The recent World Series got me to thinking back to when I was a kid and my father and I — and sometimes, my Uncle Nathan — would go to Dodgers games. I can't remember much that I liked. The traffic to and from the stadium was always terrible and the parking was awkward and overpriced. A few times, my father tried saving a buck or two by parking in a nearby residential area where folks who seemed to need the income would let you park on their lawn for a dollar less than parking at the stadium. That meant a much longer walk to and from the stadium that, to me, didn't feel like a good trade-off for the savings.
But mainly, I recall the time we parked at the stadium but didn't see the game. My father bought the cheapest-possible tickets and they were "stand-by" seats. You didn't get in if the game was sold out and this time, it was. To make matters worse, when we returned to his car, the parking lot was so crowded with cars in its aisles that we couldn't get out. And of course, there would be no refund for the exorbitant parking fee.
It was something like 102° that day and my father, Uncle Nathan and I spent about five innings in that lot — in a car with no air-conditioning and with limited access to refreshments or restrooms. A number of other Dodgers fans were in the same predicament and we all listened to Vin Scully calling the play-by-play on the radio, plus we could hear directly the sold-out crowd roar time and again. It all sounded a lot more interesting than anything my father and I ever got to watch from the bleachers.
Around the fifth inning, a couple of folks attending the game came out, got in their cars and left — for what reason, we had no idea. The spaces they cleared sparked an excited reaction from one of the other folks out there with us who couldn't get into the stadium. He announced that it was now theoretically possible to clear an exit route if certain of us could move our cars with surgical precision.
It was like "If you turn your wheels all the way to the left and back up exactly four inches then this guy can turn his wheels all the way to the right and move forward exactly three inches, then this guy can back up six inches…" Rubik's Cube had not been invented at the time but when it was, I was reminded of that day in the Dodgers' parking lot.
My father was apprehensive about trying to move his car that precisely. Half an inch too far and he'd scrape paint or worse with some stranger's Cadillac and he'd of course need to leave a note and deal with that and maybe even insurance companies…and it was just too potentially messy. Another captive Dodgers fan who by then was desperate to get out volunteered to move my father's car…and while he did it a millimeter at a time with everyone yelling contradictory instructions, he managed to do what needed to be done.
An inning or so later, a half-dozen autos had been carefully repositioned and a path to freedom was finally cleared. We got out and got home well before the end of the game which had gone into extra innings. If we'd waited in the lot for the final out, we'd have been there way longer than we expected.
That may have been the last time my father ever attended a game. If it wasn't, I'm pretty sure it was the last time he bought the cheapest seats. The next time I was in Dodger Stadium, I was 68 years old and I was there to get a COVID vaccination.