| By Jay Hart
It seemed inevitable. Every time there was a nationally televised game from Dodger Stadium, the cameras would pan out beyond the outfield wall to show the “late-arriving crowd.”
As a kid growing up in Illinois, I always thought Dodger fans just didn’t care enough. As an adult transplant in L.A., I found out it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with traffic.
Bill Plaschke, the sports voice of the Los Angeles Times, penned a column recently that summed up perfectly the experience of attending a game at Dodger Stadium:
“Dodger Stadium is a distinctly wonderful place to watch a baseball game, but a most difficult place to attend a baseball game.”
That’s not necessarily unique in the baseball landscape. For me, Wrigley Field is the holy grail of baseball stadiums, but the bleachers — especially on a hot Friday afternoon — are an absolutely miserable experience, at least until you’re six Old Styles in. Fenway and its quirks are a bucket list experience until your neck begins to strain because your seat is facing right field, not home plate. And at Busch Stadium, you have to deal with Cardinals fans. Uggh.
The newer crop of parks do a solid job of enhancing the experience. Citizens Bank in Philly knocks it out of the park with the food. (Pro tip: skip the provolone, always go wiz.) Oracle Park in San Francisco has the best view in baseball, though PNC in Pittsburgh gives it a run for its money. And Chase Field in Phoenix has air conditioning.
All of them beat the experience of the Kingdome, where no one wanted to go inside on a sunny day in Seattle to watch Jay Buhner stand in the middle of dip-stained astroturf. Or Milwaukee’s County Stadium which, aside from the slide in the outfield, was a glorified high school park. Or old Busch Stadium where you had to deal with Cardinals fans. Them again.
Point is, for a lot of us, attending a game is more about going to a park where a baseball game happens to break out. It’s literally the only sport where leaving early isn’t frowned upon. So the particulars — getting there, parking, food, etc. — matter, especially if your team is 20 games under .500 at the break.
That’s clearly not a problem in L.A., where once again the Dodgers are among the favorites to go all the way. But the stadium?
“Once you are there,” Plaschke wrote, “in your seat, watching baseball’s most consistently great product play a baseball game, it’s heaven. But everything else about it can be hell.”
So tell us … what’s your favorite place to watch baseball, and what’s the worst?
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