Saturday, June 10, 2006
6/6/06 Karma
On 6/6/06, I did not rent The Omen, Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. I did not bet online that the world would end (10-1 odds). I did not listen to Ann Coulter rant on The Today Show about the 9/11 widows (certainly a sign of the decline of western civilization). Rather, I went to Dodger Stadium. If the world was going to end, this would certainly be a nice place to spend my last moments.
I am no fan of the LA Dodgers (I have rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals since I was 6). But I love the experience of watching games at the Stadium. The setting in Chavez Ravine is sublime, especially on a temperate late spring evening like the one we enjoyed on Tuesday. If you sit behind home, you have a view of green hills and palm trees when you look beyond the outfield. The scenery changes colors too as the sun sets in the early innings. LA is a city of great outdoor spaces where residents from across the city mingle - the Santa Monica Mountains, Venice Boardwalk, the Strand, the Hollywood Bowl, the Santa Monica Pier, the Rose Bowl. Dodger Stadium is right there as an egalitarian civic jewel.
But Tuesday night was extra special. Not only was it 6/6/06, but the starting pitchers, Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe, are former teammates on the Boston Red Sox. Another former Red Sox teammate, Nomar Garciaparra, is now the Dodgers leading hitter. The Dodger manager is Grady Little who pulled Pedro in the 7th game of the 2003 League Championship Series and allegedly cost the Sox a trip to the World Series. I bought the tickets a month ago with no idea that it would have so many interesting, intersecting story lines. As Bill Simmons wrote on espn.com, "On the Creepy/Improbable/Déjà Vu Scale, this was like President Bush crashing a book signing for the author of 'My Pet Goat.'"
In the end the Dodgers scored six runs in the sixth inning (eerie, huh?) to win 8-5. And the world survived the potentially apocalyptic day. The LA Times totally ignored the ball game's back story but fortunately Bill Simmons did not. All I can add to his essay is, "what he said."
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060607
I am no fan of the LA Dodgers (I have rooted for the St. Louis Cardinals since I was 6). But I love the experience of watching games at the Stadium. The setting in Chavez Ravine is sublime, especially on a temperate late spring evening like the one we enjoyed on Tuesday. If you sit behind home, you have a view of green hills and palm trees when you look beyond the outfield. The scenery changes colors too as the sun sets in the early innings. LA is a city of great outdoor spaces where residents from across the city mingle - the Santa Monica Mountains, Venice Boardwalk, the Strand, the Hollywood Bowl, the Santa Monica Pier, the Rose Bowl. Dodger Stadium is right there as an egalitarian civic jewel.
But Tuesday night was extra special. Not only was it 6/6/06, but the starting pitchers, Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe, are former teammates on the Boston Red Sox. Another former Red Sox teammate, Nomar Garciaparra, is now the Dodgers leading hitter. The Dodger manager is Grady Little who pulled Pedro in the 7th game of the 2003 League Championship Series and allegedly cost the Sox a trip to the World Series. I bought the tickets a month ago with no idea that it would have so many interesting, intersecting story lines. As Bill Simmons wrote on espn.com, "On the Creepy/Improbable/Déjà Vu Scale, this was like President Bush crashing a book signing for the author of 'My Pet Goat.'"
In the end the Dodgers scored six runs in the sixth inning (eerie, huh?) to win 8-5. And the world survived the potentially apocalyptic day. The LA Times totally ignored the ball game's back story but fortunately Bill Simmons did not. All I can add to his essay is, "what he said."
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060607
