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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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