Ben Maller

Robby Incmikoski: Here we are with my guy Ben Maller, Fox Sports Radio. Hey, Ben, I want to talk to you about Dodger Stadium. I guess the first thing to ask is, What is it like just walking through the third-oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball? What’s the experience from the time you step in to the time you leave that place?

Ben Maller: Yeah, the first thing, Robby, is when you go in, it’s how massive it is. It’s humongous. Most of the time you enter Dodger Stadium from behind the downtown part of Los Angeles, so you’re in this massive parking lot. As far as you can see are parking spaces, and then you have to find the entrance—it’s changed over the years. But you walk in, and you see this beautiful field below you and then the mountain range. It’s just awesome—it’s awe-inspiring when you see it. You’re in the middle of a city, and it’s like all these ballparks that are in a city. People think of LA, they think of a lot of traffic and whatnot, but you get to Dodger Stadium, and it’s just like you’re in this little bubble that’s over downtown Los Angeles. It’s pretty crazy.

Robby Incmikoski: Ben, when you walk in the media entrance, you’re at the top of the mountain right there, top of Dodger Stadium, and it is honestly one of the most beautiful viewpoints in all of Major League Baseball. Do you remember the first time you saw from that high, and what was your reaction?

Ben Maller: Yeah, when I was a kid, I grew up in Southern California, so I went when I was a kid a few times. I didn’t go that much; I didn’t live near Dodger Stadium. But when I started in the media, I had imposter syndrome—like I didn’t really belong: “What am I doing here?” It was something that I had watched a lot on TV, and just the palatial nature of the whole experience when you go to Dodger Stadium. Now over the years, since so many of the old ballparks have gone away, there’s only a few left that are older than Dodger Stadium—it’s kind of crazy. When you think about the legends that played there back in the early days of Dodger Stadium . . . When they first moved, they played at the Coliseum for a couple of years, but they still had guys that were on the Brooklyn Dodgers when they moved to Dodger Stadium. So they had guys that go all the way back to the days when they were in Brooklyn that were still playing for the team in LA.

And just the fact that they’ve been able to keep it up over the years, which is not easy to do, is—it’s held up. A lot of these other ballparks, one of the reasons they’ve gone away is because they haven’t been able to take care of them, but they’ve done a great job. They’ve renovated it a bunch; it’s much different than it was when I first went there. They used to have tons of space behind home plate—the foul territory. There was one of those great moments when Kirk Gibson scored, I think from second or first, on a passed ball years ago because there was so much foul ground, but now they’ve filled that in with all the “Hollywood seats,” we like to call them where all the celebrities go and sit behind there; they have a crazy restaurant. That’s the thing—when I first went to Dodger Stadium and I got to walk around the bowels of Dodger Stadium, it was still the same as when they first built it. They had the old Angels clubhouse down from where the Dodgers clubhouse was when the Angels played there, and there was just a tunnel. You’d take the elevator down, and there was a tunnel and there were a few seats that would wrap around home plate, but that was it. The umpires would walk through the tunnel and there’d be a walkway to the back. Now there’s this massive five-star restaurant, but you can’t really tell any of that from just looking at the ballpark. It looks pretty similar to what it looked like before—only a few slight changes. The renovation cost millions and millions of dollars, but it’s just so fancy-schmancy underneath there. I keep going back to the word “impressive,” but it’s magnificent to walk around.

Robby Incmikoski: Ben, as a media member, I’ve done this, but I’m curious about your experience as a guy who does it way more frequently than I do; I only do it for three days at a time once a year when I’m out there with the Pirates, or when I was with the Twins. What is it like trying to make your way from either the press box at the top all the way down to the clubhouse level? How would you describe that journey?

Ben Maller: It’s like being on a roller coaster, especially at the end of the games. You’re in the game, it’s okay, but you have two options: You can either take an elevator—which is the same elevator as they had in the early days of Dodger Stadium; it’s a very slow elevator—and there are only three elevators behind the press box for the media to use, and really only two. There’s two that go all the way down to the field. There’s one that goes up to the upper level and down to the press-box level. So you’re pretty much at the mercy of the elevator operator. Sometimes after the game, they’ll have the elevator waiting for you, but typically what happens is you have to take the escalator. You have to take multiple escalators down. You then have to take a staircase down, and you have to walk by a couple of security guards, and the crowd’s leaving. Everyone’s trying to leave, and you’re going against the grain, against the crowd. People are looking at you like, “What are you doing?”

