Baseball, Beer, Dodger Dogs, and Fireworks

A Major League Baseball season has 162 games.  That’s a lot of games.  Teams are pretty much going to win a third of their games (unless you’re the White Sox this year), lose a third of their games, and it’s the other third that will determine what happens in a season.  But if there are any two games that I would pick to win all season, it would be Opening Day and the Fourth of July.  If I could pick 43 games to lose, it would be the 43 interleague games against teams that aren’t the Astros because interleague play is stupid.  In basketball, I would pick Christmas and my birthday to win for the Celtics (this season they beat the Lakers on Christmas and it was wonderful and didn’t play on my birthday) and I would pick the games in the Tournament of Meaningless to lose.

This was our view for the second game I went to in Los Angeles, but I wanted it to be the first picture for this post.

Opening Day and the Fourth of July are the two big events of the baseball season.  Major League Baseball should do a better job with these days.  The Dodgers will be opening in Asia for the second straight year in 2025.  I get it, they have Ohtani and Yamamoto so they’re going to Japan next year (after going to South Korea this year).  Those games are understandably before the rest of the league starts.  But they should make that infrequent and it should be one Opening Day for all 30 teams most years.  The Fourth of July should have lots of games on national TV and the Blue Jays should never have a home game that day (they were home this year on the Fourth of July, but at least it was the Astros who had to play in Toronto and were not allowed in the country on the Fourth of July).  I always wanted to go to Opening Day.  I thought about going to see the Dodgers on Opening Day in Pittsburgh one year when it was during my Easter vacation.  Fortunately I decided not to do that and ended up going to Los Angeles on Opening Day in 2013 and got to see Clayton Kershaw pitch a shutout and give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the eighth with a home run.  It’s my favorite regular season game ever.  And now something like that will never happen again unless Shohei Ohtani does it.  The DH is so stupid.  I had never been to a Fourth of July game so I decided to do that this year.  It turned out to not be as fun as the Opening Day game I went to.

After my trip to Las Vegas and Portland, I was off to Los Angeles.  I got there on July 3 and Sean and I had In-N-Out for lunch.  I wouldn’t say In-N-Out is as good as Five Guys or Shake Shake, but it’s much cheaper so it’s good value for the money.  And if I’m in California, I have to get it since I can’t get it in New York.

We were off to Dodger Stadium that night to meet Pete and Lorenzo.  It was Gavin Stone pitching against Cristian Mena, who was making his Major League debut.  The Diamondbacks got a run on a sacrifice fly in the top of the first.  The Major League debut for Mena got off to a rough start.  Freddie Freeman hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the first.  That was followed by a solo home run by Teoscar Hernandez.  Mena allowed four runs before recording an out.  For the rest of the game, the Dodgers made 27 outs without recording another run.  Gavin Stone has been very good for the Dodgers this year, but he wasn’t good in this game.  He allowed seven hits, three walks, and four runs in three innings.  The bullpen wasn’t good either.  They allowed eight runs in six innings and the Dodgers lost 12-4.  Attendance was 47,965 and the temperature was 74°.  It got a little chilly as the game went on, but the weather was pretty good.  With the bad pitching, the game lasted three hours and 23 minutes, which is pretty long for a game in the pitch clock era.  The upside was that it was more time spent at Dodger Stadium with Pete and Lorenzo.

This was our view on July 3.

On July 4, it was just Sean and I going to the game.  Traffic to Dodger Stadium was the lightest I’ve ever experienced thanks to the holiday.  We went to Philippe’s before the game for their famous French dip sandwiches.  There was a big crowd getting into the stadium and I was a little worried about getting in before the Fourth of July pregame festivities.  Then I realized we were trying to enter on the reserve level (the second highest level, where we had sat the night before).  The reserve level has more seats than the Staples Center (I know it has a different name now) and the top deck is much smaller so I figured we’d be better off going in up there (we were sitting up there anyway).  That worked.  We got in quickly and we were in our seats for the national anthem with the huge flag in the outfield.  There was a flyover at the end of the national anthem.  It had been a long time since I was at a game with a flyover.  I would think it was some Notre Dame football game that I went to or maybe Opening Day in 2013 (I don’t remember if there was a flyover for that game or not).  I’ve definitely been to a handful of Notre Dame football games that have had flyovers.  It was a reminder of how cool those are.  And we had a cool vantage point.  We were high up right behind home plate so we had a great view of the flag in the outfield and the two planes coming right towards us from center field.

