As anyone on my email chains already knows... my boss has decided to dedicate his day to mowing his lawn and picking his Father-in-Law up from the airport so I have found motivation to continue my baseball stadium reviews.

So we left off after my last adventure with a dutch kid to Anaheim stadium, I took a few days off from baseball and then on Wednesday morning I set off from Anaheim to attempt a long public transit adventure across the vast expanse of LA sprawl to the baseball holy land that lay in Chavez Ravine.

I decided to check with the locals on the easiest way to Dodger Stadium and luckily none of them had the heart to tell me the truth... there is no such thing as an easy way to Dodger Stadium. So after meeting a lot of crazy locals and riding two buses and two trains and walking about 1.5 miles in a total of two and a half hours I had finally made it... to Chinatown.

On a map of LA Chinatown is the closest neighborhood to Dodger Stadium only about a mile or so to walk it, but after walking through crazy pet stores, bootleg clothing and karaoke DVDs I found no one that could tell be the best approach to walking that one mile. I decided to take a break and have a Tsing-Tao in the Golden Dragon where I caught the first 5 innings of Sox-Yanks with the owner who's grasp of the English language consisted of "Chang-Ming Wang" and "very good." Suffice to say I had four beers and very little conversation before just calling in a favor of Mel to talk be through the hike with the use of Google Maps.

The only approach to the stadium that was not on a freeway was to slide down the side of Chavez Ravine through the backyard of some vacant lots. This was scary and apparently (as I learned afterwards) totally covered in poison ivy/oak/sumac (which I now have the worst case in the history of man kind.) But after the slide/tumble down the cliff (the one behind the stadium with the green in the poster.) I hike through the traffic and numerous parking lots to the front gate of Dodger Stadium with 15 minutes left before first pitch!

The stadium is super huge and gorgeous. If you sit in the upper deck of come in through the front gate the entrance is awe-inspiring. Your enter the stadium from the very top deck behind home plate to take in the field, the two scoreboards (old LED board and new HD video screen) with the lovely green foothills behind the single deck of bleachers in the outfield. The left field hills feature letters in a HOLLYWOOD sign-esque style, which say "THINK BLUE" in large Dodger blue letters that are well lit and provide a cool signature besides the amazing baseball that has taken place on the field and the well publicized traffic.

The one down side to the large stadium is that on a weekday night game against the Brewers, it can feel really empty. The crowd was a respectable 37,000 but in a stadium that holds 55+ it sure shows when there are 20,000 empty seats!

Overall the stadium has a great vibe and knowledgeable fans that love their team and have this wonderfully understated hatred of the Giants and all things associated with the Giants. As the man seated next to me, listening to the Giants game on am radio stated, "Oh its okay I don't hate Giants fans, they'll all burn in hell anyways." Totally calm and totally serious! It was a highlight.

As for the Dodger dogs... they are pretty good but seem to be living off their catchy name. They are long and made by Farmer John but kinda skinny and not juicy enough for a ballpark dog. The food and beverage and tickets are on the higher end... I made the big mistake of not sitting in the all you can eat bleacher seats for 40 bucks!! But there were Tecate 24s for 10.50, dogs for 5.75 and my seat in the second row of the top deck behind home plate was 28 bucks. But NEVER NEVER walk there!

Labels: ball park, baseball, brewers, dodgers, large beers, posion ivy, public transit, stadium reviews