6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

blogdowntown updates us on the funding stalemate with the Dodger trolley:

Councilman Bill Rosendahl was particularly incensed that the Dodgers refused to help bear the costs of service in 2008. "I just think it's a cheap shot that a firm as successful as [the Dodgers] doesn't come up with the funds," he said during a June Transportation committee meeting.

While charging a fare would raise some revenue, LADOT says that the amount would fall far short of the cost of service. In its projections, LADOT concludes that $50,000 - $120,000 could be raised by charging a fare of $1 to $3. Given 81 home games, the higher of those ridership numbers would give an average of 617 fares per game. The 2008 service averaged roughly 700 riders.

The Dodgers are looking at advertising sponsorships as a way to pay for the service, but refuse to pay for it themselves.

Labels: dodgers, parking

Dodger Stadium, The Next 50 Years

Frank McCourt unveiled his vision for Dodger Stadium's next 50 years today; here's a gallery, and a video which is still viewable using mplayer under Linux.

Strangely missing, in a future of ever-tightening oil supplies in which prices will likely hit $225/bbl by 2012 (that's four years from now, kids), is any mention of public transit, a long-time bugaboo with the Sons (and here at 6-4-2 as well).

Jon has more on all the hoopla.

Update: More in the Times by Jesus Sanchez. There's scuffling about some "dialogue" with the city on bringing a rail line to Dodger Stadium, as well as shuttle buses, but nothing concrete.

Roster Notes

• Buried in the LAT piece about Dodger Stadium's future was the note that Andy LaRoche hit 1-for-6 in his first rehab assignment with AA Jacksonville. Gotta add him to the watchlist.
• The Dodgers are "growing increasingly frustrated trying to find the cause of the pain that has sidelined [infielder Tony] Abreu most of the spring." Abreu is scheduled to see Dr. Neal ElAttrache later today.
• Howie Kendrick is healing but still has some ways to go before a rehab assignment.
• Relevant to today's game, the Red Sox recalled Justin Masterson from AA Portland, and sent Craig Hansen back to AAA Pawtucket.
• Several moves by the Rangers, who disabled Kason Gabbard with a sore back, optioned Kazuo Fukumori and Wes Littleton to AAA Oklahoma, and recalled Scott Feldman from that same club.
• The A's disabled Travis Buck with shin splints (!?).
• Eric Chavez has moved to the 60-day DL.
• The A's also signed Frank Thomas for the balance of the season, and the AN faithful seem to be happy about this.
• The Padres' Mark Prior has suffered a setback and has no timetable for pitching.

Labels: angels, athletics, dodger stadium, dodgers, injuries, padres, parking, rangers

Those of you missing out on Glenn Greenwald's recent string of posts about the recently deceased writer David Halberstam (an erstwhile New York Times reporter) may have missed out on a great deal. (The above links are all behind the Salon pay wall, but you can get a day pass by watching a brief Flash advertisement.) Halberstam had remarkable personal courage at a time when many of the vices now afflicting the national political press (incuriosity, vanity, and frivolity especially) were also on harsh display. As a war correspondant in Vietnam, he encountered much resistance to actual reporting, unsurprisingly; but he also stood up to it, something he commented upon in a 2005 valedictory speech to the Columbia Journalism School graduates.

Halberstam and his colleague Neil Sheehan had filed a string of highly negative stories about the war to date, with the consequence that then-President John F. Kennedy asked the Times' editor to pull him from the theater. Once, after a round of particularly hard fighting in the Delta, he and his fellow journalists had been prohibited from entering the battleground. Repeated requests to U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and General Paul Harkins for access yielded no results. The ensuing reaction by the military was startling, to say the least:

In those days, the military had a daily late afternoon briefing given by a major or a Captain, called the Five O'clock Follies, because of the generally low value of the information.

On this particular day, the briefing was different, given not by a Major but by a Major General, Dick Stilwell, the smoothest young general in Saigon. It was in a different room and every general and every bird Colonel in the country was there. Picture if you will rather small room, about the size of a classroom, with about 10 or 12 reporters there in the center of the room. And in the back, and outside, some 40 military officers, all of them big time brass. It was clearly an attempt to intimidate us.

