On the eve of the World Series I am reminded of what the big games and baseball and the Dodgers mean to me. As a kid living in the shadow of Dodger Stadium I played one year of Little League, (I was on the Giants, sadly,) outside the Elysian Park entrance to Dodger Stadium at the fields across from the Police Academy. I don’t think I was very good at the game. It was my baptism really, into sports in general.
I had a tumultuous childhood. From birth until I was 12 I experienced moments of stability but where I lived and who I lived with was often in flux. Melham Avenue in La Puente, Greycliff Avenue in La Puente, Ranlett Avenue in La Puente, Prichard Street in La Puente, N Taylor Avenue in Montebello, Sandia Avenue in West Covina, Melrose and Western in Hollywood, Eckerman Avenue in West Covina, Sunset Boulevard in downtown LA, Quinn Street in Bell Gardens, Santa Maria, Nipomo, Sandalwood in Nipomo, and a few others I have lost track of all gave way to teenage years spent on Calvados Avenue in Covina, California.
I was staying with my Aunt and Uncle as I had at times before, in the Spring of 1975. On Monday, April 14th, I went with my Uncle to the Dodger’s home opener and sat high up in the reserved section on the 3rd base line. It was an electric night. The Dodgers had lost the World Series the year before to a star-packed Oakland A’s team that included Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Gene Tenace, Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Bill North, Ray Fosse and Rollie Fingers. (A more colorful team is yet to be seen.) The giveaway for the night was a National League Champions pennant and when Ron Cey hit a solo shot off of Jack Billingham the crowd pulsed with excitement. In the 6th inning however, with the outcome still very much in question, the Toy Cannon, Jimmy Wynn, came up and blasted one into the left field pavilion and the ravine erupted.
Studies have been done on the excitement and mentality of crowds. For me, not yet 10-years-old, I remember a certain ecstasy that had been otherwise foreign to me. I remember the sound and the fury, the elation and the energy, as if it woke me from a somnambulant state life had been training me in. It was magical and that Jimmy Wynn homerun stuck with me and carried me really for years. It was of my happiest moments. The positivity of life became real to me in the company of Dodger fans.
A few years later when my Aunt and Uncle had taken me in even though I was a Ward of the Court, (or a child of Los Angeles County,) my Uncle had connections to baseball. First, his company had 8 of the best seats in the house at the Big A and so I got to go to quite a few games and sat in the front row, right behind the on deck circle for the visiting team. My Uncle also had a coworker who was a scout for the Dodgers and so when the Dodgers returned to the World Series in 1977 and 1978 and 1981, I got to go to some of the games.
Happy (Burt) Hooton was my favorite Dodger pitcher and he had pitched in many of the three World Series in five years between the Yankees and Dodgers. For me the Dodger-Yankee World Series was expected and Burt Hooton’s knuckle-curve was virtually un-hittable. The night of Game 6, I had left my seat in the left field pavilion to go to the restroom but then of course, I ended up at the back of the Dodgers bullpen trying to get Hooton’s attention. I thought maybe I could get him to give me a ball. I was 12. Instead I remember a groan coming from the crowd as I strained to see, through the slight crack where the gate swung, what was happening on the field. I could not see the players on the field but I did see a fly ball high in the night air and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I raced back to my seat to discover the dastardly Reggie Jackson had done it again, another homerun this time off Bob Welch.
The Dodgers lost the World Series that night and my disappointment was profound. I remember the drive home, feeling so crestfallen I did not know what I would do with myself. That my Uncle who would become my Dad got Reggie Smith’s bat for me from his coworker took the edge off in subsequent days. It went into the family trophy case where I admired it often.
I stayed a baseball fan. I am a true blue Dodger fan and an Angels fan. The Angel’s 2002 World Series championship is one of my favorite victories by any of my teams. I stayed a fan of baseball even through the period of rampant cheating, (guys using PEDs to gain an unfair advantage over those who did not use illegal drugs, or worse, artificially keeping players from even making the big leagues and realizing that big pay day.) I am well versed on the history of the game. I think Sandy Koufax is likely the most dominant pitcher ever, though I have only seen old film of him.
I collected cards too, when I was a teenager. In the end I sold them to fuel my severe Asteroids habit but I had some great cards. I remember Topps informing me on the greats of the game, from Pie Traynor to Christy Mathewson to Rogers Hornsby, and the great Cy Young himself. I remember a Brewer named Kurt Bevacqua had won a bubble gum biggest bubble contest and had the human head sized bubble immortalized on card stock. I had outsized cards I got at Dodger Stadium of Frank Howard and Ken Boyer. I loved the nicknames. Mick the Quick. The Penguin, (Ron Cey who I just met a couple of weeks ago. I stood in line with all the autograph seekers then told him when I got to him I just wanted to shake his hand and that when I was a kid he was The Man. And he was…) Mr. Clean. The Express. Mr. October. (I embraced him as an Angel.) Disco Dan. Game Over. And of course, Happy, a name given Burt Hooton because of his implacable lack of facial expressions. Baseball irony.