You can get good views of the sun setting from the top deck.

And there were fireworks after the game.  I don’t really feel like talking about anything that happened in between, but I will.  It was Landon Knack against Zac Gallen.  The two pitchers combined to pitch eight and a third and allowed seven runs.  So I saw some bad starting pitching.  But the Diamondbacks got a good performance from their bullpen.  Their relievers pitched five innings and allowed two hits, no walks, and no runs.  The Dodgers’ bullpen allowed eight hits, four walks, and five runs in four and two-thirds.  So the Diamondbacks won 9-3.  In the two games I went to, the Dodgers had two innings where they scored a total of seven runs and 16 innings where they scored no runs.  The game ended with Cavan Biggio striking out and the Dodgers getting booed off the field.  I want to root for Cavan Biggio because he went to Notre Dame, but he hasn’t done much for the Dodgers (he’s actually been pretty good since July 9, but he did nothing before that).  The fireworks were good after the game.  This game was 76° for the first pitch.  It lasted two hours and 48 minutes.  Attendance was 52,320, which is probably the biggest crowd for a game I’ve been to since Opening Day in 2013 when the attendance was 53,136.

I love Dodger Stadium, but the food and beverage program still needs work.  I ended up just having Dodger Dogs and Andre Ethier’s Walkoff Blonde from the Tarantula Hills Brewing Company in Thousand Oaks, California.  That was all good, but there just need to be more good/affordable options.  I was going to get tacos at one of the games, but it was like $35 for a taco platter.  I don’t know how many tacos that included, but I wasn’t paying $35 for any amount of tacos.  There were more places to find craft beer than I remember from previous trips to Dodger Stadium, but there needs to be a wider variety of craft beer available (there were some options, but it was mostly IPAs) and they need to have some on tap (it was all cans).

So I didn’t get to see the Dodgers win on July 4, but I’m glad I finally got to a game on July 4.  The Dodgers are now on a three-game losing streak at Dodger Stadium with me in attendance.  The last time I saw them win at Dodger Stadium was a 3-2 victory over the Mets on August 20, 2021.  I’ll probably be back next year so hopefully I’ll get to see them win again.

I have been pretty pessimistic about the Dodgers for this season.  They should win the division, but they just haven’t been playing very well and they’ve had a ton of injuries.  They were playing really poorly right before the All Star break.  There were just too many easy outs in their lineup also.  They got off to a nice start after the All Star break, but their bullpen has been struggling (their starters need to pitch more innings).  I like the moves they made before the trade deadline and Clayton Kershaw is back.  Hopefully they’ll have Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto back for the postseason also.  And once they get to the playoffs, they’ll have a chance because of how stupid the postseason format is.  The Dodgers and the Braves have clearly been the best two teams in the NL for the last two years and they combined to win zero playoff series during that time.  So maybe they’ll end up having more postseason success in a season where they’re struggling more in the regular season.

I had two more baseball games to get to in July, but they ended up not being the games I expected to go to.  I’ll get to those in another post.

Baseball in Big 10 Country

Last year I saw baseball in SEC Country (Oklahoma and Texas).  This year I saw baseball in Big 10 Country (Nevada and Oregon).  It’s so stupid that Oregon is in the Big 10 now, but that’s where college sports are in 2024.  There’s no Big 10 team in Nevada (at least not yet), but I could imagine the Big 10 having events in Las Vegas like the Big 10 Championship Game or their basketball tournament.  The Pac 12 didn’t have any Nevada teams and they had events in Las Vegas.  The Pac 12 should still exist, but sadly, it does not.  Anyway, I didn’t go to Los Angeles during Easter vacation, so I had to get there during summer vacation.  I wanted to combine that with other baseball stops so I had to figure out what worked with baseball schedules and flight options.  I wanted to go to Portland because I’ve never seen a sporting event in Oregon (before this trip, I had spent a couple of hours in Oregon).  And then I wanted to do something out West before Portland or after Los Angeles.  I thought about Salt Lake City, but the flights were not very convenient.  So I ended up doing Las Vegas.

