Knocked out of the park

At a recent Dodger game, I didn’t see any peanut shells on the floor of the MVP field box section, but I thought I spotted a few caviar spoons.

With peanuts selling for $5.50 for a single bag, a peanut allergy must be acting up. I looked around for legendary “Peanut Man” Roger Owens, famous for tossing $2 double bags of peanuts sidearm, underhanded, behind his back or between his legs. But Owens was nowhere to be seen. I’m told he still works the stadium, but probably not as much.

More concerned over whether Manny Ramirez’s dreadlock haircut would spoil his slugging mojo, I turned to a fellow and offered to buy the beer “if Manny hits a home run his first time at bat.” When he parked it on the first pitch, I was thrown into anaphylactic shock — one draft beer costs $12.

With peanuts and beer at $17.50, the game here no longer belongs to the hole-in-the-wall gang; It’s the hole-in-the-wallet suckers, at fast-food stations from the right field corner to the left who are asked to pay $5 for lemonade, $5.50 for cotton candy, $5.75 for bottled water, $9.50 for chicken tenders, $11 for a Canter’s pastrami sandwich and an unspeakable amount for two cupcakes with a Dodgers logo at Mrs. Beasley’s.

There are timely advertising signs climbing every wall, and so much commercialism at the stadium that it makes you wonder if the gift shop sells burqas in Dodger blue.

With a $120 MVP ticket (a gift from fellow writer Jim Laris), it figured that I could go into one of three private clubs and browse through a Wolfgang Puck buffet. And with my hand still shaking from clutching fast-food money so hard, I thought I’d lean into a whisky at the bar.

Wrong! Only baseline ticket holders, paying $285 per ticket in rows 1 and 2, or just $225 when sitting with the rabble in rows 3 through 8, are admitted to the clubs. I settled for a Dodger dog, a comparatively good value at $5. Way back when, I always ordered two dogs and a beer. These days that would cost $22. On this day, as if following a treasure map, I counted paces back to the condiment stand to add onions and relish to my disintegrating little puppy: An old Farmer John dream was turning to fricassee. Alas, even the old faithful Dodger Dog now bites the hand that feeds it.

I regretted not having gone to the “all-you-can-eat” right field pavilion. For $40 I could have fed ravenously all afternoon on hot dogs, peanuts, popcorn and soda. The plan doesn’t include candy, ice cream or beer — so to hell with it. I thought it might be a good deal for a parent who could pass around the surplus to the kiddies. But not so. Anyone over 4 has to have a $40 ticket.

There was some childish glee (and the day’s only bargain) in getting to the park. For $1.25, the Gold Line took me from Pasadena to Union Station where I boarded the new free “Dodger Trolley.” My seat on the train faced backward. In seeing the place you’ve just left, there’s less anxiety about where you’re going. I stopped worrying about Manny Ramirez’s haircut.

Out the window, there wasn’t much to see: Most businesses and homes in Pasadena have their backs turned to the traveler. But I did catch a sign on the now-gone Crown City Brewery. It made me thirst for a ballpark cold one — a CC ghost that would haunt me later on. I got a glimpse of Mt. Washington and Highland Park and got through Cypress Park without incident.

At Union Station the Dodger Trolley crowd was so big that the Metro people had to call on a few big yellow school buses to help out. Aisles on a school bus are narrow and the seats are designed for little rumps. One fellow, about six-feet, three inches tall, had to unfold in sections to get a seat: one leg in the aisle, the other intruding on the person seated next to him — me. Being that close, we had to become friendly. It was agreed that if Manny Ramirez went into a slump after the haircut we should have Sweeney Todd make a meat pie out of Joe Torre.

At the stadium minutes later, I spotted an acquaintance, Jessica Moss, a student at Pasadena’s School of Culinary Arts. She was wrestling a bicycle out the back door of a regular Metro bus. “I had to beg them to let me on the bus with my bike.” Smart young lady, it saved her paying $15 in the parking lot.

At the park, I was lucky to be seated next to a Nick Morrison, a resident of San Marino and committed skeptic. “I’ve been here a half-hour,” said Morrison, “and spent $30 on food, but I’m still hungry and haven’t finished one beer,” he explained. “They let kids on the field two hours before the game to shag flies and run around for an autograph — that’s so they’ll get thirsty for $5.75 bottled water. Have you ever found the drinking fountain at Dodger Stadium?”

Pointing to several beach balls fluttering nearby, he continued. “There are four deadly sins at Dodger Stadium: We can’t bring in coolers, alcohol, beach balls or weapons. ... “That’s because they sell ‘em inside.” Well, not the weapons.

A few rows below us a guy had a beer with a blue light on the bottom, the special “$12.75 Blinking Beer.” Said Morrison: “In San Marino, we used to beat up guys who bought things like that.”

A few days later I returned to the stadium and planned to buy a top deck ticket for $11, but, the top deck is sold out.” I had to buy a $19 reserve level ticket and sit in the sun. Had I paid $23 or $31, I could have sat in the shade — they charge for shade at Dodger Stadium.

And, another thing: By the fourth inning I looked up and saw that the top deck was not even half filled.

“Sold out?”

You bet.