6.11.00
LOS ANGELES DODGERS vs OAKLAND A'S
Today was “Fuji Film Photo Day,” when they open the park two hours early and let fans go down on the field and take pictures with their favorite players. It's not quite as casual and free-form as it sounds—there's a railing that snakes through the outfield beyond which spectators can't go, and the players just make a tour of the perimeter; you end up with lots of pictures of your favorite Dodgers posing with people you don't know and will never see again.
More than the photo ops, however, what this Fuji Film Photo Day provided was a reason to pause and reflect, for I remember going to last year's event and feeling deeply ambivalent about it. Ambivalent because one year ago it was unclear whether the Los Angeles Dodgers were even an organization worth one's patronage, let alone fandom. One and a half years into the Fox Era, the Dodgers had made a lot of dramatic, baby-and-bathwater-tossing moves, and the result was a deep sense of unease among Dodger faithful and a team that was having a hard time getting out of its own way. It was painful to watch and difficult to get behind, this expensive and underachieving team, and for most of the season I avoided wearing my Dodgers t-shirt for same reason I stopped wearing my Sonic Youth t-shirts after the third crappy record in a row. It's embarrassing.
The problem was, as plainly evil as the Fox administration had proven itself to be, I still liked the players themselves: the resolutely unglamorous (except for his ridiculous haircut) Eric Karros; eager and fleet-footed Adrian Beltre; Todd Hollandsworth, far more articulate than is proper for a professional athelete; talented head-case Chan Ho Park; bad-ass Texan Darren Dreifort; the much-maligned but quiet and capable Gary Sheffield; even the struggling Todd Hundley—he was trying so hard!
So, I was torn. Torn between wanting to wash my hands of the whole thing, put fond childhood memories to rest and become a full-time Padres fan instead, and wanting, badly, to be given a reason to believe, some inkling of hope, some light at the end of the Fox tunnel that would allow me once more to indulge that blind, unqualified, giddy adoration, that willful suspension of disbelief that is at the heart of sports fandom.
It would be several months, of course, but that glimmer of hope arrived last fall, when lifetime Dodger freak Robert Daly ponied up $15 million of his own money and provided Fox a face-saving escape hatch. Heaving a tandem sighs of relief, twin jackasses Peter Chernin and Chase Carey handed control of day-to-day operations over to Daly and things have been looking up ever since. Green-for-Mondesi, continuing efforts to dump payroll that I'm convinced are going to result in Alex Rodriguez wearing a Dodgers uniform next year, and more Nancy Bea Hefley organ time than at any time in the last three seasons. Daly knows what he's doing, and it's heartening.
As is the Dodgers' play to this point, which might not seem to be the case given the way these reports have been going. Last year the Dodgers sucked, and they won all but one of the dozen or so games I attended; this year I haven't seen them win since Opening Day, but they're comfortably over .500 and staying within sight of the division-leading Arizona Diamondbacks, which, given the Dodgers' grueling first-half schedule, is about all anyone could hope for. All of which is to say, it's nice that it's nice to be Dodgers fan again. Naysayers will point to L.A.'s $90 million payroll and claim that the Dodgers are just as bad for baseball as the Yankees and Braves. To which I can only reply: But the Dodgers are the good guys! That's $90 million in the fight against evil! C'mon!
Rookie righthander Eric Gagne, who despite his Devo-esque goggles and his preference for the rather fey Gahn-yay pronounciation of his name over the more conventionally Anglicized Gag-knee is a fairly intimidating presence on the mound, gave up five runs to the A's in the first, after which I turned to my brother and said, “Watch—he won't give up another run for the rest of the day and the Dodgers will still lose,” and that's pretty much what happened. (The A's got their sixth run later when rookie catcher Paul Lo Duca got suckered on a double-steal and tried to throw out the runner at second while Jason Giambi waltzed home unmolested from third.) The real story of the day was the dominating performance turned in by Kevin Appier, who went the distance and got the shut-out for the A's. Damned impressive is what it was, and it was nice that the half-dozen or so people who stayed til the end saw fit to give him a polite ovation.
FINAL SCORE: A'S 6, DODGERS 0
MEMORABLE HECKLE:
The tone of the afternoon was perhaps best captured by the gentleman to our
left, who, some time around the fifth or sixth inning, when it'd become clear
that the Dodgers were not about to get anything going against Appier, pleaded:
“Come on guys—I got a Lakers game to go home and watch!”
