Series fables.
As a junior in college at Chico State, I drove with my roommate to the three World Series games the Dodgers played the A's in 1974 at the Oakland Coliseum. Having no extra cash (the tickets in the right field bleachers cost $15 each by mail--no Internet), I didn't buy a single trinket from the souvenir stands--partly because they only offered A's items. I did take a tiny tuft of grass someone else tore out of the field after the A's won game 5 to close out the Series 4-1, and tried to plant it in our front yard at our family home in Camarillo. By then, it was too dry and didn't take.
That was my only World Series experience until last year.
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