General Stilwell tried to take the intimidation a step further. He began by saying that Neil and I had bothered General Harkins and Ambassador Lodge and other VIPs, and we were not to do it again. Period.

And I stood up, my heart beating wildly -- and told him that we were not his corporals or privates, that we worked for The New York Times and UP and AP and Newsweek, not for the Department of Defense.

I said that we knew that 30 American helicopters and perhaps 150 American soldiers had gone into battle, and the American people had a right to know what happened. I went on to say that we would continue to press to go on missions and call Ambassador Lodge and General Harkins, but he could, if he chose, write to our editors telling them that we were being too aggressive, and were pushing much too hard to go into battle. That was certainly his right.

So: Never let them intimidate you. Never. If someone tries, do me a favor and work just a little harder on your story. Do two or three more interviews. Make your story a little better.

I bring this all up because of an exchange I had with Dodger spokesman Josh Rawitch nearly two weeks ago in which he flatly refused to allow me to publish an unedited version of his response to my request to publish portions of an e-mail exchange I had with him over the Dodger Stadium parking situation. In particular, he refused to acknowledge at all the reports in the Los Angeles Times of individuals displaying Disabled Person license plates or placards being routed away from appropriate parking stalls.

I don't pretend to be a real journalist; quite the opposite. But what has been eating at me for some time now has been the utter refusal of the Dodgers as an organization to publicly recognize that they have flaws and could, maybe, learn a thing or two. I have since heard from several people that the parking situation is indeed improved, even in relatively heavy traffic. That is certainly all to the good, and I applaud that, I really do. But what I find appalling still is the team's refusal to deal with what seems like starkly obvious defects. We can see; we can read; why can't they?

I intend to go to several games at Dodger Stadium this year, partly because I enjoy it and partly to find out first hand how well the parking really is working out. Stay tuned.

Labels: dodger stadium, dodgers, parking

LA Observed has a brief piece up quoting an e-mail from an Echo Park resident who reports that the Dodgers plan on re-opening the Scott Ave. gate. This gate has been closed for about eleven years because of the work of then-city councilwoman Jackie Goldberg and local residents who complained about the traffic through their neighborhood. The Dodgers will make a presentation at the Barlow Hospital, 2000 Stadium Way, Los Angeles, 90026, on Wednesday at 7 pm. jjackflash suggested that the Scott Ave. gate closure may well have been part of the problem in an earlier post. Could it be that someone is listening at Dodger Central?

Labels: dodger stadium, dodgers, parking

Oh, yes. Forgotten in all the parking changes is the Unocal operator at Dodger Stadium:

One consequence of the Dodgers' new parking system could be the endangerment of the Union 76 gas station beyond center field, a landmark as old as Dodger Stadium.

Although a line formed 25 deep for the women's restroom inside the 45-year-old station about an hour before Monday's home opener, business wasn't booming as usual at the gas pump.

Station operator Chuck Mercier said his station served about 60 cars Monday, down from the 80 to 100 vehicles it had served per day in years past. Surveying the trickle of vehicles driving past his station — on a day that 56,000 fans packed Dodger Stadium — Mercier said, "They've pretty much closed me off."

Mercier said he had e-mailed Dodgers officials about his concerns and hoped that they would try to work with him to ensure the survival of a landmark that has been featured on the Travel Channel as the only gas station on the premises of a major league baseball stadium.

"I would love it to stay there and I would love to have it accessible to the motoring public to give them the service," Mercier said. "There is a possibility that someday it won't be there."

Well, just as soon as people stop driving cars that need gasoline, sure.

