Dodger Stadium (Los Angeles, California)

During our stay in San Diego in April 2018 we took an overnight road trip to Los Angeles to catch a Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium. We are now down to our last four Major League Baseball parks, Dodger Stadium making #27 (out of 30). Although we’ve been to Southern California numerous times in the 11 years we’ve been traveling full time, Dan, not being a big Dodgers fan, was dragging his heels on this one. Personal feelings aside, there was no way we would skip any of the ballparks, especially as we are now so close to the end of the list. Since the Dodgers were playing the Arizona Diamond Backs (i.e., not the SF Giants or Oakland A’s), we had nothing invested in either team. As it turned out, the Dodgers were heartily beat by the D-Backs, with the final score of 9-1.

Dodger Stadium is nestled in Chavez Ravine Valley, and was a short walk up a steep hill from our hotel. The stadium has been around for 55 years, a relatively long time for a baseball stadium. It is the oldest stadium west of the Mississippi River, and the third oldest ball park in all of MLB, just behind Fenway and Wrigley, and holds 56,000 fans – the largest stadium in the league. That didn’t stop us from doing our usual walkabout, checking out the amenities, searching out our vegan food options, and finding a nice cold beer to drink with our peanuts. And, of course, taking lots of pictures!

Some other fun facts about Dodger Stadium include:

• Because of the nearby ocean, the cooler denser air at night might cause a homerun hit in the daytime to fall short a few hours later.
• Pope John Paul II held mass at Dodger Stadium in 1987.
• They say it never rains in Southern California - the club went from 1988 to 1999 between rainouts, a streak of 856 games that was the major league record before the current streak. That record has since been broken, with no rainouts since April 17, 2000, 1,471 consecutive games through April 15th, 2018.
• The Dodgers were the first team to get more than three million fans to games in a single season.
• There’s a hidden Japanese garden behind Parking Lot 6, built by Japanese sportswriter Sotaro Suzuki in 1965. He was so amazed by the new stadium he commissioned this garden, complete with wooden bridge, rock garden, and a stone lantern.
• The stadium has its own zip code – 90090
• On any day there isn’t an afternoon game, you can take in and eat your own lunch in the stadium.
• You can get married on the field. $5,000 rents you home plate for the ceremony. $25,000 gets you the whole field. Or, if you feel like proposing during a game, you can pay $75 for a personalized message on the scoreboard banner, or shell out $2,500 to have the entire down-on-one-knee thing broadcast live on the Jumbotron.