Tweet
HOFFARTH: Dodger Stadium 'crossing the line with this 'cycle
By Tom Hoffarth, columnist
Posted: 01/22/2011 10:29:23 PM PST
Updated: 01/22/2011 10:37:00 PM PST
Riders fly through the air during a practice session for the Monster Energy Supercross motorcycle race Saturday at Dodger Stadium. (Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press)Take me out to the dirt clods. Take me out where it's loud.
Buy me some ear plugs and Winston Lights. I don't care if we get in a fight.
On an otherwise beautiful Southern California beachy-keen Saturday in January, Dodger Stadium was transformed into a giant truck stop just outside of Blythe. It was a cross between a Bret Michaels concert, an NRA convention and hog-calling contest.
Big hair, meet big air. No tattoo was taboo. More leather than Garvey, Lopes, Russell and Cey.
Dignity dug itself a hole and crawled into it.
Really, what's the worst thing that could happen to a Dodger Stadium outfield buried in a symphony of sludge? Is there more than just a grass turf dying a slow death on the infield, buried under plastic sheets and pieces of plywood that pretend to protect its integrity?
Yes. There's a hallowed groundskeeper tossing and turning in his silt, clinging to his sanity.
"It's funny how during the baseball season we try to keep people off the infield grass as much as possible," Eric Hansen, the Dodgers' longtime field maintenance guru said the other day, trying to crack a smile.
"But now ..."
Now, it's too late. A Supercross has crossed the line. Saturday's incessant buzz created by the Monster Energy AMA event, followed by the revved-up rumbling that a monster truck show will provide next month, keeps baseball out of sight and mind on L.A.'s diamond under the rough almost
right up to Opening Day at the end of March.
"Usually, as you drive in here, you reach a point in the road where you see this beautiful splash of green," said Orel Hershiser, the Dodgers one-time Cy Young Award winner who did a double-take after arriving at the stadium, having flown in from his home in Las Vegas with his sons in tow.
"This time, you drive up and just see ... dirt. Very strange."
What's the big deal? They do this every year at Angel Stadium, and that Los Angeles team doesn't seem to have any residual effects.
This place, we always thought, had more specialness.
All week long, Hansen had to watch tons of clay and sand strewn across his formerly pristine surface and turn it into what appeared to be more like a construction site taken over by a gang of Harley Davidson bikers. Don't worry, he was told. All that all the sod will be replaced. In due time.
Until then, he'll have to live with the sight of what amounts to a 6,000-square foot wine stain on his rug. We hope Hansen didn't see the yellow Bobcat skip loader tractor try unsuccessfully on Saturday to maneuver around a single orange pylon that marked the very manicured elevated circle where Clayton Kershaw
Riders compete during a qualifying heat for the Monster Energy Supercross motorcycle race Saturday at Dodger Stadium. (Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press)tries to earn a living. He insisted to the Supercross organizers right from the start they not touch the area near the pitcher's mound.
Sure, no problem. Where was that spot again? Someone moved the cone.
Maybe, when all is said and dragged out, we shouldn't assume the Dodgers, first-timers in this undertaking, sold their souls to a lime-green energy drink/transmission fluid. Perhaps this isn't just a fast off-season buck to be made to help Frank McCourt pay for a platoon left fielder or a situational left-handed lawyer.
We have no ballpark figure on what the Dodgers ownership stands to gain from this self-infected wound. We just now realize that, having seen it all unload, we doubt we'd have done this if we owned the place.
If you must leap to some kind of conclusion, make it go as high as some of these gladiators on their motorized scooters got on the series of inclines sculpted in front of the visitor's dugout.
But just know the dirty little secret here: Walter O'Malley might have done the same thing.
The man who took the heat for orchestrating the Brooklyn Dodgers' move to the greener financial pastures of West Coast big-league baseball had been renting out his palace since it was built in 1962.
He took on all sorts of bizarre events until he decided in the mid '60s to hire someone named Jeane Hoffman as an assistant to the president.
Not only was she the highest-ranking female in the front office, but her sole purpose was to find creative ways to promote and utilize Dodger Stadium for non-baseball activities such as rentals for movies and TV, conventions, alternative sports and concerts.
She swung for the fences right away. She got MGM to film some of its new Elvis Presley movie, "Spinout," in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, over by the Union 76 station. A couple of months later, the Beatles took the field.
From the info on O'Malley's official website - WalterOMalley.com, created by his son and subsequent Dodgers caretaker Peter O'Malley - the Dodger Stadium blueprint was to be a multi-purpose facility functional on a year-around basis.
Still, even he and his family had some standards.
Today, the Dodgers rely on Jill DeStafano, manager of venue sales and services, to squeeze off days into paydays. Commercial and movie site rentals usually bring in a standard rate of about $25,000 a day, according to Josh Rawitch, the team's VP of communications. A wedding or bar mitzvah go for much less.
None of those things, of course, play into Hansen's greatest fear - that all these foreign rocks somehow get embedded into his infield dirt skin. Keep track of the bad-hop singles this April.
Meanwhile, we can only wonder how low this could go from here. A show of hands: Who wants a swamp buggy race? A paintball tournament? A season of the TV show "Wipeout"?
Stay classy, Frank. This all comes with a price.
4 door
Comment