Posted on 03/30/2008 1:54:47 PM PDT by doug from upland
DFU COMMENTS:
I joined the world record crowd at the Los Angeles Coliseum last night for the historic 50th anniversary of the Dodgers coming to Los Angeles and the Dodgers/RedSox exhbition game. 115,300 people. That's a lot of people. Fortunately, I was not mugged and by friend's car was not damaged for the brief excursion to the City of the Angeles.
What was the first thought that came to mind upon entering Los Angeles city limits? John Rocker said it best: It's the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark, looking like you're riding through Beirut next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing.
I was a little surprised that we didn't see big signs on the freeway that said WELCOME TO THE SANCTUARY CITY - Viva la Raza.
It was a festive atmoshpere. We arrived at about 4:15 so we could watch batting practice. Right across from the Coliseum, a guy was selling parking lot spots for $60. He didn't much like it when I asked if that was dollars or pesos. We would have paid the pesos.
So we drove a block and started making a right turn at Broadway. A guy waved to us and said, in English, "Parking for twenty bucks. Go to the end of the block and see Carlos." Gee, what were the odds we would be in L.A. and come across a guy named Carlos?
At the end of the block, there was entrepreneur Carlos. He was a tenant in one of the 8-unit buildings that lined the street. He took the initiate to be selling space at the curb in front of the building. He moved his truck out of the way, and we got to park.
Yes, folks, Los Angeles is as bad as you have read. It is a third world hellhole. You would not want to walk alone at night anywhere near the Coliseum and USC. Even if you were armed. Thanks goodness the public address announcer was still speaking English.
Batting practice was great. Although our seats were way out in right center, we wandered the area of the infamous left field screen. Good grief. The new version was 60 feet high, and it was on 201 down the left field line. The Dodgers' defense didn't even use a left fielder. That had him playing in the infield up the middle.
Ball after ball after ball was launched into the crowd, mostly to center, left center, and over the screen. And then came David Ortiz. No, John Kerry, not Manny Ortiz, the name you created to show you were a baseball fan and regular guy. How did that work out for you?
Ortiz was remarkable. He just kept crushing them to center and right field. He must have hit out 20. At one point, I think he launced four in row way over the right field fence. I just missed getting a couple souveneirs, and my friend just missed one that hit the guy and front of him and bounced off his shoulder. We were guessing that a hundred balls must have been hit out during batting practice. Gee, Doug, do you think you should have brought your old glove?
A guy in the stands did something I never thought I'd see. A shot over the screen, not a Wally Moon-shot, he managed to catch with one bare hand. Just amazing.
Some of the old greats were there, including Duke Snider, Wally Moon, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Jerry Reuss, and a host of others I can't remember.
I took my Bushnell binoculars, but I think I should have borrowed an amateur astronomer friend's telescope. We really were out there.
I was nine when the Dodgers played there first game of four seasons at the Coliseum. One season, 1959, included a World Series victory over the ChiSox. Larry Sherry, the kid from the Fairfax district, won two and saved two games.
Much to my amazement, I think there was only one fight in the crowd. During the days of Raiders games, I think they had SWAT waiting on the hotline.
The score was meaningless. The left field screen was just silly. The belief that Los Angeles will someday be annexed by Mexico was confirmed. But it was really fun adventure and a pleasure to relive some of the joy of youth. The other great sports memory from my youth was the Little League no-hitter against Servi-Soft. Fifteen of 18 outs were strikeouts, with two walks. Unfortunately, my parents were unable to make that game.
As we left, we heard some speakers blaring the song, "I Love L.A." Not me.
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Dodgers, Red Sox play for 115,300
Exhibition game at LA Memorial Coliseum draws masses
By Tom Singer / MLB.com
LOS ANGELES -- Frank McCourt finally cleared the Snake River Canyon.
Excuse the mixed sports allegory, but it is warranted. Ever since the Dodgers' chairman announced a one-night return to the Memorial Coliseum, and even more so as talk turned to a crowd of 115,000-plus in an 85-year-old facility that holds 92,500, he sounded a little like Evil Knievel pumping about flying his motorcycle across that Idaho chasm.
