Southern California’s Palace Of Baseball

We brought a picnic of leftovers! OMG! All sorts of goodies from Sunday that made it into a soft sided bag and past security. The Foxes dined at the park!

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As Phillies fans, Helaine and I were excited by the chance of seeing West Coast games in person. Last night was a first chance. We dropped Doppler at the sitter and headed up ‘the 5’ toward Chavez Ravine. Phillies versus Dodgers.

LA has traffic. Get used to it. It took 1:20 door-to-door. I can live with that.

IMG_20140421_181714-w1400-h1400Helaine got us great seats down low just up the line from first base. We had an unobstructed view of everything. It was a little tough to judge inside/outside pitches, but other than that, perfect.

We came early. The park is different when the teams are on the field taking batting and fielding practice. We watched A.J. Burnett walk up to the fence, sign autographs and take pics with fans.

Did he have to? No. Class act.

IMG_20140421_193333-w1400-h1400Speaking of which, thank you Dodger Stadium for being a class act too. Every employee we came across was helpful and friendly even though we were wearing Phillies gear. Maybe baseball realizes at the current cost for tickets we deserve to be treated well.

The stadium itself seems to be in pristine condition. It’s cool to see the zig-zag roof over the bleachers and hexagonal scoreboards, now in sparkling high def color. There are more advertising signs than in ’62, but this isn’t a 21st century glitter palace.

IMG_20140421_180820-w1400-h1400We brought a picnic of leftovers! OMG! All sorts of goodies from Sunday that made it into a soft sided bag and past security. The Foxes dined at the park!

The Phils opened with two runs in the first and never looked back. The Dodgers looked lackluster–like patsies on this night. It got chilly toward the end. We were prepared.

380828_20140421_184132-97324829.jpg_1024x1024Nice place to see a game. We should do it more often. Angels Stadium is even closer.

3 thoughts on “Southern California’s Palace Of Baseball”

  1. Geoff, are you still a Dodger fan, even though they moved out of NY years ago? I’ve been to one of the Dodger’s games. If you ever want to eat in a restaurant close to the ball park, try Phillippes. They have the best French dip sandwiches I’ve ever tasted. http://www.philippes.com/. I am drooling, just thinking about their food.

    When the Angel’s built their stadium in Anaheim in 1966, I won 4 box seat tickets to the first game played there. It was like attending a world series game, all the seats were occupied and the parking lot was packed. It is closer to your home too.

  2. I went to 1 game there–probably summer of ’65. I think it was the year of Sandy Kofack’s pitching. I don’t remember who the Dodger’s played that night—although I probably still have the program–somewhere in my family home’s attic. It was still a New stadium then, and a thrill to attend. When you first started your article above, I guessed right off where you were heading. The stadium from my memory hasn’t changed much from your picture. They were building the Angel’s stadium or perhaps it had just opened–when I left to return to CT in July of ’66. I drove both ways–only difference being that in ’64 I stopped along the way to stay with friends and family, and on the way home, we (my younger sister flew out after school let out)camped up the coast to Oregon and then over to Yellowstone and anywhere we could find a National Park or Forest. It was the 2nd year of the Golden Eagle Passes, so camping was free. Good Memories–

  3. One of the occasional perks of my travel-intensive job is sometimes I get to check out baseball parks, and a few years ago on a night off I got to go to Chavez Ravine. They were playing the Phillies then, too! Great stadium, but as a Red Sox fan used to Fenway, I was really disappointed by how little baseball knowledge the crowd displayed during the game. Lots of people there just to be seen (how L.A.), and folks looked at me like I had three heads when they saw that I was keeping score. But I would go back in a heartbeat, it was a lot of fun.

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