BASEBALL!!!

Wow! This past weekend was a major blast because I had tickets to two Red Sox games here in LA.

The first was an exhibition game at The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Saturday between The Sox and The Los Angeles Dodgers, commemorated by the 50th anniversary of The Dodgers leaving Brooklyn to head West. I'd never been to The Coliseum before and was pretty excited to see it! It's funny because the two things I thought of when I entered the stadium was the 1984 Olympics and the Charlton Heston movie "Two Minute Warning". Yes, we knew there was a movie reference in there somehow, right?

The game was great, with a record 115,300 in attendance. The largest ever for a single baseball game. Sox won 7-4. However the trip back to the car was way beyond anything I could have ever imagined. A lot of people heeded the advice of The LA Times which suggested parking at Dodger Stadium and taking a shuttle the few extra miles to The Coliseum, thus saving $25 in parking fees. By end of night I started to think everyone had taken that to heart, as the end of the line (I finally found!) to get back to the shuttle buses was six blocks in length!!! It took over two hours to reach the bus that would take me back to Dodger Stadium and my waiting car. Luckily I had this really entertaining drunken 20 year old who had us all laughing our asses off while he tried everything he could to find a ride back to his car. Hoping to bypass what ultimately became known to us as the "Dodger Stadium Death March", he approached everyone from street cleaners to police officers in their squad cars and bicycles with a promise of $20 to $50 for a lift!

Then on Sunday The Red Sox played The Dodgers once again at Dodger Stadium in the last of the exhibition games before Dodgers opening day on Monday. This time I had a box seat along the 3rd base baseline which included several amenities like an all you could eat buffet of hot dogs, hamburgers, barbeque sandwiches, and other goodies. I ate 3 hot dogs, two orders of onion rings, and ice cream. Yum!

Had a chance to see the players warming up at close hand as well as try to intercept a couple of fly balls that landed near my seat. I was almost able to grab one ball except the guy in the row in front of me got to it first. No matter, I still had an amazing time and want to go back again real soon! Even if The Sox lost 8-0.

Check out photos from the weekend. Batters warm up with our seats in the foreground. Matt Kemp & Andre Ethier signed autographs as security made a final check of the oh-so-close-to-us grass on the field. As one of the first pitches leaves the hand of the pitcher, Manny Ramirez stands at the ready in the outfield.