Tuesday, May 1

I heart the Doyers

I have attended four Dodger games already this year without spending a dime. I guess (with the exception of a couple of friends who bring their family instead) most of my friends think of me first when it comes to "Dodger fans" and call up when they have available tickets (that they win from a raffle or obtain from work). Over the years i have paid for the privilege of watching a game in beautiful Dodger Stadium and although tickets aren't that expensive everything else have succumbed to inflation. Parking fees had spiked up considerably while beer & food had gone up at least a buck. While these increases aren't really burning holes in the wallets of the loyal Dodger fans it doesn't exactly make them happy either. You see Dodger Stadium for many many years now have been in bad need of a little makeover. Among others the Seats had no cup holders (yes very archaic) and were in really bad shape. So in an effort to make more revenue (for the makeover and supposed acquisition of new players) the new owners (the McCourts) sliced up the foul territory and moved the dugouts farther into the field to make room for six new rows of field level seats. These ultra expensive seats put you right in the thick of things but not without penalty. Because it is actually field-level the view is a little obscured and as a result the premium boxes quickly earned a lot of negative criticism... If you ask me i think these new seats defiled my quaint Dodger Stadium...

What is so bad about these new seats (aside from defiling the place) is the fact that long time Season Ticket holders who used to have the Best Seats in the Stadium (especially the ones directly above the Dodger Dugout who used to be able to exchange pleasantries with Tommy Lasorda) got bumped... Okay, they did offer them those new seats as a courtesy but at a very premium price (offering the new seats for the same price would have been proper i believe... but this is America the land of Capitalism... even in baseball apparently). This one fellow in particular forty-three years ago, as a 43-year-old man, Irving Zeiger sent a deposit check to then Dodger owner Walter O'Malley... Zeiger wanted season tickets to Los Angeles' new baseball team and since his check was the first received, O'Malley rewarded him with the most pristine seats in the new stadium, right behind the Dodger dugout: aisle 25, row one, seats one through four, i mean how cool is that??? This man practically sat amongst the Dodgers greats like Sandy Koufax and Fernando Valenzuela ever since the LA Dodgers' opening Season in 1962. Then suddenly after the abominable renovations this Dodger Renaissance man of sorts was going to be seated behind an ugly partition, below him the 4 new rows just above the Home Team Dugout... No longer did he posses the best seats in the house which he had earned from an LA Dodger birth rite of sorts. It's sad to think that after 43 years of unbridled loyalty he no longer belonged... And get this; those same seats he held for 43 glorious years he could have retained for a jaw-dropping $120,000.00 (a 500% increase-- DOH!!!)...

Zeiger declined the amazing offer and retained his now degraded seats for 20K. As a silent protest he did not attend the Opening Day game for the first time since 1962...

My story is quite different from Mr Zieger's. I have never purchased Season Tickets nor will i ever have nearly as great a seat he then held (or even now). In fact my first Dodger Game is sort of anti-Season-ticket so to speak. I used to work with this Mexican girl Esther who also worked part time as an Usher (used to call her-- Esther the Usher lol) at the Stadium. She would tell the security guard to let me and my friends slip into the Stadium and sit somewhere in her section. Although it was kind of a crap shoot on most days (because we held no tickets) it was a lot of fun. We were sort of like Dodger Fan Nomads ya know hahaha!!!

Those were the old days though. My cheating days if you will... Nowadays i can actually afford tickets without having to worry about going broke. But like i mentioned above i have been invited by friends to go and that is always a fun thing. In the first game i attended this Season i met up with my friends at a very reasonable time only to be held up by a late comer (a white guy ironically enough-- aren't they prompt?). The next couple of times i went with some Filipino friends whom i expected to be late. Filipinos being late is practically a lifestyle you see... These guys arrived at my house at 6:55 pm, fifteen short minutes before the first pitch (boy i was annoyed...). I swore never to go with them again lol...

On Monday night against the Diamond Backs i went with Jeremy and Doug, a couple of beer- bellied white kids. These guys were an entirely different experience from the Filipinos because as soon as i pulled up at Jeremy's place (actually 20 minutes early) he was waiting outside with a beer cooler-- that was a pleasant site lemme tell ya lol... We were so early we had time to check out his pop's mint-conditioned ('cherry' Jeremy likes to call it) 1968 Mustang Coupe and custom 1993 Harley Davidson Heritage Soft Tail Special, hit a local dive for a quick brew, and pick up Tailgate beer from a Supermarket...

When we arrived at the Stadium we had one hour to spare... how sweet is that?

Anyway, i don't think you could quite say that the new owners are doing a bad job at attracting new players or that they have actually defiled the Stadium with their obscure changes... I just think that it was tacky they way they have treated the Season Ticket holders, particularly Mr. Zeiger and that we really haven't seen any major acquisitions resulting from the revenue generated from the new 1600 sold-out season seats. It has been a couple of years...



(Mr. Zieger above... Fellow with the glasses clapping his hands with a diet coke sitting atop the dugout)

"I just don't feel like the Dodgers are my team anymore, I doubt that they are even L.A.'s team anymore. It's no longer about a relationship. It's about a business."-- Irving Zeiger...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home