^[1]I made my first trip of the season to Dodger Stadium last night and I can’t believe I waited more than a month to get there. I’ve been to many ballparks and Dodger Stadium is my favorite place to see a game. Of course it’s not the first place I saw a big league game, that distinction belongs to Shea Stadium. Those of you who have never had the displeasure of a game at Shea are better off not knowing what you’re missing. But if you must know what Shea is like, imagine a rats nest inside of landfill of burning tires and surrounded by junkyards. Because I didn’t know any better, I loved that dump.

I attended my first game at Shea in 1984, not with my dad but with the patrons of a local bar who had managed to commandeer 30 tickets and a school bus. When the school bus full of grown men pulled up to our house my mom had no problems telling me to get on board. That night there was no score-keeping, no home runs and no catching foul balls. There was lots of drinking, fighting, and one instance of a school bus getting pulled over. At some point that night the Mets played the Expos too; since this was the brief period when Pete Rose was an Expo I got to yell “Pete Rose sucks” repeatedly. My first game and I jeered the guy with more hits than anyone in history. To be fair, I told every Montreal player to fuck off at some point that night as well as many of the Mets, but you have to understand that at ten years old, I had a problem holding my liquor.

More baseball and bad behavior after the jump.

Before I get into the game let me say one thing. Growing up on Long Island I was told that Dodger fans show up late, leave early and in short don’t know squat about baseball. This is of course complete and utter bullshit. Dodger fans are awesome and I’m not just kissing up because I’m a Mets fan.

Anyway, back to the game. For baseball related bad manners, my first game as a ten year old set a high bar. I thought that I’d never experience anything close to that game again.

But that was before last night, when I sat in the AM/PM All-You-Can-Eat Pavilion.

Whoever came up with the idea of all you can eat seating for the game is a genius because the only thing that can improve the experience of going to Dodger Stadium is free food. Basically for 25 bucks you get to see a game and eat all the hot dogs, nachos, peanuts and soda you can handle. Best of all there’s no two hot dog limit or anything stupid like that, I can say “I’ll take six Dodger Dogs, peanuts, nachos and a soda” and then tun to my wife and ask what she would like. Basically it’s like going to a Roman banquet and a baseball game breaks out.

Midway through the game my wife and I start wishing we had a kid so we could send them down for more food. It seems like the only time we want kids is when we’d like someone to do things for us, this is why we’re not having children. Plus if we had kids they might have gotten upset when the Dodger fans in the bleachers kept yelli ^[2]ng obscenities at me and my Mets cap. Luckily everyone was too stuffed to really get worked up or it might have gotten ugly but it wasn’t the fighting I was worried about, it was the potential vomiting if anyone was punched in the stomach. Of course, had someone thrown up it would have been a school bus away from being just like the first game I went to, including the Mets losing.

Related posts:

1. Unemployed? American Cinematheque Feels Your Pain. ^[3]
2. "Jason Bay or Manny Ramirez?", asked and answered. ^[4]
3. LA Metblogs Will Be Represented At Jackopalooza Tomorrow ^[5]
4. BREAKING: Yankees Sign Everybody ^[6]
5. Is LA closer to an NFL Team than we think? ^[7]