Then you have to get down to the very bottom of Dodger Stadium, and then you have to navigate—if you’re going to the visitors’ clubhouse, you have to go to the right, but then walk past where all the rich people sit and the nice restaurant. So then you have to go past the gift shop and the whole thing. But if you go to the Dodger clubhouse, you’ve got to turn left, and there’s a guard there, and they’ve renovated it. So now there’s a media workroom, and then you walk down another hallway to get where the clubhouse is. It’s a maze—it’s like being in a corn maze at Dodger Stadium. If you’ve never been there, or only been a few times, it’s impossible not to get lost. I’m lucky; I’ve been there a lot. It’s changed over the years, but it still feels like you’re in a corn maze underneath, because of the way it was designed.

Robby Incmikoski: Right. That’s what I’m saying—it’s wild. I have photos, I’ve taken photos of it, because it’s such an insane trip to make. I have photos to back up what Ben said, where they have all the Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers and all that as soon as you step off the elevator. I have pictures of all that.

Hey, here’s a rarity in the game of baseball. You have Fenway Park, you have Dodger Stadium, you have the Coliseum for a couple more weeks, and you have wait—Fenway, Dodger, what am I missing. Wrigley, yeah. So you have Wrigley. So really you’re only going to have Fenway, you-re going to have Wrigley, and you’re going to have Dodger Stadium. They’re the only three ballparks, Ben, and I don’t count Tampa Bay as one, but where the all-time greats, the Hall of Famers, great players, like the legends that have passed thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years ago that have played in the same park that Shohei Ohtani’s playing in right now. So there’s a kid who’s going to say, “Man, I saw Shohei Ohtani.” There’s a guy out there saying, “Hey, I saw Don Newcombe, I saw Sandy Koufax, I saw Don Drysdale,” I saw whoever, right, play in that stadium. How cool is it that Dodger Stadium is one of the three last ones standing, and that is one place where you’ve seen the all-time greats a hundred years ago, not a hundred, but you get my point.

Ben Maller: Yeah.

Robby Incmikoski: Eighty, ninety years ago, and you can still see stars today in the same ballpark where they played?

Ben Maller: Yeah, it’s wonderful. It’s one of the endearing qualities of baseball—more than any other sport, baseball is all about the history. It’s not just the Dodger players like Koufax and Drysdale and some of the Brooklyn guys that came over in those early days, but it’s the visiting players too. I heard stories when I first started in the early ’90s—stories about “Pops” Willie Stargell, and how he would hit balls out of Dodger Stadium. You think of Hank Aaron and some of the other players that have played against the Dodgers.

It's not just the guys that played for the Dodgers. For me, growing up in Southern California, it was crazy to be around Tommy Lasorda, because Lasorda was this bigger-than-life cartoon character. I started out, I was nineteen years old, and being around Lasorda blew my mind. That was where he worked—he’d been there. He was also a terrible pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but he had pitched for them. And you’d be around him and see Koufax and some of the other legends that had passed through the Dodgers, that had worked there over the years. They always did a great job, and they still do, of bringing back the old players and welcoming them back with open arms. That’s really that bond that you have at Dodger Stadium—or Fenway or Wrigley—that you don’t have elsewhere. Even the new Yankee Stadium, which is beautiful, is across the way from where Babe Ruth played; it’s not the same exact field, same exact location.

So the whole experience—you can think, when you go to Dodger Stadium, you can imagine, “Hey, this is the road that whoever your favorite player was from the ’60s or the ’70s, they went the same way, essentially, to get to Dodger Stadium.” They had a pretty similar experience in terms of the view, the mountain range outside, and the skyline outside Dodger Stadium.

Robby Incmikoski: That’s a great point, and that segues into something else I want to ask you. You’re a funny dude. I’m happy to ask you this question because it would sound great on radio. But if you stayed for a Dodger game until the final out, what is it like getting from the parking lot to the nearest street or highway?

Ben Maller: It depends what day of the week it is, right? If it’s a Monday, or Tuesday, or a Wednesday, and it’s not a giveaway, it’s bad. On a scale of one to ten, it’s like a six. But if they have fireworks or they’re giving away a bobblehead doll at Dodger Stadium, you could essentially spend the same amount of time getting out of Dodger Stadium as you would by going to the airport and flying from Los Angeles to Chicago. It’s insanity. There is no easy way to get out of Dodger Stadium. It is gridlock. It’s a nightmare trying to get out of that ballpark. That’s why so many people take shots at Dodger fans for leaving early—but it’s either leave in the seventh or the eighth inning and you listen to the game on the radio, or you stay for the end and of the game and you’re going to be there until eleven or midnight.

As you know, I do the late-night show

Robby Incmikoski: Yeah.