Those World Series games along with a couple of unforgettable playoff games, (seeing a ball go under Garry Maddox’s glove in the bottom of the 9th to win a 5-game series against the Phillies from almost directly behind him in the left field pavilion,) was absolutely amazeballs. Watching the game from way up in the left field reserve section of Dodger Stadium, nearly at the top, to see Jerry Reuss beat the Astros in a 1-game playoff was similarly charged.
I came to love the nuance of the game. The evolution brought about by advanced metrics puts all that nuance on center stage. How will Kershaw pitch to JD Martinez? Same as ever? How will all these lefties fare: Sale, Price, Kershaw and Ryu, in the first two games? Will Matt Kemp come up big? Will the Dodgers get to the Boston bullpen? Who will the designated hitter benefit the most? Which team’s pitchers can the other team steal on? Will the New England fans cheer Dave Roberts? Will Dodger fans remember Alex Cora?
I do. In the late ‘90s and early '00s my company had four season seats 19 rows behind the visiting dugout. For a couple of years I was lucky enough to receive those tickets about 10 times each year. (How I still love my bosses all those years ago at Sparkletts Water.) Welcome to the Jungle, indeed. As disappointing as those Piazza and Karros years were and as shameful it was to have been linked to steroids, when Eric Gagne came into the game I would always watch the top of the visiting dugout. Without fail every player would come to the front edge to stand and watch this guy throw 99 mph with a downward screw on the ball that was practically unhittable. It was exciting. One mid-season night, Sparkletts Water night in fact, guess who got to throw out the first pitch in a mid-season game against the Astros. That’s right, the kid who became the old man who can still imitate the batting stances of all the starters from those 1978, 1979 and 1981 teams, to say nothing of the pitching motion of one Burt Carlton Hooton.
I don’t know if baseball would have caught fire with me had I not attended those big games when I was a youngster. I am not sure I would have played through high school and beyond including some high level fast and slow pitch softball right through my 20s and 30s. It would not have been the end of the world either if I did not become a fan of America’s pastime. However, it has been exceedingly positive for me. I’m so, so thankful.
And here we are again. The Dodgers are in the World Series and now I am a father and my children are 14 and 11. We were at a Dodger-Angel game earlier this season, (interleague play,) and the kids were given free Mike Trout jerseys and my daughter, who is the sportier of the two, really embraced the Angels and Trout throughout the game. She liked Ohtani’s deep homerun to center field and relished being the contrarian in the group as the rest of us seemed to represent the Dodgers. Just a few weeks prior to that we were at a Los Angeles Galaxy game and I saw her adopt the ardor of her friends for the Galaxy and specifically for Zlatan Ibrahimovic. She asked me if she could go ask Zlatan to autograph her shoes post game. These are examples of her first real interest. As if in concert her own soccer game has taken off of late. In my humble opinion she may have become the best player on her team in the course of the current season, when at the outset maybe she was 4th or 5th. As for my son we will see. So far he remains more interested in the concessions and souvenirs.
I may be calling radio stations this week. The lowest cost for tickets I have seen is $700 per. I can’t afford to take my kids at that price and that’s okay. If nothing else we’ll go to the Boat in San Gabriel so we can be around Dodger fans and hear some yelling and cheering as we watch the game. The other night we watched game 7 at Shakey’s and every time the Dodgers scored a run I gave Mark the green light to do a loud impersonation of Nelson from the Simpsons. His impression is spot on and hilarious and so, when he did it out loud at the pizza joint, it seemed my friend David and I cracked up but so did some others from around us, which pleased Mark and got him more into the game.
I’d love them to have an experience similar to my own. I’d love to find a way to take them to the World Series. In lieu of such an outcome we are going to enjoy these baseball games like nobody’s business. In the end I hope the Dodgers prevail. I want that because I love the Dodgers and it has been too long. The Dodgers have the best and most loyal fan base in sports. More, they deserve a big win after having endured the bad ownership groups that were Fox and the Mc Courts. Also, Boston. Frank Mc Court is from there and Red Sox fans largely suck.
Most of all I want the Dodgers to win for Clayton Kershaw. He has surpassed Nolan Ryan and Frank Tanana and Fernando Valenzuela and yes, Happy, as the best pitcher I have seen in my lifetime and I want the Dodgers to win one with him and for him and I want him to be relevant when that happens, which is now.
Let’s Go, Dodgers!
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