Archives for posts with tag: Los Angeles Times
Clayton Kershaw at Spring Training in Arizona.

Clayton Kershaw at Spring Training in Arizona.

The only good thing going for Dodgers fans is that Clayton Kershaw is ours and ours alone. Every other aspect of being a fan is depressing and hard to even believe.

These owners don’t send us season ticket holders the beautiful printed tickets we used to get (even though season tickets cost twice what they did three years ago), they make us go through online rigamarole just to get a Dodgers Pride Rewards card for our spouse, they treat us like terrorists at the gates of the stadium, they won’t let us watch away games on TV, and now, the ultimate extortion plot, they take away our street parking! Who’s the terrorist now?

The L.A. Times reported today in a Page 1 story, “The number of people watching the games on TV has fallen, from 228,000 a game in 2013 to an average of 56,289 last year — barely more than Dodger Stadium holds. At the same time, stadium attendance has soared. The team sold 3.8 million tickets last year, the most in Major League Baseball, and 3 million tickets were scooped up even before this season began.”

As anyone who came to last year’s games on a regular basis knows, this is flat-out bad reporting, although the Dodgers’ management wishes it were true.

Ticket sales may have soared, because those bastards talked such a good line when they paid way too much for the team that people snapped up season tickets at a record number before the season started, in fact before anyone knew there was going to be a season-long TV problem.

But I’m telling you right now, no way was real attendance anywhere near what it was the year before. In 2013, bobblehead nights turned Dodger Stadium into a zoo! In 2014, on Clayton Kershaw bobblehead night, they didn’t even open all the concession stands, because there was nowhere near a capacity crowd.

Now, attendance will go down once again as people are forced to either pay $20 (TWENTY *%#@ING DOLLARS) for parking or not go to the game at all.

If those greedy pigs (that means you, $tan Ka$ten, Mark Walter$ and Magic John$on) are making so much money NOT showing us games on TV, why can’t they make it a little less unpleasant to see the games in person?

I’m not saying I miss Frank McCourt, but it was better being a frustrated fan then than a disrespected fan now.

Outfielder Andre Ethier just wants to do his job and contribute to the Dodgers, or whatever team will value his contribution.

Outfielder Andre Ethier just wants to do his job and contribute to the Dodgers, or whatever team will value his contribution.

Andre Ethier and I have a lot in common. We are both Aries (me April 8, him April 10), we are both team players, we both have a curious mix of confidence and insecurity, and we have both felt under-appreciated by our employers.

My last year at the L.A. Times, I was not utilized to my full ability by the powers that be in charge of design at the paper. I, like Ethier, considered myself (and was considered by many other people at the Times) to be one of the best at my position, but I was relegated to filling in for others or doing work that I wasn’t used to, and I wasn’t particularly happy about it. (Unlike Ethier, I did on occasion complain loudly, which probably didn’t help my case any.)

I did what I was asked because I thought I needed the job. (I didn’t have $56 million waiting for me one way other other.) I also did it because I truly enjoyed the work I was good at for the time I was allowed to do it.

What I found out after leaving the Times was that A) my other teammates there missed me (like Ethier, I had opportunities during my many years with the paper to pull the shit out of the fan with a timely home run), and B) that I could find fulfillment elsewhere.

Although I would miss Captain Clutch (there was one year when he hit, like, 10 walk-off game-winners), I hope he will find a situation with a ball club that will appreciate his effort, talent and true team-player attitude. If the Dodgers are too stupid to see his value, I hope he too finds his fulfillment elsewhere.

Dodger Dilemma: Andre Ethier May Be Man Without Position

 

dodgers dollar signOne of these things, $tan Ka$ten and his cohorts in Dodger management care very much about.

The other can go to hell in a hand-basket for all they care. (Actually, the trip started last year when so few people showed up to the games that bobblehead nights were rarely more than ⅔ full and many concession stands were closed!)

But, hey! They got their $8.5 billion. Who gives a fig if the loyal fans who have loved their team through thick and thin for more than 50 years can’t enjoy the games at home on their TV sets, hear the melodious voice of Vin Scully and feel part of a community with a common and heartfelt passion.

It makes me physically ill to see this crippling greed and loathsome insensitivity take hold of my beloved Dodgers. And I’m not alone. I dread saying it, but one of my least favorite haters is on our side in this. Read Plaschke from yesterday’s L.A. Times.

“The most impactful collision of greed and arrogance in this town’s sports history,” Bill Plaschke writes, “has resulted in wreckage that is still smoking in the middle of the freeway, looking like another six-month SigAlert, twisted metal everywhere.”

And we are the hapless victims of this crash, bleeding on the side of Stadium Way, wishing an ambulance would come and whisk us off to salvation.

Who cares if half the National League West champion team from last year is gone? Andrew Friedman’s Moneyball tinkering won’t mean a thing if no one can watch the damn games.

Some say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in this case it’s out of sight, out of mind. You’ll see it when the camera pans the stands and nobody’s there. Oh, wait, no you won’t.