Ben Maller: It’s great for me, because when they have a sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium and fireworks, maybe on a Friday or some day during the week like Fourth of July or whatever, I know I have a built-in audience, because people are stuck in their cars leaving the ballpark. Even after the postgame show and Dodger Talk is done, they’re still going to be stuck in traffic trying to get home. It’s that bad. I haven’t been to every ballpark like you, Robby, but I’ve been to a lot of them, and there’s nothing quite like the traffic outside Dodger Stadium. And you now, with the Pirates on getaway day, when you’re trying to get to the airport and you have a chartered flight waiting for you, what a nightmare that is. It’s ridiculous.

Robby Incmikoski: It is a sight to behold for people that haven’t done it over the years. Can you just, the Dodger Dog. What made it so famous, in your experience. From what you know, what made the Dodger Dog famous?

Ben Maller: The original Dodger Dog, which was the grilled dog—I am biased; I’m old-school when it comes to the Dodger Dog. The boiled dog, not as big a fan—unpopular opinion. But the original one, when they used to grill the Dodger Dog, amazing. You had the length of the hot dog—you’re getting your money’s worth—and it’s just part of the ballpark experience. You check that box. You go to Dodger Stadium, you soak everything in, and part of the culinary experience is you have to have a Dodger Dog. You just have to check that box. It’s another one of those things about Dodger Stadium that is just built-in. It’s ingrained, part of the experience. You accept when you go to a Dodger Game, you’re going to have a Dodger Dog. Even if you’re a vegan. They have vegan Dodger Dogs, so you can have that. They got something for everybody. But the thing about it is it’s not the greatest hot dog, if you just grade it based on the hot dog experience, but when you throw in Dodger Stadium and the sounds and the smells of the ballpark, that’s what puts the Dodger Dog over the top.

Robby Incmikoski: What is it like—and I’m obviously fortunate again, in small pockets, but  I’ve had a chance to cross paths with him—but seeing Vin Scully roaming around the Dodger Stadium press box, what’s that like?

Ben Maller: This was the coolest thing. I grew up wanting to be Vin Scully. I thought I was going to be Vin Scully, and then Vin just kept working my entire life until I was middle-aged—he kept working. But I got to know him a little bit, and it was the coolest thing. He just owned the press box, but he didn’t act like a big shot. That’s the thing—you see a lot of famous people, and they’re miserable; they have an elitist attitude. Vin Scully just walked in, he was just happy to be there. He had seen more baseball games than anyone has ever seen in their life, and even in the twilight of his broadcasting career for the Dodgers, he loved hanging out with the guys in the press box. Robby, there was a table in the press box where the scouts would sit, and Vin would come in and visit the scouts, and that’s where he’d get a lot of the stories that he would use on the broadcast was from the scouts.

But like, a guy like me, who had no business being in the same hemisphere as Vin Scully, he treated like a regular guy—he’d say hello, ask me how I was doing. I have a great story about Vin because I did the Dodger postgame show, the talk show, after the game, and in my head I was a kid, I was like in my early twenties, and I thought, “Vin Scully is probably listening to me on the way home from Dodger Stadium.” So I asked him one time, I worked up the courage to ask the great Vin Scully what he listens to on his way home—he lived out in the San Fernando Valley. And Vin was very cool. At that time, he said he liked listening to classical music, which was devastating to me!

And seeing how Vin related to the guys on the crew—this guy Boyd, who you might have meant who was the guy who was in charge of the broadcast, the box—Vin would get there four o’clock, five o’clock, actually it was like four or three-thirty in the afternoon, and he’d be in there and just, I would be sitting in the press box. There’d be no noise in Dodger Stadium, and Vin was just be having the time of his life talking about day-to-day stuff. It wasn’t necessarily about baseball—about news that was going on that day, or whatever was going on in the world—and that was his circle, that was his social circle. He loved it. The thing about him was how normal he was, despite all the fame and all the celebrity. He did network TV for years; I grew up watching him doing the World Series every year on NBC. That was my experience with him.

Robby Incmikoski: I know Boyd Robertson. He’s be great to put in the book. He must have some great Vin stories. Final thing, I’m going to let you go, Ben.

Ben Maller: Yeah.

Robby Incmikoski: If somebody’s going to Dodger Stadium for the first time, what would you say to them?

Ben Maller: You gotta have a Dodger Dog; you gotta got to walk all the way around the ballpark so you can fully experience Dodger Stadium. You have to not only go behind home plate and look at the view, but you have to go out to the outfield and look at how grand the ballpark is and how it’s this amazing cathedral. People talk about cathedrals of baseball, but to soak it all in, you have to go out to the outfield (they call it the Pavilion at Dodger Stadium) and look up at home plate and all those different levels—especially on a night where there’s a huge crowd—and just look at that mass of humanity. And just soak it all in. I mean, it’s just an amazing visual. It’s like a piece of art—it’s a painting, Dodger Stadium, with all the different colors. And then you experience not just the colors obviously, but the smells and stuff. So it covers all your senses when you’re at Dodger Stadium. And it’s really one of those things that you have to do at least once if you’re a baseball fan to check, as we said, those boxes.