Knievel fell short -- literally, and, for him, painfully -- in 1974.
McCourt, however, landed safely on the other side of faith.
It had been a huge leap of faith, and the Dodgers pulled off the perfect beginning to a 50th Anniversary season. Come Monday, the editors of the Guinness Book of Records will get word back to the Dodgers about whether Saturday night's crowd of 115,300 was an international record for a baseball game. But chances are that the enterprising architects of the event will have tilted back some Guinness, or whatever the ale of their choice, before then to toast an undeniable MLB record.
In the simplest terms, 115,300 people came out to see the Dodgers and the Red Sox play an exhibition game, and to look in a giant rear-view mirror, where perhaps they could spot the reflection of a departed grandparent, parent or aunt.
They came to see Duke Snider doff his cap, to hear Vin Scully humbly call himself "an ordinary man given an extraordinary opportunity," to feel a spouse's grip tighten as Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. finished harmonizing the National Anthem.
They came, as reminded at one point by Dodgers broadcaster Charley Steiner, emcee for the occasion, "to a day you will never forget."
No, they didn't come to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar bounce the ceremonial pitch before the bottom of the second inning 20 feet in front of the plate. But the basketball great, born Lew Alcindor in New York the day after Jackie Robinson snapped baseball's color line with his Dodgers debut on April 15, 1947, quickly stole the show by asking for the ball back and skyhooking a perfect strike to Dodgers' catcher Russell Martin.
No one is going to remember who won the thing (if you must know, it was the Red Sox, 7-4).
Just as no one remembers the winner on the Coliseum's biggest previous baseball occasion, the May 7, 1959 night 93,103 held up lit candles to salute wheelchair-bound Roy Campanella during a Dodgers-Yankees exhibition (if you must know, it was the Yankees, 6-2).
This wasn't about the score ... unless considering the two scores and 10 years since the Dodgers had last played baseball here.
This was foremost about a grand launch party for ThinkCure, Boston native McCourt's Jimmy Fund spinoff, for which a million-plus to fund cancer research was raised.
"This is the beginning of a dream come true," McCourt, genuinely grateful for the response to his plea, said over and over again. "The combination of the emotional tug of returning to a former home and an undeniably good cause is connecting generations.
"That represents so much of what we love about baseball. I think that's what drew people: it's for a good cause, and because it's so unique."
This was for Ebbets Field, Crosley Field, the Polo Grounds, Shibe Park and Forbes Field and all the other long-gone baseball shrines no one can ever revisit.
And this was to connect a team with its DNA and with its fans, in numbers and proximity seldom seen.
Perhaps Dr. Charles Steinberg, chief of marketing for the Dodgers, captured best the lure of "the opportunity to take people back to the time in their lives when they may have fallen in love with baseball."
By noon, seven hours before first pitch, the area around the Coliseum was awash in blue. The smell of tailgaters' smoked links wafted through the air.
"I Was There" T-shirts, bearing details of the event, were big sellers. People were drawn to the clearing just outside of the peristyle, east end of the Coliseum, where the Baseball Festival was in full swing.
There, all the blue -- tops, bottoms, shoes, wigs - swam in a unicolored palette. Popular with photographers was a trio of bare-chested young men who had painted their torsos blue, Los Angeles' own take on that other Blue Man Group.
The stage shook from '60s rock music. Nothing as mellow as Paul Mauriat's "Blue, blue, my world is blue ..." No, this was Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon rocking the house all the way from Palisades Park.
Younger fans gyrated to the music. Older ones kept time by rapping their canes against the ground.
Cannon's set ended, and the most magical part of the day was about to begin. As loudspeakers thumped out the title song of the Dodgers' new theme -- From Brooklyn, New York to L.A., and this is what the fans all say, the Dodgers are the heart of L.A. -- a convoy of four buses pulled up at the very edge of the milling mob.
The buses' doors flung open, and Dodgers and Red Sox disembarked to part the blue sea, one-by-one filing through flabbergasted and delirious fans to crowd the stage as fans would eventually crowd the Coliseum stands.