---

Look, here's the deal. I go to Angel Stadium, and I park offsite; I get in almost instantly, and get out in a half hour, an hour absolutely positively tops (and on light attendance games, almost as easily as I got in). The park even offers nearby rail service from Amtrak and Metrolink. Dodger Stadium offers... headaches getting in and getting out under good circumstances, though many more getting out. To Josh Rawitch, and whoever else is reading this, I can only say: the Dodgers are not making it likely they'll break four million attendance with these changes. And they're making it very easy for me to forego any trips to Dodger Stadium this year; Helen and I have already talked about giving up that holiest of holies, the Cubs series.

Look: Get Frank McCourt out front to apologize about the screwups and then actually do something about them. I'm giving this until the end of the month. SOSG will be at the park tonight; I expect a full report.

Labels: dodger stadium, dodgers, parking

More reason to love Sons of Steve Garvey: this marketing campaign that has since turned into an unintentional joke. Also, don't miss SOSG's big post yesterday on how the parking fiasco meshes with the general McCourt-era problems created by stubborn and willfully obtuse management. Speaking of Dodger management, I got an e-mail yesterday from Josh Rawitch regarding my public pillorying of him; with his permission, I'm going to post the exchange, because I don't think there's much in there he could really object to.

Also, we heard from public nuisance T.J. Simers today. Once in a while he says what needs saying, and today was one of those times.

I had received tons of e-mail from irate Dodgers fans, and just thought a service-orientated business such as the Dodgers might make the owner available to soothe the disenchanted.

"What could he say?" a Dodgers spokesman asked, and "sorry" might have been a good start.

Apparently employees were made to park outside the park, and the shuttle buses stopped running, possibly because they couldn't navigate traffic. As a result, employees ended up walking to their cars in an offsite lot through parking lots that famously aren't built to deal with pedestrian traffic at the exits; one tripped and fell, necessitating a visit to the hospital.

Simers interviewed some fans, and without insulting them, too:

PATTY HAYES: "I complained to a Dodger executive about increased prices and decreased benefits (a while back) and said the Dodgers appear to no longer appreciate season-ticket holders. He said, 'Oh, we appreciate you, we just don't show it.' I had ample time to contemplate the truth of that statement during my 1 hour and 50 minute exit from preferred parking on opening day."

[...]

TIM KEELER: "Some friends avoided the lots by parking outside the stadium. After the game, Frank McCourt and his entourage walked down the street…. I bet he decided to walk out of the parking lot and catch a cab to Beverly Hills."

[...]

W. THOMAS: "I'm canceling my season tickets next year if they don't fix it, and I'll be selling all of the remaining tickets for this year if it's not fixed soon."

[...]

JOSE CRISTOBAL: "As I sat in the morass that was the post-opening day Dodger Stadium parking lot, Vin Scully sat there too. As he crept along, one of the human beings hired with my extra $5 for parking realized it was Vin and offered him the chance to use a closed lane. But in a gesture that has defined his career, Vin chose to forgo the special treatment and sat among us regular folks. Now if only the Parking Lot Attendant and the Screaming Meanie could take a page out of Vin's book of class. [It's not clear here where the quotation marks should end; I've never seen anyone besides Simers refer to Jamie McCourt as "the Screaming Meanie".]

"I checked with Vin, who said with a laugh, 'I love traffic,' while continuing to take the high road. 'I'm no noble hero or anything like that; I wanted to go right and the closed lane wouldn't have helped.'

Ah, Vin Scully. I should throw in as a final thought that, as Jon did today in his clever post on yesterday's game, that it's still possible this will all work out. But I'm less than impressed so far, and it's amazing the disconnect between those responsible for the situation, and those paying to be in it.

Update: Matt Welch, in the pages of the Times' editorial section (hat tip: LA Observed):

ACCORDING TO "The Wisdom of Crowds," a 2004 book by James Surowiecki, pluralistic markets of non-specialist individuals tend to arrive at conclusions and predictions that are reliably more accurate and efficient than those made by experts. Another way of putting it — and I'm talking to you, Frank McCourt! — is that baseball fans already knew how to park at Dodger Stadium.