Robby Incmikoski: Hey, sorry—one last thing I forgot. You mentioned Willie Stargell. I forgot to follow up on that. How cool is it they have the stars marked from where his two home-run balls landed, like five hundred some feet over the right-field pavilion at Dodger Stadium. You don’t see that often from a visiting player. From a visiting player, you don’t see that  much.

Ben Maller: Yeah, those were the fish stories. I heard stories about Willie Stargell home runs when I started—it was like Bigfoot, these home runs. They did mark those. There’s only been a handful of guys that have hit a ball out of Dodger Stadium. I used to see it back in the ’90s—the steroid era—but I’d see guys in batting practice hit balls out of Dodger Stadium semi often, it seemed like Mike Piazza and Billy Ashley, of all people for the Dodgers. But yeah, there’s only been a few balls that have gone out of Dodger Stadium, and they did mark it. I don’t know if they still do. They renovated it.

Robby Incmikoski: It was there last year. It was there last year. I don’t know if it’s still there.

Ben Maller: Okay, so then it’s still there. 

Robby Incmikoski: I have pictures of it.

Ben Maller: Okay, so it’s still there. I’ve heard Vin tell me stories off the air about that, watching Willie Stargell hit those balls, and also elsewhere, Hank Aaron and whatnot. It’s just crazy.

Robby Incmikoski: One last thing I forgot too—how loud is the music there, those speakers?

Ben Maller: It’s like being at a rock concert, which is funny because that’s one thing that has changed, Robby. When I first started covering the Dodgers, the players used to complain because it was only organ music. They thought, “Come on, what are we doing here? We’re not at some kind of church or tabernacle. What are we doing?” And over the years, that is probably the biggest change to the Dodger experience at Dodger Stadium. They went from pretty much only having, when the O’Malley family owned the Dodgers, as I remember it. I might be wrong in this. But as I remember it, it was almost only organ music. Nancy Bea Hefley was the organist at the time, and she was the entertainment. And I remember the guys on the team would complain about how they’d go on the road and they’d hear music. And eventually, the ownership’s changed several times since then. And now it’s like going to the Hollywood Bowl or whatever your favorite concert venue is. And people do complain. A lot of the broadcasters complain, Robby, more than anybody—the closing broadcasters can’t stand it because it’s so overwhelming. You need to have those kind of headphones when you go to the airport, you know the ones that block out the noise that the guys wear out on the runway at the different airports use. It’s crazy.

Robby Incmikoski: Yeah, when I’m doing a pregame hit and they’re playing that music, I can’t hear the studio talking to me because it’s so amazingly loud in that place that it’s crazy. I’ll tell you one other story—an I tell you my great Vin Scully story?

Ben Maller: Yeah, go ahead.

Robby Incmikoski: I once peed next to him in the press-box bathroom.

Ben Maller: That’s awesome! That is great. Did he talk to you while he was peeing?

Robby Incmikoski: I said hello. I waited until after, then asked him about going ice skating with Jackie Robinson, and he told me that story. So I peed next to him and then got the Jackie Robinson story.

Ben Maller: Dude, that is awesome. That is so good.

Robby Incmikoski: I don’t know if everybody has the best pee they’ve ever taken, but that’s the best pee I’ve ever taken in my life.

Ben Maller: That’s pretty good. I remember when Vin was still traveling, I was starting out. They were in New York at Shea Stadium. It was like a getaway day. It was really hot, and Vin was doing radio only. It was so hot he was wearing Dodger shorts and a T-shirt. I still remember, you always think, I always think of Vin in a suit.

Robby Incmikoski: Yeah, of course.

Ben Maller: But I remember this one day, one of the clubhouse guys had given him an extra T-shirt to wear because it was so hot. I remember that, and Vin told this amazing story—it was actually in New York also—about when he was a kid growing up and there was a sanitation strike in New York. And the trash was piling up where he grew up—it was like trash on the streets—and it was around Christmastime. Back in those days, they had the giant boxes for TVs, you know, huge TVs, like the size of motorcycles. What people in his neighborhood would do to get rid of the trash is they’d take the empty boxes of the TV, and they’d fill it with trash and then wrap it and leave it on the doorstep and someone would come and steal it, thinking they got this TV. And it was just trash. As you can imagine, Robby, Vin telling that story was like a poet. It was amazing.

Robby Incmikoski: I would listen to Vin describe paint drying and stop whatever I was doing to listen to it, so yes. All right, brother, I appreciate you, Ben Maller.