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Day at ballpark no picnic for team or fans
Traffic jams, long concession lines, a dearth of Dodger Dogs and a couple of on-field injuries make opening day an endurance test.
April 10, 2007


You knew it was going to be an interesting opening day at Dodger Stadium when the fighter planes executed a perfect fly-over.

Before the national anthem.

, Top Gun, and it only got worse, the rattling Dodgers' home opener taking a nosedive from troubled to abysmal.

At the end of a long Monday afternoon, Grady Little rubbed his forehead and used words perhaps shared by thousands of frustrated fans, two injured players and a ballpark that has never looked more weary.

"You're right," Little said. "We're glad it's over."

The final score: Colorado 6, Dodgers 3, Fans 0.

In the fourth year of the McCourt era, while things on the field seem headed in the right direction, life in the stands appears more miserable than ever.

Dodger Stadium's fancy new parking system resulted in mammoth traffic jams that decorated Chavez Ravine in gridlock. Departing traffic was still bumper to bumper an hour after the game.

Then there were Dodger Stadium's creaky old concession stand lines, which were occasionally even worse than last year, and are you wondering how that could happen?

One loge stand ran out of Dodger Dogs in the fourth inning, that's how.

I learned this while conversing with a frustrated fan who had been standing in line for more than an inning.

"How can you run out of Dodger Dogs on opening day?" he shouted, yet another consumer cry unheard.

The stadium was tough on the fans, and even tougher on the players — just ask Matt Kemp.

The Dodgers right fielder crumpled into a heap in the fourth inning after leaping against the hard plastic covering of a new extended right-field wall scoreboard. Last season, that area was padded.

Kemp left the game with a bruised shoulder, and teammate Jeff Kent added a warning.

Said Kent: "That plastic screen up there? That may have to go. I don't think guys are going to want to jump that wall."

Said Kemp: "All I'll say is, my shoulder really hurts."

Adding fan insult to player injury, those two extended wall scoreboards no longer constantly show out-of-town scores like last season. Those out-of-town scores appear only briefly between innings. In their place are routine pitching and hitting statistics that could be easily shown in smaller type elsewhere.

Whoever designed the new scoreboards was clearly not a baseball fan. Or maybe that person was tired of those traditionally fun September questions about whether the Dodgers will be scoreboard watching.

Because there will no longer be a scoreboard to watch.

The day was summed in the fifth inning when Nomar Garciaparra botched a grounder at first base and threw late to a charging Jason Schmidt, who immediately grabbed his right hamstring and left the game.

Did he pull the hamstring by hustling? No, he didn't pull anything. He was suffering from a cramp from not drinking enough fluids.

ADVERTISEMENT"It's one of the stupid things about this game that you just don't think about," he said.

In her first perfectly timed moment of the season, organist Nancy Bea Hefley used the delay after Schmidt's departure to play a tune from "Les Miserables."

Miserable indeed.

And in the seventh inning, an idiot leaped from the stands and raced across the outfield before being tackled by security guards.

Even more disturbing, the guy was wearing a Rafael Furcal jersey — on yet another day when the Dodgers sorely missed their injured star shortstop.

"I don't know why they don't show guys like that on TV," said Kent. "It has to be more entertaining than watching me strike out."

For 56,000 fans — that was the exact Dodgers ticket count, believe it or not — the entertainment was not always worth the effort. Some of their worst fears came to life, and I'm not talking about long waits for elevators.

The fans saw Juan Pierre's questionable arm — he couldn't throw out the Rockies' Brad Hawpe, who was tagging from third, at home plate on a fly ball to shallow center.

The fans saw Schmidt's questionable fastball — it registered at 81 mph on Garrett Atkins' homer.

Of course, they also saw Pierre show his speed by turning a single into a double in the seventh. And they saw Schmidt strike out six in four innings and keep the Dodgers in the game.

And, yes, like last year, they saw the Dodgers attempt to rally with none out in the ninth, loading the bases, bringing everyone to their feet. The rally amounted to only a run, but everyone in town remembers last year, when those comebacks made memories, sometimes even four-homers-in-a-blink memories.

For all the problems associated with an aging stadium and an ownership group that just can't seem to make it shine, those memories are what keep fans blindly coming back.

At the end of another curtain-collapsing opening act, one again wonders for how long.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.