welcome to dodger stadium!

i took the family to dodger stadium on thursday night.

yes, we got the matt kemp action figures and the manny ramirez figures too. my kids played with the kemp dolls throughout the game since i liberated two of them from their boxes. at the end of the evening matt kemp and mark raced back to the car with the loser having to ride home in the bed of the truck. luckily mark edged kemp at the last second and touched the truck first. at that very moment kemp hit a solo homer in the bottom of the 6th. yes, we left early. our tix sucked and the kids got antsy, (read: faith got antsy,) and so we took off but heard the roar of the crowd. i jumped in the car and flipped on the radio to discover it was matt's big night all the way around, (save for the lonely ride home in the trunk.)

to be completely honest, the game was a mixed bag. i kept thinking about how much i would like to tell frank mccourt about my experience with horrible seats, terribly designed seating, a bad usher, no straws, a ridiculously long line to get the free action figures, (it did move fast however,) confusing tickets, (again, just poorly designed seating,) more bad seating as the dust of my cracked peanuts kept flying into the hair of the people in front of me because of a breeze that passed through a wire, mesh fence underneath and behind my seat that should have been a solid fence...and then there was the really bad part. parking at dodger stadium used to be a breeze. (didn't frank mccourt formerly own parking lots? you would think he'd be better at this.) one knew there were two loops going opposite directions. one had choices. i came in at stadium way off the 110 and was funneled right into a lot to the right. i had to walk all the way up 3-4 flights of stairs, (with a 3-year-old in my arms,) to will call at right field reserved only to enter and walk all the way around to my seats in left field reserved.

because i was watching a game on the weekend and saw a commercial for $17 reserved seats for matt kemp action figure night and thought, "gee, bad seats but cheap. "my kids are little. "it'll be fun." (what a moron.) i felt penalized for not sticking to my usual standard of just not really going to baseball games in person unless i have some kind of a line on decent seats, typically on the field level, occasionally loge or club. the $17 ticket price became $22.75 per by the time the ticketmaster surcharges were paid. (it is both collusion and a monopoly-i am pretty sure. i am not a lawyer but i feel certain.) what sounded like $68 on the commercial bounced right up to $91. okay, big deal i can handle giving away an extra $23. fuck it. but to then have to deal with a parking situation that used to be par excellence but now is strictly a convenience for the organization? (i believe it must result in getting people off the property more quickly than in the past. that is the only rationale I can come up with. geezus chrimus i miss the o'malleys.)

from our seats in left field, (the first seats in the top row of the reserved section, my wife and myself along with my 3 & 5-year-old kids,) we could see my car on the opposite side of the ravine. "look kids, it's the bug truck! See it?!" "yep."

with lapfuls of hot dogs, cokes, licorice, action figures, and peanuts on our persons, we were booted from those really bad seats. a lady approached from my right and said to me, "you're in my seats."

"wtf," i thought?! "you mean these effed up seats, the single worst location i have ever sat in at any event ever are not even the right seats?!??"

how could that be possible. it was reserved. it was section 17. it was row jj. why there was an 'm,' in front of the seat number '10,' i had no idea but i thought i was in the right place. well, i guessed we were probably slightly further down the left field line in the same last or top, row, but a section over so like a reasonable person i took my family down a few rows and plopped down in the first available seats i found. they were better than that crowded, inaccessible back row.

for the next two innings we enjoyed the game, playing with our matt kemps, eating peanuts, posting pix to facebook, you know, all that night at the game kind of stuff. then came the couple who were supposed to be in the seats we were in. i asked them if we were in their seats before they could tell me and they confirmed my suspicion. i asked faith if we should move down a row and she asked them if they wanted to sit in the seats in front of us to which they agreed. cool. we would spend another inning right there as takahashi and kuroda battled like two samurai on a diamond-shaped war ground.

next came a mysterious kid with a ticket. he approached the couple in front of us, ticket in hand, (matt kemp in his other hand,) and said, "you're in my seat. "i'm only one." he was only one?! he was 11. how is he only one? despite 3 or 4 empty seats further in next to the couple they turned and looked at me. i looked at faith who could not have been more inconvenienced said, (matter of factly,) "we have to move."

i grabbed my 3-year-old and his sprite, put a matt kemp in my pocket and urged faith and terra to get out of the row we were in. they did and down we went. at the exit faith turned as if to
leave the stadium. i grabbed terra and pulled her back in my direction and went down to better seats, to a huge section of 30 or 40 seats that had been empty all night. i went down four rows, turned and went out into the middle of that mass of unoccupied seats where i sat myself and my kids down. faith joined us but notified me if it happened again we would be leaving. we were still in the 4th inning.

at that point the cotton candy guy arrived and i shelled out $3 for about 10-cents worth of sugar and pink food coloring. james loney got thrown out attempting to steal 2nd base and i booed heartily after which terra and mark booed too. with bases loaded in the top of the 5th and two outs kuroda faced his counterpart and I yelled out, "strike out the bumb!" (i think they heard me down in the loge section.) mark mimicked me and repeated the phrase. now this was why i came to the park. i told terra matt kemp's licorice was in fact a freeze ray and just one of many
superpowers kemp had in addition to hitting baseballs out of the park and throwing runners out from miles away.

all went well for a couple of innings. the dodgers held their slight advantage and the family maintained our grip on our latest seats of choice. unfortunately, a bad odor soon became noticeable. no, it wasn't dodger stadium sewage. it was mark. my three-year-old had gas, which of course means only one thing, he would soon need to go number two. i had to do something and fast. briefly i imagined the dodger stadium restroom. i imagined getting mark into a stall and having to wipe down all manner of disgusting human byproduct. i turned to faith and informed her mark had passed gas no less than 10 times in about the last 90 seconds and suggested we leave, which we did.

we made our way from left field to right field, exited the stadium, walked down three or four flights of stairs, traversed the parking lot from the right field bleachers nearly to the exit, at which point mark won his race against the matt kemp action figure. as soon as we got home mark went directly to the restroom to do his business. mission accomplished. i turned on the game and saw kuo get the last three outs of the dodger victory. (goodbye six game losing streak.) i am just not going to bother with those bad seats in the future.