Thursday, June 7, 2012

Dodgers vs Rockies

After the Giants series, another division rival came into town, the Dodgers played the Rockies. The first game was on a Friday, since I work on Fridays I showed up a little after the gates opened for season ticket holders and the first thing I see is the CY Young guy aka Clayton Kershaw throwing some pitches...

 Mr. K

Kershaw in his wind-up

For the most of batting practice it was pretty slow today. So I decided to hang around the foul pole and see what happens when you have a WS MVP, an NL Cy Young winner and a future all star catcher together...

Nothing much happened just them discussing and having their "meetings". As for batting practice I decided to head over to the dug out and see what other Dodgers I could go say hello to. Once again Andre never fails to disappoint, he signed once again for the fans.

At that moment he was talking to the little Dodger "Deuce"

As for Andre I had a baseball and asked him to sign it and mid way in his signature some said something and he looked up and kind of gave a bad autograph but Andre is notoriously known to have a "unique" autograph so that just makes my autograph "more unique".

Right before heading to my seats I noticed that Chad Billingsley was talking to another season ticket holder along the bullpen and I went over and politely asked him for an autograph and he said yes and signed my baseball card.

 
As for the game the Dodgers beat the Rockies 7-3. Since it was fireworks night we decided to try to meet some Rockies players, the reason I decided to start meeting and getting autographs of other non Dodgers was that I already met the whole Dodger squad except for a few so why not meet other big leaguers. The way I see it, if you made it with the pros, even if it was with the Astros, you made it and probably had your dream come true and plus you never know who will be the next big star or future hall of famer. For that reason when I grow older I want to have those memories or at least the ability to just say I met so and so. On to the Rockies so we waited and soon enough the Rockies strolled by starting off with the starting pitcher Jamie Moyer...

Jamie was a class act, he stopped for fans, signed autographs and was nice enough to take a photo with me.
Next came by Tyler Colvin and Jeremy Gutherie...

 Tyler Colvin (Signed my game ticket)

 Me and Tyler Colvin


Jeremy Gutherie (Signed my ticket)

Interesting fact, my buddy David aka Davids Autographs asked Jeremy about his shoes he was wearing and man did that excite Jeremy, turns out he was a big shoe-head. He stayed around a bit and pulled out his phone and showed us his collection of shoes. If I had their kind of money I would have a bunch of shoes too. He can come off as a sarcastic guy but Jeremy is a nice guy always cares about his fans.

After Jeremy left, another player came by. He was well known as a Minnesota Twin rather than a Rockie, this would be Michael Cuddyer. Really nice guy he came and signed for everyone, I had him sign my ticket but I preferred getting a picture instead and being a nice guy he did...

 

As the night progressed we thought all the players were gone but boy were we wrong. One player remained and it was a good one! Carlos Gonzalez! He took a cab and before he left he stopped and signed for pretty much everyone who was there. I had him sign a baseball for me. He needs to work on his penmanship a bit...

Me all excited after he signed my ball!

Carlos Gonzalez

That was it for Friday night....Now moving on to Saturday!

On Saturday I decided to hang around by Ronald Belisario. He was tossing the ball with Kenley Jansen who over throws the ball into the seats too often. Every time he does Belisario gives him an ear full.


Belisario getting ready to throw

For being a coke head, he is a really nice and polite guy with the fans. Every time I see him I tell him "Hola Belisario como estas?" and he always responds back and tells me "Bien and some other Spanish words I am still trying to figure out". As for today Belisario was really nice and gave me this gift after he finished playing catch...


Oh yea! A 50th anniversary baseball and used by Ronald Belisario and Kenley Jansen! Sadly this would be the only thing exciting for BP, as for me no other baseballs came close to me or players to interact with. So I just went to my seats and enjoyed a good game and during the game, my sister spots something strange, guess who was sitting in the crowd with the fans? Steve Lyons! As he left I stood up shook his hand and asked him for a photo and he was more than happy too!

 As for the game, the Dodgers won again with the final score...2-1
After the game we tried to see if we could meet Troy Tulowitzki but that was impossible but the night was not a failure me and my two friends Mario and Bree got Davey Lopes autograph...

Photo at the time was signed by Garvey, Russell signed the next day.

That was it for Saturday, as already mentioned I got Bill Russell to sign my photo of the great infield the next day at viva los dodgers. That day I also managed to get a sneak peak of their bobble head, even though it already came out here is a picture of it...

