Think Blue, Part 1

August 19, 2009 Scott Sunaoka Comments 0 Comment

So many of you already know this, but I am a huge Los Angeles Dodgers fan. I have been since the sixth grade. And although I have been to some pretty great sporting events in my life I had never been to Dodger Stadium. I have seen the Dodgers play before, but that was in Washington DC when I was there for a conference and the Dodgers were there playing against the Nationals.

At the time of this writing, the Dodgers are currently in first place in the NL West and when we went to LA they had the best record in baseball (currently they have the best record in the National League). Of course my hope is that they will win the World Series so being the eternal optimist that I am, I convinced Keao that we had to see the Dodgers this year because this is their year.

And, not only do we need to watch a game at Dodger Stadium, but we also need to take the stadium tour so we can really get the good fan experience. So instead of being at the ballpark just once during the day, we would end up going there twice.

The sign that greets you upon entering the parking lot

On a clear day you can just make out the famous Hollywood sign

The tour started out with us walking around the upper deck for a while as our Dodger Ambassador, Jordan, gave us some history of the park. This part was pretty interesting. But that was just the start…

Our next stop was down an elevator to the press box level. We went into one of the conference rooms where we watched a short video about the future of Dodger Stadium. Of course it was hosted by Vin Scully, the legendary Dodger broadcaster.

This is Tommy Lasorda‘s retired jersey number in the conference room

Next up was the Vin Scully press box. The actual box where Vin Scully calls the games every night. I believe it is literally one of the best seats in the house.

Here I am pretending to call the game

Here’s the view from the press box

After fooling around in the press area for a little while we then got to check out the luxury suites. Some of them are really nice, it’s too bad I’ll probably never get to watch a game from there.

There’s everything in here including food!

I like the theme of this table and stools

Ronald, Tommy and Keao

They even have a pool table in case the game gets boring

Frank Sinatra’s actual seats

Here he is sitting in one of them

Afterward we kind of worked our way down to the ground level stopping by the entrances to the Dodger and visitor clubhouses. We then entered the Dugout Club, a high-end club with tons of Dodger memorabilia.

Before the World Series trophy they gave out bats to the World Series winners. Those five bats are from the Dodger World Series championships before 1988

This is home plate from Ebbets Field that the Dodgers took with them when they came to Los Angeles

Did you know that Babe Ruth briefly coached for the Dodgers?

Then we got to go tour the field and the dugout, but not before getting to walk through the tunnel that leads directly to the doors of the Dodger clubhouse.