In L.A., where no intelligence is more coveted than knowledge of optimal driving routes, the masses have long developed their own idiosyncratic strategies to cope with such logistical squeeze plays as going from Venice to Hollywood at rush hour, Las Vegas to Los Angeles on a Sunday evening — and to and from Dodger Stadium on opening day. Some routes are better than others, but the net result of group experimentation is that a bad situation doesn't get much worse.

Enter the Dodgers' pratfall-prone owner. McCourt (who made a fortune in parking lots in his native Boston) decided in the off-season that the way to improve Chavez Ravine's car-crunch was to eliminate the one thing keeping it from being a real nightmare: human choice.

Welch, who actually attended opening day festivities, "managed the two-mile- plus post-game commute to work in a cool 90 minutes, and even that doesn't do justice to the horror."

Update 2: Jon Weisman interviewed in a Times story:

"I don't think anyone expects the Dodgers to eliminate stadium traffic entirely," he said. "That being said, given that the Dodgers have increased the basic cost of parking 50% from last year, fans have a right to expect significant improvement, and many are pessimistic that the Dodgers can deliver."

And: have urban planners ever been right about anything?

"Longtime Dodger fans have systems they've worked out," said Richard Willson, professor of urban and regional planning at Cal Poly Pomona. "They're used to strategically choosing parking spaces in this first-come, first-served method. You can't expect introducing a new system to work perfectly the first day."

Maybe the best thing to come of this will be to convert a few Dodger fans who favor central planning to a more "wisdom of the crowds" point of view...

Labels: dodger stadium, dodgers, parking

After torturing us with new draconian parking restrictions while raising parking prices (and intimidating the wheelchair-bound, for shame), the latest news is that they want us to carpool. Our fabulous reward?

In order to accommodate as many fans as possible, the Dodgers are offering an Early Bird Parking/Carpool Special to fans that carpool (at least 4 fans per automobile) and park in Lot 15. These fans will receive a free ticket for each passenger to a future game if they arrive at Dodger Stadium at 9:30 a.m. and park in Lot 15, which is the lot located above the Think Blue sign. This offer is limited to the first 600 automobiles. Lot 15 is a special access parking lot that is only utilized during sold out games. Fans will need to enter via the Academy Gate off Academy Road across from the Police Academy between 9:30 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. In addition to the free ticket for a future game, fans that carpool and park in Lot 15 will have early access to Opening Day batting practice via the Left Field Pavilion. You must have tickets to Opening Day in order to participate in this special offer. Additionally, the lots on Stadium Way near the LAFD Training Facility will cost just $5.

So, they're inviting us to —

• fight rush-hour traffic
• to arrive at the park three and a half hours before the game
• so we can maybe get tickets to a future game
• and/or see the Dodgers commence batting practice, which in all likelihood won't begin until two hours before the game
• leaving us to entertain ourselves with Gameboys or whatever for an hour and a half.

Sometimes it seems that Frank 'N' Jamie are determined to try every dumb idea possible just to say they were doing something about a legitimate problem that in fact defies easy solution. This is the same attitude that got us Daylight Savings time extended by a month; it's just not helping, and what's more, it was obvious from the start that it wasn't going to help, either.

Frank admission (har): I've had my problems with the McCourts, and in fact one of the motivations of this blog was to kick them squarely in the pants when they deserved it. Their cluelessness extends to Jamie's sartorial habits, which apparently includes the wearing of orange sweaters during Giants games. The same kind of thinking has apparently gotten us a regulation game in which the entire fielded Dodger team will wear the number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson. Robinson was an unquestioned hero, but this is just ridiculous. Enough, already; the numbers are there for a reason. Please, in the future, I beg of you: have someone whose last name is not McCourt vet these ideas.

Update: SOSG has fun with the space-time continuum problems the 42-ness will present. "[I]magine the Padres' dismay when Bruce Bochy Bud Black has to tell the press, 'I feel like we were beaten tonight by one guy.'" Why don't the Dodgers ask smart guys like us about this stuff, huh?

Update 2: Maybe not so smart. San Diego's manager isn't Bruce Bochy, it's Bud Black.

Labels: dodger stadium, dodgers, jackie robinson, parking