Opening day, the smell of hot dogs, beer and peanuts in the air. Even though baseball season has been officially open since last Sunday. For me it really started today. My parents have been taking me to Dodger games since I was a kid. I love the Dodgers, win or lose. I decided to get there early and park outside of the stadium. Not only do you save $15 for parking, but you don’t have to deal with the madhouse which is Dodger parking.
But even all the local street parking is already filled up. So I park in Lot 13 right off of Stadium Way. It’s a bit of a walk up the hill into the stadium, but it’s only $5, and exiting is fairly easy. My friend hasn’t arrived yet and is caught up in the traffic outside, so I hang out in the amazingly cool, Loge Terrace and get a large beer and enjoy the shaded park like area. This is truely my favorite part of the park. They have flat screen TV’s mounted around the table area so you can enjoy your food and drink and not miss any action!
The pregame activities have begun. Large flags, navy parachuters flying from the sky, and the flyby by the blue angels are all very inspiring, USA USA USA! Whatever, it’s no Prince halftime show, but it was entertaining.
The game started, and Schmidt struggled from early on. Then despite his homerun is his first at bat as a Dodger, the rest of the team couldn’t seem to get anything going until the bottom of the ninth after being down 4 runs. They managed to get the bases loaded against the Rockies’ closer Brian Fuentes with no outs. I thought we were about to be treated to an opening day rally. But Fuentes got pinch hitter Mike Lieberthal to pop-up, Juan Pierre managed to drive home one run on a sac fly for the second out. Then Russel Martin nearly kept the game going with a hard hit ball, but Rockies’ center fielder Willie Taveras tracked it down for the last out.
In the 5th Schmidt left with tightness is his hamstring and Matt Kemp left the game early after colliding with the outfield scoreboard. Overall a pretty lackluster performance by our boys in blue. It’s understandable, considering they opened the season on the road. Maybe they were tired, after arriving back in LA late last night. But it’s a long season and once this team gets going, I really think we have a great team this year!
Back to the parking before I get going. I’m very glad I didn’t park inside the stadium. Traffic was pretty much at a stand still. It’s to be expected when 40,000 or so cars are all leaving the same place at once. So much for the new parking system eh? We’ll see how the parking situation goes as the season goes on. One good thing though, other than in the first inning or two, the food lines seemed to be moving rather quickly. An improvement over last year. I hate waiting through 2 innings for my Dodger dog…
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