I had been to Las Vegas once before.  I went for an education conference as part of a graduate class twelve years ago right before I started the blog.  If that was the only time in my life that I ever went to Las Vegas, that would have been totally fine with me.  I’ve been to a minor league game in Reno so I have done a sporting event in Nevada.  But it worked with my other plans for this trip so that’s where I started.  That reminds me, I thought about going to see Notre Dame play BYU two years ago in a Shamrock Series game in Las Vegas.  I didn’t get to any Notre Dame football games that year, but I considered it.  I would pick a game on campus a million times out of a million over a game in Las Vegas, but Las Vegas is easier to get to than South Bend is.  There are a lot of direct flights from New York and a lot of good/cheap/convenient hotel options.  So anyway, it was easy enough to get there this summer and that’s what brought me there for my first baseball game of summer vacation.

Gambling is stupid (the whole purpose is that the casino makes money and you don’t) so I did not do any gambling at all.  In fact, I really didn’t do anything other than the game.  I checked into my hotel and took a nap and then went to the game.  Las Vegas Ballpark opened in 2019 so I’m pretty sure it’s the newest minor league stadium I’ve been to.  It was pretty nice.  There were good food and beer options and the wait at concession stands wasn’t very long even though it was a pretty good crowd.  I had an Aviators Ale from the Tenaya Creek Brewery in Las Vegas and a burrito.  They were both good.  There was a pool out in right center field.  Of course, the Diamondbacks have that, but I don’t know of any other minor league stadiums that have a pool.  And the pool is cooler in an outdoor stadium than in an indoor stadium (the roof is usually closed in Arizona).

The game was the Oklahoma City Baseball Club against the Las Vegas Aviators.  Oklahoma City is the Dodgers’ triple-A affiliate and Las Vegas is Oakland’s affiliate.  It was fun to see a Dodgers’ affiliate since I know some of the players.  James Outman, Diego Cartaya, Nick Ramirez, and Kyle Hurt are players who I’m familiar with who played in the game.  It was not a well-pitched game.  It was tied at six after five innings.  James Outman had a double and a home run.  He had a good rookie season last year for the Dodgers and then he was bad this year until he got sent down. He got called back up recently so hopefully he’ll be able to contribute to the Dodgers again.  It was still tied at six going into the top of the eighth.  I stayed to watch Oklahoma City hit and then I left.  Normally I wouldn’t leave early, but I had gotten up really early for my flight to Las Vegas and I had a 6:00 flight the next morning on my way to Portland.  The game was taking a long time with the bad pitching (it ended up being three hours and one minute, which is long in the pitch clock era).  And we were looking at the prospect of Rob Manfred extra innings.  The good news and the bad news was that it didn’t get to Rob Manfred extra innings (the only reason that’s bad is because I actually had a rooting interest in this game with the Dodgers’ triple-A team).  Las Vegas scored six in the bottom of the eighth and the game ended 12-6.

This was my view for most of the game in Las Vegas.

Attendance was 4,438 and the temperature at the start of the game was 101°.  The high during the day was 104°.  It actually is a pleasant heat at least for a short amount of time with the humidity being so low.  The forecast had been calling for temperatures around 110° so it wasn’t as hot as I was expecting.  And I think it got up to 120° the following weekend.  So it was hot when I was there, but it wasn’t terrible.  Of course the A’s are supposedly moving to Las Vegas (I don’t know if that is 100% official yet).  There was talk of them playing in this stadium until their stadium is built.  That would have been an issue with Sunday afternoon games in the summer.  But now the plan is for them to play in Sacramento until their stadium is built.  Major League Baseball shouldn’t be in Las Vegas, but supposedly it’s going to happen.  The A’s have the worst outdoor stadium in baseball so it won’t be sad to not have games there anymore.  But it will be sad to have another Major League Stadium with a roof and probably artificial turf.  I’m skeptical of having a Major League team and a triple-A team in the same city.  I guess it’s cool for the fans because you can easily go see your team’s triple-A prospects.  But it’s not as convenient as it would sound for the Major League team.  You would figure that the triple-A team wouldn’t be home at the same time as the Major League team.  So if you need to call somebody up, it’s not like that would just mean going to the Major League stadium instead of the triple-A stadium.

