There's No Silverware in Baseball

When you grow up in Chicago as a Cubs fan the experience of attending a baseball game equates to something very specific in your head and in your heart.  For me, it always meant a sip of dad's Old Style at Murphy's Bleachers, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the heavy Chicago summer air, and generally basking in life with the other 42,000 ridiculously happy white people around you.

That above vingette is what puts my first Dodgers game into such relief.  While I have been to plenty of other ballparks (including Angels Stadium, where I was offered sushi that would be brought to me in my seat and that I could pay for with my credit card) no experience was quite as out-of-baseball-character as my night at Dodger Stadium.

My Uncle #3 of 5 (yeah, that's just my dad's side of the family... what can I say... I'm Irish) asked me if I wanted to go see the Cubs play (read: lose to) the Dodgers.  Knowing that there is only one acceptable answer to an invitation to a Cubs game I accepted (you never know what game will be the game you will desperately regret missing, though with the Cubs, this is a more difficult discipline to uphold).  I made my way over to meet Uncle #3 of 5 for a drink and wait for his friends (who we will call I Make More Money Than You & I'm Bill Murray's Brother (seriously)).  Once we headed over to the stadium I was greeted by metal detectors and a pat-down by an elderly man.  Do I look like a Latin King?  Don't answer that.

The next thing I know, I am being whisked down a hallway and having my hand stamped by a girl in a pencil skirt and five inch heels (indication #1 that I was not attending a baseball game).  I was then taken down an elevator to a subteranian, all-you-can-eat restaurant.  Now, I know what you are all thinking, and I am sure most of you have had a corporate box experience at a sporting event where there is a miniature buffet in your suite.  This was not that.  This was a full-blown, 300 person capacity restaurant (complete with dimly lit lounge/bar) that had stations with every meat/pasta/sushi roll imaginable, ready to be sliced off the bone and placed delicately on your plate.  The kicker:  everything (including my numerous Stellas) was free (indication #2 that I was not attending a baseball game).  Can we all back-track for a brief moment and revisit the fact that I was served a beer in a glass bottle, no more than fifty feet from the field of play of a major league baseball game?  These people clearly did not go to state school (indication #3 that I am not attending a baseball game).  Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is a zucchini on my plate.  Yes my father just rolled over in his grave.  Yes I am blaming his younger brother and taking no responsibility.  I am sorry, but actual silverware and going to a baseball game have been, without exception, mutually exclusive events in my life.  Until Los Angeles had to go and take that from me.  Los Angeles: 5,378 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0.  I wish I had been at the game with a girl, armed with access to a purse I would have palmed the silverware just out of principle.  Home Alone style.

Eventually we actually managed to extract ourselves from the full-service restaurant in order to investigate whether or not we were actually near a major league baseball field or just on the set of CSI Tacoma.  Thanks to Uncle #3 of 5 this was the view that I was greeted with.  What can I say, some people blood-related to me are substantially more successful than I am and because my father was their hero (as he was mine), they treat me better than I deserve to be treated.  I am not above that.  Especially when it involves being this close to an American baseball game (indication #1 that I am attending a baseball game). 

I got to meet Jennifer Aniston, who showed up in the fourth inning and left in the 7th.  I hear this is a common event in Los Angeles.  I was also informed that some attractive woman from E-news was sitting behind me who was there for less than two innings.  I don't forgive that girl, but frankly, Jennifer Aniston could show up in the bottom of the ninth and talk on her cell phone for the final out while asking me why a ball that fell on one side of the foul-line was a strike and I am fairly sure that I would still be impressed with her as a person and humanitarian.  Life is fair like that.  I also got to meet a famous Jewish guy.  I have no idea what his name was or what he does for a living.  But given the fact that he had a large pinkie ring, a "girlfriend" thirty-nine years his junior, and a line of 20-something Jewish guys lined up to pay respects to him during mid-innings, I am going to assume that he is in "the business" and staggeringly successful.  Sorry Darwin.

Just as I was feeling as though I was actually witnessing America's greatest past-time ten feet in front of my face, I was handed the following.  Yes, that is the "in-seat" menu.  Because I clearly wasn't fed enough in the restaurant/lounge/brothel.  I apologize for the photo quality, I must have still been shaking in anger.  If you can make out the "Ultra Premium Selections" you will note that I was given the option of ordering a 12-year-old scotch at a baseball game (indication #4 that I am not attending a baseball game).  This is unassailable proof that the whole can occasionally be less than the sum of the parts.  Los Angeles has again taken two things that I love (baseball and scotch) and, by combining them, absolutely ruined both of them for me.  Los Angeles: 5,379 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0.

I also need to stop and address an endemic issue here in Los Angeles.  This "city" loves to attach needless and redundant modifiers to otherwise straight-forward phrases.  So I suppose if I only have a first mortgage (at 95% loan-to-value) out on my house I can only afford the "Deluxe" liquors but if I have a HELOC and an additional unsecured second-lien, I can afford the "Ultra Premium" liquor.  Thank god it isn't just premium, people might not know how important I was if not for the ultra.

There is so much else from the evening that I would like to relay (like the fact that Uncle #3 of 5 met and spoke with Ernie Banks at length, who was in town for the All Star game.  The worst part is that he had worse seats than us, which is un-American.  I should be shining Ernie Banks shoes if not for the fact that they magically never get scuffed.) but I am truly worn out just from having to re-live the above.  I hope that you will forgive me.  The only two people I really wanted to tell the fully-indignant story to already know it anyway.  Sorry inter-web, we just aren't BFFs yet.

Doug Dascenzo

-I Heart Palindromes