By Keith Thursby
Times Staff Writer
There’s a long line of people
willing and able to criticize the Dodgers for the traffic mess at the Coliseum
Saturday. But what could people have expected?
Unless you’ve been under a
rock for a few days, you know that more than 115,000 people crammed in and
around the Coliseum to see the Dodgers play the Red Sox. The Dodgers provided
free shuttle service to the Coliseum and back from Dodger Stadium and depending
on the newspaper or blogger, it was a disaster or worse.
We did fine.
I left my home in Irvine on Saturday with my
two teenage sons at about noon. The plan was to have lunch and get to Dodger
Stadium by 2. We arrived right on time to find few people and several buses
waiting for baseball fans.
Yes, it was ridiculously
early for a 7 p.m. game. But we had 115,000 reasons for getting there so early.
We got to the Coliseum about
3 and waded through the thousands already there. Clearly we weren’t the only
people arriving early. We got into the stadium a little after 4 and saw the
real baseball highlight of the night, batting practice.
We cheered Vin Scully, ate
overpriced junk food and had a good time with our friends. But we couldn’t help
but notice all the late-comers. We started hearing stories all around us about
people delayed by the long lines at Dodger Stadium.
Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection in the the Regional History Collection
of USC Libraries
The Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants on opening day at the Coliseum, April 18, 1958, from "Mobsters, Molls, and Mayhem: A Year in the Life of Los Angeles" at the Doheny Library.
So we decided the easiest
thing to do was abandon ship. We lasted five innings, enough to soak in the
weirdness of baseball at the Coliseum and the drunks and the near-fights and
the knuckleheads throwing peanuts at every Red Sox fan who walked by.
We got to the bus line at 9
and nearly an hour later we were on the way back to Dodger Stadium. It wasn’t
pretty or efficient but for a crowd that big, it was pretty peaceful. We were
back in Irvine
before midnight.
We didn’t want to leave the
game early, but figured it was our only option. And we weren’t
complaining. This was free parking and
transportation, after all, even if it was messy.
I don’t have any baseball
memories of the Coliseum. My memories are the 1984 Olympics, the Rams and Notre Dame or UCLA against USC. But we wanted
to experience Saturday’s event.
So it was beyond crowded. Too
many lines and too little baseball (can’t remember the last time we left
anything early). But my kids and I knew it wouldn’t be perfect, just something
we can say we did.
keith.thursby@latimes.com