I have one other thought before I get to Portland.  The Oklahoma City team changed their name from the Oklahoma City Dodgers to the Oklahoma City Baseball Club.  I have no problem with them not being the Oklahoma City Dodgers.  They only became the Dodgers’ triple-A team in 2015 so it’s not like they had a long history of being the Oklahoma City Dodgers.  But Oklahoma City Baseball Club is stupid.  They used to be the Oklahoma City 89ers and the Oklahoma City RedHawks.  Oklahoma City Baseball Club is temporary.  They’re going to pick a new name.  But this is a stupid trend that comes from soccer.  Why do soccer teams have stupid names?  I just looked up the MLS teams.  Most of them have stupid names (which I guess comes from European soccer teams having stupid names).  Here are some of them:  Atlanta United FC, Charlotte FC, Inter Miami CF, CF Montreal, Real Salt Lake.  What is Inter Miami CF?  Those are just some of the stupid ones.  They’re not all stupid.  There’s the Colorado Rapids and San Jose Earthquakes, but they’re mostly stupid.  So this stupid trend has come from soccer into other sports.  We had the Washington Football Team before they became the Commanders (another bad name since it can be shortened to the Commies, but it’s still better than the Washington Football Team) and now we’re going to have the Utah Hockey Club.  They should have stayed the Oklahoma City Dodgers until they came up with a good name.  And either be the Utah Coyotes for a year or come up with a name (why does it take so much time to come up with a new name?) instead of the Utah Hockey Club.

Anyway, I was off to Portland early the next morning after my day in Las Vegas.  My schedule was like my day in Las Vegas.  I got to my hotel and took a nap.  I thought about going to a place that was on Man v. Food, but it was kind of out of the way so I didn’t.  I was going to a Portland Pickles game.  The Pickles play in a collegiate summer league.  The website was kind of confusing.  There’s the Pickles, but then there’s also the Pickles All Stars.  It is not at all clear what the difference is between them.  I saw the Pickles All Stars play the Bend Bucks.  They play at Walker Stadium, which is like a nice high school field in a public park.  It was only 335 feet to center field so it definitely wasn’t professional dimensions.  But they did have merchandise for sale and some different options with the concessions.  The food was kind of expensive so I just had a hot dog and a Pub Beer from the 10 Barrel Brewing Company in Bend, Oregon.  The beer was nothing special, but it was cheaper than the other options and most of the other options were IPAs.  That’s something I’m noticing with local beers at a lot of sporting events.  There’s not enough variety in the beers.  There are too many IPAs.  I feel like IPAs are a roll of the dice.  Some of them are just fine, but some are too IPA-y.  Anyway, I left early again because I had another early flight and I didn’t care about the outcome.  The Pickles were winning when I left and I can find no record on their website or their social media what the final score was.  Since there’s no box score that I can find, I don’t know what the attendance was, but it was a pretty full crowd.  The high temperature that day was 76° so it got pretty cold during the game.  A week later the high temperature in Portland was 103°.  It would have been nice to find the happy medium between those two temperatures for going to a baseball game.

The left field line goes from home plate to the west so the sun was setting in a weird place for a baseball game.

I would have liked to have a little more time in Portland to get to a Man v. Food spot or something, but that’s the way my schedule worked out.  I was staying at an airport hotel so I didn’t really get to experience the city.  But Portland is one city where I would definitely put an expansion team when Major League Baseball expands (somewhere in the South is where I’d put the other team, and the A’s would be in Oakland, Sacramento, or San Jose and definitely not Las Vegas).  I’m in favor of Major League Baseball expanding, but I fully expect Rob Manfred to do it in a stupid way.  We’re probably going to get some realignment that kills the NL and the AL.  I’m expecting to be East and West instead of AL and NL.  I would much rather have the possibility of a Mets-Yankees World Series than having the Mets and Yankees playing more frequently in the regular season.  But Rob Manfred is involved so it will probably be something stupid.  So given the choice between leaving baseball the way it is or expanding and realigning geographically, I’d just leave it the way it is.  Speaking of something stupid, my next blog post will cover the way the Dodgers played when I was in Los Angeles.