"Nomar!" "Tommy!" and "Jeff!" shrieks filled the air as the players scaled the few steps to the stage. When the Red Sox followed them, there was a groundswell of "Let's go Dodgers!"
But when everyone was gathered, shoulder-to-shoulder, the same fans offered their peace feather to the Red Sox: "Yankees (blank)!"
They gave their little speeches in the shadow of the eternal flame topping the peristyle, native son Nomar Garciaparra and adopted son Russell Martin eliciting the biggest cheers.
"It's a privilege to share this with the Boston Red Sox," said Joe Torre, the current Dodgers and former Yankees manager. "Excuse me -- the World Series champion Boston Red Sox. For some reason, that doesn't bother me anymore.":
Then they receded, to start their workday, a nine-inning trip through time.
Some things never change. Fifty years ago, the Dodgers in the dugout were rubbernecking for Doris Day. Saturday night, Boston manager Terry Francona said, "My favorite part of the whole night was when there was a foul ball and, like 57 guys ran to protect Pam Anderson."
Recognitions and honorary pitches interrupted the play, but you had the sense the players -- neither today's nor those visiting from the past -- were not the featured attractions here.
They were the fans. The 115,300 who spanned McCourt's Snake River. The 138 million to whom Scully dedicated his newly-presented bronze plaque.
At 8:17 p.m. PT, this blue sea roiled with -- what else? -- the biggest wave, as the 115,300 alternately stood to reenact another relic. The spontaneous act caught on instantly, as if orchestrated by unseen forces. Of course: tides are caused by the moon's pull, and this doubtless was a blue one.
I was waiting for them to shut off the lights from 8-9pm so they could save the world, but they apparently didn’t want to participate in saving the world. Evil capitalists.
it’s gonna seem weird to see joe torre in dodger blue this season
LOL! “wally moon-shot”. I hadn’t thought of those “blasts” for years Doug.
Doug have you been to then Los Angeles Raider game HELLO
I saw couple fights among gang bangers once this was just tail gating LOL!
I must admit to never being either brave enough or foolish enough to go to a Raider game.
AH I been to Raider game LOLOLOL!
I remember one time I saw LAPD busted some gangbangers that only good action Raider game sucks meanwhile the action off the field was pretty cool LOL!
The no. 7 train goes to Shea Stadium. IIRC, you can take it from Shea to Grand Central, change for the 2 or 3, and go up to Yankee Stadium.
Okay. I was just posting Rocker’s infamous remarks to make a commentary about L.A.
Doug, thanks.
PS: I do have to ask, what was the score?
It was mentioned in the article below my commentary.
Calcetines Rojos - Siete
Los Dodgers - Cuatro
No, I caught it, just couldn’t resist...
I have. There was a reason why whenever we played on MNF back then, it was on the road. :)
HII GOP Raider
BTWWWW you are so right LOLOLOL!
Speaking of that I remember back in da day when Raiders play in Los Angeles game be boring all good action is in the stand seeing LAPD going smackdown on gangbangers who had wayyyyyy too much to drink
Okay, you got me. :)
For those who don’t know, this wonderful nostalgic event raised a great deal of money for the battle on cancer. Thanks for being part of it, BoSox.
No other American metro area has TWO of the classic stadiums: Coliseum AND Rose Bowl.
They used to put 100,000 in the Rose Bowl.
They still put 100,000 people in the Rose Bowl.
LOL, my mother still hasn’t forgiven my uncle for taking me to those games. And now that I think about it, I think the old gangbangers might have been on something a little higher grade than alcohol...;)
Thanks for the report, Doug! I’m a football girl myself. Lifelong Raider fan, if you must know. I thought baseball was the most boring game ever, until my darling baby boy joined Little League. He made me like baseball, and when he decided he was a Dodgers fan I became one, too.
When he attended Claremont, I visited him and we got to to to a Dodgers game together. Such fun. All I say is, Right Field Sucks!
I’m looking forward to the Dodgers kicking Giants butt tomorrow. It just won’t be the same, though, without being able to Booooo! Barry Bonds....
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