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My visit to Dodger Stadium was a part of a greater visit to southern California, where I spent a few nights with my best friend from college, Lucas. My dear friend Lucas is not interested in sports whatsoever, and his closest contact to baseball was apparently singing the national anthem as a part of the Los Angeles Children's Chorus at Dodger Stadium. However, I still managed to drag him to three separate baseball games--and he seemed to enjoy all three, which I am taking as an absolute victory.

As a result of life changes I had at the end of April, I pushed hard towards wanting to hit as many baseball games at different parks as I could before the season ended. A sequence of well-timed events led to Lucas being in Chicago for a visit, which allowed me to take the opportunity to fly back to the Los Angeles area with him. The Dodgers are a team that I have a general liking towards, especially as the final victims of the Astros' 2017 season. My impression of them is that they're a generally good baseball team that uses the benefits of being located in a large sports market very well, with acquisitions such as Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts turning them into what are essentially the 2010s Patriots of Major League Baseball--having made the postseason every year since 2013 isn't exactly an easy task.

Arriving to Dodger Stadium was a nightmare--I greatly underestimated the Los Angeles traffic and during my time on the exit off the highway and towards the stadium I put my car into park due to being still for so long. As a result of this traffic, I missed the Mookie Betts bobblehead promotion the stadium had going, which makes this the second time this has happened to me. Undeterred, Lucas and I found our way to one of the parking lots surrounding Dodger Stadium and walked towards the center field gate. The parking lots surrounding the stadium are massive, but once we parked in the general lots we were able to get to the stadium relatively quickly. We would up seeing the statues of Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax, which I enjoyed as I am a sucker for history.

The stadium itself is one of the oldest in baseball right behind Wrigley Field and Fenway Park but has had recent renovations that make it feel less like it was built in the 1960s. Much like the city it resides in, Dodger Stadium does feel a bit sprawling and we felt like it took a substantial amount of time to find our seats. The backdrop of the stadium itself is pretty in an atypical way compared to other stadiums: whereas most of the stadiums I've been to are integrated into cities and have skylines or relatively flat land as backdrops, Dodger Stadium has lush nature and rolling hills that are parts of Chavez Ravine in the background. It's a breathtaking scene, particularly during sunset, which we were able to see during this night game. The food here was notably good, in my opinion--I would rate it a 8.5 out of 10 on the ballpark food scale, with the pulled pork sandwich I got complementing the extra long "Dodger Dog" well. Lucas wanted to get Dippin Dots towards the eighth inning of the game, so we took a walk around the 500-level concourse to find them--during this walk, I noticed that the ballpark was selling soju in addition to bao buns, making me regret driving a bit in addition to making me think I missed out on some food options.

The game we attended between the Dodgers and Twins was one of the most memorable that I've been to so far for a few reasons--chief among them being the fact that this game went into extra innings. This is the only game of the first nineteen in my chase that dove into extras, and I was gifted with the treat of seeing three of them. The tickets to this game were among the priciest of the chase, meaning that I was able to level the cost of this game closer to the average when weighing out the fact that I attended 33% more baseball than I had paid for. Additionally, the 2023 Twins were the visiting team, meaning that noted 2017 Astro Carlos Correa was in town--and whenever he came up to bat the crowd booed with a vitriol and coordination that could have only stemmed from hatred. Chants of "cheater," "bang bang," and others that I will not write here were hurled at Correa during his plate appearances, of which there were five. The only thing louder than the boos were the cheers that came at the end of his at-bats, where he went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts. With a negative WPA on the game he actively hurt the Twins' chances of winning, which felt nice to watch. I wouldn't be lying if I said I didn't join in on the boos. The pitchers in this game combined for just over two hits per inning in an offensive slugging that ended 9-8. The Dodgers seemed to have the game neatly wrapped at the top of the eighth with a 6-3 lead, but a three-run inning from the Twins tied it up, setting up an extra-innings showcase with the bottom of the ninth ending with Johan Duran putting out Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Will Smith (a set of players with an average OPS of .921 coming out of this game).

The most memorable part of the game, however, was the ending--a very tired Lucas that was surprised baseball games cannot end in ties watched with me as the Dodgers entered the bottom of twelfth, with a thirteenth inning on the horizon. Betts popped out to give the Twins their first out, and a Freeman intentional walk led to a Smith strikeout to give the Twins a second out. During this at-bat, the runners at first and second (Freeman who walked, and Chris Taylor who was the ghost runner for the extra inning) stole second and third. After a Max Muncy intentional walk, the Dodgers' next man up was Trayce Thompson--who worked the count full. In the last pitch of the game, Twins pitcher Jorge Lopez fired a fastball high and inside that Trayce Thompson took for a walk. As I do with all of these blog posts, I look back on the games using Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant, the latter of which has broadcast footage from every pitch from 2016 onward. The away broadcast of this pitch in particular was a funny watch, as the announcer encapsulated how I was feeling with a defeated "of all the ways for this great game to end..."

Despite the game ending on a twelfth-inning full-count walk-off walk, I still very much enjoyed the game and thought Dodger Stadium was a cool place to visit. I can't imagine coming here regularly without preferred parking, and Los Angeles traffic is a nightmare--but there's a uniqueness about the largest park in major league baseball (and the world!) that was breathtaking to see in person.