It's Time for Baseball

Although I relish each new baseball season, it seems that baseball now has a new flare to it with the Corvair. I love driving to Chavez Ravine and taking in a Dodger game. I live only about 20 minutes away and go, top down, making sure I go plenty early, to show off the Lil' Red Devil around the stadium. It adds a certain nostalgia to the entire event of going to a MLB game and drives home the meaning and history of the game for me. However, there has been an incident, which has soured my attitude toward baseball in the City of Angels.
The assault of Giants fan, Bryan Stow, shone a light on what has been a looming shadow on Dodger baseball for quite some time, ever since the McCourt regime came to be. The brutality was enough, but the following comments, or lack there of, from the Dodgers Organization and McCourt, was just salt in the already festering wound of the Dodgers Organization, the city of Los Angeles, and to the Major League Baseball. Immediately following the incident, McCourt tried to distance his club from liability. First he said, "Having 2,000 security guards out there would not have prevented the incident." I bet it would have, even 100 security out there would have done more. Next, he said that his liability stopped at the ballpark's exits and he had nothing to do with the parking areas. Well, let's see, McCourt sure as hell had a lot to do with doubling the parking fees at Dodger Stadium over the last several years. No doubt McCourt and the Organization are having something to do with the profit from that, ya think? Next, what were those suspect "fans" doing there at the game in the first place? If their sole purpose, which by all indications it seemed to be, was to get fall-down drunk and crack heads, then they are not real fans. Solve the problem and hire undercover, off-duty LAPD, which they have done, and you have eyes on the crowd. The parking area is the most important area in the entire ballpark. That is where the altercations usually start; keep it under watchful eyes of police, security, and staff and you keep down the problems. Even if something erupts, you can have an immediate response and quell it, while also getting names, making arrests, and hopefully banning those individuals from the stadium. Especially for opening day, when the Giants are in town, COME ON! That is the obvious day that there might be trouble, so at the least beef up on security at those games, when a fierce rival is in the city. I have been to Dodger Stadium many times since about 1983 and it should be a place where people go to see the grand game of baseball, not for shot gunning beer and looking for fights. Reserve that for home or the bar/club. Grow up!

Moreover, this has revealed a lot about the character of Frank McCourt. What a spectacle that they had a couple of days ago at the Dodger Stadium parking lot. A fund raiser to collect money for medical expenses for Bryan Stow. What a farce and another shameful reaction by McCourt. McCourt’s Organization should have footed the entire medical bill from the very start. What ever the fund raiser collected, McCourt should pull out the Dodgers' check book and match it, times two.

After this incident, I hope McCourt has to give up ownership of the Dodgers, either to his estranged wife or to another buyer. Either option would be more beneficial and honorable than what his tenure has turned out to be.

To Style. . .