Inside Dodger Stadium
Dodger Stadium is, quite possibly, the most difficult stadium to navigate for a reporter. For starters, getting to/from Dodger Stadium is a gigantic pain in the ass, and that’s because of the LA traffic. Once you get to the stadium entry, it’s another few miles you have to drive in a rideshare car just to get to the media gate, and you have to follow certain colored lines along the ground to get there. On the team bus, it’s a little bit quicker to get to the bowels of the stadium.
When you enter through the media gate, you take some steps to the concourse and see the most beautiful view of the stadium along with the Elysian Hills and the San Gabriel Mountains beyond the outfield, and it is GORGEOUS!
When you look at the photo above, this is what you see after walking through about 100 feet past the media entrance. There are very few ballparks in baseball with a better scenic view than this one. The sun is always out, the weather is always beautiful and the grass is always pristine! The multi-color seats are a nice vintage touch that has always looked cool through the years.
Then it’s time to get to work, and that’s where the fun ends. There are two elevators behind home plate, and I have seen pregnancies take less time than getting to the bottom floor on one of these. I’m kidding, of course, but you get the point. This is the only ballpark in baseball where you have to allow travel time to take an elevator.
Once you get to the bottom floor where the clubhouses are located, you step off the elevator and walk along an impressive display of all the individual awards won by countless Dodger greats over the decades. You can see them pictured below, and they are pretty damn cool.
Then you make a right turn, show your credential to the security guard and walk the long-ass tunnel to the visiting clubhouse. Once you enter the clubhouse, there’s no other way to put this – it’s tiny, uncomfortable and jam-packed. The players have small lockers and very rarely do you see an empty locker next to one occupied by a veteran, which is usually the case in larger clubhouses around Major League Baseball. There are no couches in the visiting clubhouse, and the TVs are mounted as close to the low ceiling as possible.
You have to walk into a portion and past the food room to get to the manager’s office for his pregame media availability. Let me be honest for a second here – most players dislike the fact that media is even allowed into the clubhouse to begin with, and I’d say almost all players do not like the fact that the media has to walk by the food room as they eat, play cards and chat with each other.
Postgame, there’s a Dodger Stadium security guard that guides the media through a tiny, dank tunnel to avoid walking past the food room like we did in the pregame media availability. I have no clue what changes between pregame and postgame, other than they just played a game and may be pissed off, happy, or anything in between.
As for the stadium itself, it’s pretty damn cool and very aesthetically pleasing. The concourses are wide enough, the food options are aplenty and the weather is always perfect.
Once BP begins, you will hear the loudest music at a stadium in your entire life. It’s so loud that, and I can only speak for myself here, I can barely hear the studio in my earpiece when we’re doing a pregame report live from the ballpark. The music selection is fantastic, and many fans arrive early, mostly to avoid game traffic, and that makes for a pretty cool ballpark vibe.
Then you add the celebrity factor, and it’s a pretty neat experience. The reporters, camera people and photographers all congregate in the inside camera well, essentially located a few feet from the on-deck circle.
The manager and clubhouse tunnel are within 10 feet of the visiting TV reporter, and you hear/see a lot of interesting stuff. You can hear the manager yelling out to players and umpires throughout the game, and I’ve heard some funny shit in my time sitting in an inside camera well.
One night, former Pirates pitcher Gerrit Cole, on a night when he was not pitching, walked up to me, pointed to a tall guy in a blue Dodgers hat that was sitting about 15-20 feet from us and said “Isn’t that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?” I looked over and said “yes, it sure is!” You never know who you’re going to see at a Dodger game, and that makes the Dodger Stadium experience kinda cool despite how inconvenient it is, not to mention the Dodgers constant ass-whoopings they put on the Pirates almost every series they play there. In fact, in my final six seasons working Pirates games, they went a combined 4-15 at Dodger Stadium, and three of those wins came in an extremely unexpected 2022 sweep in a season where the Pirates went 62-110 and the Dodgers went 111-51. Sometimes you just can’t explain baseball, and that’s what makes it amazing.
They were swept again in the 2024 season in a three-game series at Dodger Stadium.
In most of my time with the Pirates, the team had a police escort JUST TO GET OUT OF THE PARKING LOT! The team hotel is roughly 3 miles from the ballpark. I have memories of sitting on the bus for 25-30 minutes just to get out of the parking lot and onto the highway, only for the rest of the ride to take about five minutes.
So, basically, when you go to LA – you enjoy lunch at LA Live, great weather, and a casual, laid back atmosphere. Then you get ready to sit in traffic, have your ear blasted with insanely loud music, and watch the Dodgers win most games they play against the Pirates.