As for the game, it was Mothers day, so it was a packed house and once again the Dodgers won! Final score was 11-5...As for trying to meet Tulo I was determined to meet him so we stayed after the game and I did not meet him but I met someone as popular as him! Jason Giambi, he came over and signed for all the fans, he is a nice guy and very family oriented...


Jason Giambi

Once again Tyler Colvin came over and signed along with Jeremy Gutherie, I asked Tyler to sign a card I brought with me...


Also Esmil Rogers came over and signed a quick card for me but left before I had a chance to ask for a photo.


As for this series, Ethier + Cargo + Giambi and other notable players made it a great one, stayed tuned for another series, I'm trying to do all this past home stands while the Dodgers are out of town. Hope you enjoyed!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Giants vs Dodgers Series



Well this season was my first season being a season ticket holder, as you may all know by now there were some benefits in becoming a season ticket holder (STH). The one that got me to buy the tickets was the MVP card, this allowed me to enter an hour before general public and witness Dodgers batting practice from the field and well this is my view when I came inside.

Normally the crowd is about 20-30 people depending on the given day. This day however marked a special day, this was the first day the new owners were in the stadium. So me and my buddy Harry aka Eyes of LA were on the look out to meet the main man, Magic Johnson!

Sorry for the bad picture, my buddy Harry is the pro photographer. I'm just the occasional picture taker from my phone. But anyways even though I am a big Clipper fan, I was happy to have McCourt out of our stadium and I welcomed the new ownership. As for batting practice it was pretty slow I did not catch a single baseball. This year the Dodgers were using the 50th baseballs so my goal was to catch as many as I can. Anyways later on when the Dodgers were finishing their at bats I headed to the dugout to see if I could get some autographs. One of my main hobbies is collecting baseballs and autographs. However I am not the type that sells or buys autographs. Each one of my autographs has a story and whenever a friend or family member points a specific one out I go on about how I got it...Anyways The first person I managed to get over to talk to me and my sister for a second was this guy! Andre Ethier!


He was such a nice guy, I told him how me and my sister were big fans and we wished him well which at the time was early into the season. He is always fan friendly and finally I was able to meet him, from all my years of going to Dodger games he always eluded me and my sister and finally I got this!


I was already stoked so I did not think anything else could match this, however right before we left, Don Mattingly strolled by and took some time to interact with fans and sign autographs as well.


This is what Donnie signed for me, like most times I always ask the player or coach to personalize my items. This is a good tip because some players are suspicious that people will sell their autographs and by asking to personalize it, it reassures them it is for you or for a friend and also they generally take more time and give you a better autograph. So keep that in mind when you ask for an autograph. Anyways as for batting practice we decided to leave because
1)Giants took the field and it smelled pretty bad
2)Me and Harry were trying to go find the new owner...Magic!

So we waited and waited and right before first pitch we got a glimpse of Magic!

As you can see it was a mob scene, a lot of people were waiting for either to take a picture or as in the photo to get an autograph. Personally I was there to just see the new owner and wanted to shake his hand but that was impossible. So now after this we headed back down to the field to go get more autographs, we headed over to the bullpen and this is the best place to score an autograph. Especially all the relive pitchers. And today all the players came over and took time to sign right before the game started, well all but Kenley Jansen...

Josh Lindbloom


Javy Guerra & Scott Elbert


Javy Guerra

So after the national anthem, we decided to head to our seats to enjoy the game and along the way we ran into the voice who sang the national anthem. Katrina Parker, I asked her for a photo and she was so nice and posed for photos with everyone who asked.

Katrina Parker

After this we continued to our seats and I thought the adventure was over for the day, I was wrong. Guess who I bumped into on the escalator, take a guess...

Any ideas?....Yup the penguin Ron Cey, took another pic when I yelled Ron and I got him by surprise.

As for the game the Dodgers won the series taking 2/3 games and as for Giants fans, please keep some class when you lose. Here's a picture that caused a lot of twitter buzz from the Left Field Pavillion people


  Photo Credit : Jon Sohoo


I hope you liked the recap, please leave feedback or follow me on twitter and tweet me too I am open to feedback aalcala17

Welcome!

Hello! If you are reading this I want to thank you for the time to come check out my blog, this blog is mainly to tell my stories as a season ticket holder for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I will talk about my daily experiences at the beautiful heaven on earth. Hopefully this keeps people entertained as well as myself. Oh on a side note I also am the blogger of LawlersLawFirstTo100Wins. As you might know I am also a Clippers fan and 49er's fan but this blog will be mainly Dodgers and baseball. I hope you guys like, as for the first couple entries they will be old adventures since the season has been going on for a while and I just had time to start this blog. Enjoy!