“Dodgers Blue Heaven” is what Tommy Lasorda called the Los Angeles baseball experience.
Dodgers Hell arrived Wednesday afternoon in the East Village, via some 20,000 to 25,000 noisy Los Angeles fans.
Making Petco Park sound like Dodger Stadium minus that venue’s ultra-obnoxious sound system, Dodgers fans became jet-engine loud when Teoscar Hernández cracked a tie-breaking, three-run home run straight away.
Hernández’s 420-foot, sixth-inning drive sent Los Angeles to a 5-2 victory that decided the series, on a day when the game on the field wasn’t the only competition.
Proving that thousands of folks can disagree and still get along fine, fans of both teams exercised their lungs but not their fists across the two-plus hours.
Whenever Dodgers star Freddie Freeman batted, a back-and-forth played out among each team’s ers
“Fred-die, Fred-die!” chanted Dodgers fans, making themselves heard at every ballpark level.
Padres fans held serve, with an assist from the team’s alert entertainment staff. In response to the “Fred-die” chant, a message appeared on videoboards urging a Padres cheer, while ballpark organ music boomed in accompaniment.
“Let’s go Padres!” hollered fans in the announced crowd of 45,481, the 29th sellout this season.
But this wasn’t the home team’s day. And it ended with a Dodgers “Hells Bells” moment on San Diego soil.
Wearing the No. 51 popularized in San Diego by Padres Hall of Fame reliever Trevor Hoffman, Alpine product Alex Vesia closed out L.A.’s victory with three strikeouts. The save was the left-hander’s 10th of his career and first in San Diego.
After the final whiff, the Steele Canyon High School alum screamed several times.
Dodgers fans drowned him out, too.
Contributing to the Chavez Ravine vibe, numerous Padres fans apparently sold tickets that Dodgers fans got, directly or indirectly.
If Dave Roberts were still playing for the Padres, would it have bothered him that Padres fans sold tickets that ended up with Dodgers fans?
“Yes,” said the Dodgers’ manager, who grew up in San Diego County.
“As a player, absolutely, it makes you angry,” Roberts added.
I will never criticize a Padres fan for selling tickets to any team’s fans. The proceeds can enable a Padres fan to buy tickets to more games, adding to future crowd .
Fans have ed the Padres at a level beyond what most Major League Baseball teams are being ed. Out of the 30 clubs, small-market San Diego stands behind only the Dodgers in home attendance.
I’d advise any Padres player or staffer to never criticize Padres fans for selling tickets (not that any have, that I know of).
San Diego is one of the country’s least-affordable cities, further encouraging side hustles. In October, when Padres fans are most needed, they’ve shown they can be counted on.
For playoff games, they paid hefty prices, rewarding the efforts of Padres executives to make sure only Padres fans get tickets. Within those capacity crowds, Dodgers fans made only a relative peep at the two 2022 Divisional Round games in San Diego – each of them Padres victories.
Roberts said there’s no National League ballpark in which Dodgers fans aren’t easily heard. The efforts of the Pantone 294 ers group, he said, are impressive.
“One of the best moments — I in 2017, we were in Yankee Stadium, and that group took over Yankee Stadium, saying ‘Let’s go Dodgers!’” he said.
The Midwest, too, is vulnerable to the blue wave, especially since the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani two offseasons ago.
“We get people from Japan to see us in Cincinnati and Milwaukee and random places because that’s the way they can get to see the Dodgers and Shohei,” Roberts said.
As for the baseball Wednesday, a significant piece to it came Tuesday.
Roberts in effect punted on Tuesday’s game — no, he said, he never punted when he played for Rancho Buena Vista High School’s football team — by having a 4A pitcher log 111 pitches in San Diego’s 11-1 rout, in which Dodgers infielder Kiké Hernández also pitched.
Roberts’ refreshed bullpen logged nine innings Wednesday. Absent Tuesday’s punt, “we don’t win today’s game, and we lose the series,” said Roberts.
Also critical to Wednesday’s outcome was the large disparity in outcomes on not-good pitches.
Where the Dodgers’ Michael Conforto and Teoscar Hernández homered off home run pitches (the latter did well to catch up to Jeremiah Estrada’s heat, clocked at 98 mph), Fernando Tatis Jr. flied out on a belt-high slider he liked, and Manny Machado grounded out on a belt-high 3-0 sinker. Those at-bats came with men on base.
Neither the series nor the blue-funk afternoon changed the Padres’ basic status. Though co-ace Michael King’s absence is being felt on multiple levels and A.J. Preller will need to upgrade the offense, at minimum, getting one of the three wild-card playoff spots remains fairly realistic.
This too: the Padres will continue to receive tremendous fan .
