history. again.

Well Saturday's game was really impressive, despite the fact that we lost. Though overall, the game itself ended up seeming like such a small part of the day. My friend Dave and I got to the Coliseum around 3pm or so - everywhere you turned was a sea of blue. Dave is a USC fan, so he's used to football tailgating at the Coliseum. Neither of us anticipated how much there would be for the Dodgers game. Every parking lot and field in every direction seemed to be filled with blue tents and tarps. We wandered through the crowds, grabbing a beer and some food by the Sports Arena; then wandered over through the baseball festival, which seemed to be mostly a collection of bouncy tents. Eventually we made our way in to the Coliseum. For the size of the crowds, everyone was in good spirits and we never ran into any long lines for anything. As I mentioned in the last post, I had gotten some last minute "crappy" seats out by the Peristyle (the arched colonnade) but when we got to our section, I was glad we had. Our seats were on the stone steps of the Coliseum itself. Maybe I'm crazy, but I just thought that was cool. I kept thinking of all the Grand Pianos for the Opening Ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics that were right where I was sitting now. And the scale of the crowd in the Coliseum for the game was just massive. At 115,300, it was the largest crowd to ever see a baseball game. Ever. Anywere. So even in that regard, we were part of history. And it felt like it. Especially if you stopped and thought that Dodger Stadium is one of the larger baseball stadiums still around, and this was twice the capacity of Dodger Stadium. It was a smart marketing move by the Dodgers as a way to kick off their 50th year in Los Angeles, and I'm sure they made a ton of money with that kind of crowd; but to their credit, they really pulled it off well. It was a day to be remembered.