My Favorite MLB Team – The Los Angeles Dodgers

Scroll below and enjoy

presents a
Shut Up And JAM! Sports Section Article
My Favorite
MLB Team

What Dreams May Come

“It’s time for Dodger baseball !” 5 simple words interwoven into the fabric of baseball lore and echoed efficiently throughout the vast airwaves of Southern California by the great Vin Scully marking the start of another L.A. Dodgers game. Instantly, senses are filled with the smell of delicious Dodger Dogs grilling in the warm sun, the sound of baseball bats as they smack balls with their distinctive abruptness and the sight of the most pristine blue and white jerseys in the old pastime . Memories of World Series glory , October heartbreak and all the weird stuff in between . Of Chavez Ravine and its amazing view of the L.A. skyline, home to one of the great old ball fields where legends like Sandy Koufax , Steve Garvey and Tommy Lasorda laid down the foundation to greatness along with a host of others. Yeah, it’s definitely time for Dodger baseball!

To start with, my earliest memory of the L.A. Dodgers was in kindergarten as I watched them jump for joy after defeating the Oakland Athletics in the 1988 World Series . Of course, I wasn’t old enough to articulate the significance of this event but it became sort of a catalyst to how I began viewing the Dodgers– as winners. Around this same time, my first hands-on experiences with the game were being had learning how to catch with my Dad and playing little league with my friends. I didn’t know much of what I was doing in the beginning and that darn ball could really hurt at times but I did know one thing… it was fun and I loved it! Without realizing it initially, I had come down with a bad case of the baseball fever curable only through fielding ground balls, spitting sunflower seeds and dirtying every single pair of worthwhile pants that I owned (…sorry Mom). Baseball was life.

As I continued to play and adjust to the physical tendencies of the game, the desire to learn and incorporate new skills began to develop so that I could be even better the next time I stepped on the diamond with my contemporaries. “Let’s watch the big boys play in the majors” my parents would say as we huddled around the television as a family “see if we can pick up anything from them”. What fun I had as for the first time, I observed professional baseball players who hit, ran and threw way harder than anything I had ever seen in the little leagues. Whether it was stone-faced pitchers throwing crazy 100 mph fastballs, defensive players snatching unbelievably difficult ground-balls with the speed of a mongoose or hip-jiving offensive sluggers who could send the ball to the moon with one swing, these dudes were freakin’ amazing and I knew I wanted to be like them! “So that’s what they meant by majors.”

One of the very first guys that stood out prominently to me as a kid was the great Orel Hershiser , ace pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. While smaller in stature than many of the other guys on the field, Orel played with a fervent and demonstrative passion that made him seem like he was as big (or bigger) than any of the other guys he was playing against and I absolutely LOVED it! This sort of ‘tudey approach not only spoke volumes to me in terms of coolness but also inspired hope that anyone really can make it in the big leagues with enough dedication and perseverance to being the best. It didn’t take too long for me to realize that the Bulldog had quickly become my favorite pitcher in baseball and to this day he still holds that mark ranking #2 on my Top 10 favorite MLB players of all time list.

After the grandiose success that the team enjoyed in the 80’s with Hershiser and the crew, it was awhile until the Dodgers fielded a competitive squad which sort of put them on the back burner for me as a kid since I was still relatively new to the whole “picking a favorite team thing” and found myself to be more a fan of individual players like Bo Jackson and Ken Griffey jr. (more than likely because it required less effort). Meanwhile, as the 90’s rolled on, something terrible in baseball occurred as I learned about one of the ugliest 5-letter words that exists in sports… STRIKE (unless we’re talking about bowling I suppose)! Players and owners had failed to come to an agreement on the new and financially-altering “salary cap” being proposed into the rules of MLB which cost the loss of hundreds of regular season games as well as an entire World Series in the 1994-95 season. WHAT THE ACTUAL $@#! !!! A bitter pill to swallow for lowly and impressionable young fans like myself who were barely starting to figure things out and not entirely sure about where to plant their fan flag in this great sport.

Without question, the stoppage of games to this magnitude soured my devotion to baseball during this time (at least as far as watching was concerned) and my attention shifted to the other 3 sports as I gained traction in my understanding of what I liked and how to truly pick a favorite team for life (see my other sports posts- My favorite NBA team: The Los Angeles Lakers, My favorite NFL team: The Dallas Cowboys and My favorite NHL team: The Los Angeles Kings). It was unfortunate too since I still felt a special kinship with the great pastime and certainly wanted to enjoy more but the jaded feelings of this devoid and forgettable era cast a shadow over the sport for me that persisted for the next several years even after the perilous strike had lifted. After what seemed like an eternity to my young mind, Major League Baseball had finally returned (playing a 144-game season in 95-96 after also losing the better part of the previous year) but it didn’t feel the same as many fans (myself included) struggled to overcome the hurt feelings that the game had bestowed by pulling the rug out from under our feet in the way that it had previously and it showed en masse as attendance dropped at stadiums around the country and television ratings plummeted to dangerous lows. For me personally, I didn’t want to invest my time fully into a game that could potentially just shut itself down like it had already done before and it certainly effected my passion enough to where I still couldn’t sign on wholeheartedly to any one team (at least for now).

Meanwhile, I continued to follow the game from a casual distance during subsequent seasons throughout the 90’s, checking in on SportsCenter highlights and playing random baseball video games ( Major League Baseball (NES) ESPN Baseball Tonight (SNES) Triple Play 96 (Sega Genesis) ) to sort of “keep pace” with everything that was going on in the world of rbi’s and fastballs. No matter what too, I always found myself checking in on the L.A. Dodgers and seeing how they stacked against everyone else however I still really hadn’t correlated them to being my favorite team yet since I did this with a few other squads as well (most notably the Chicago White Sox , Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees ). I guess I felt that since baseball had been relegated to second-fiddle in my sports lexicon, I didn’t need to apply maximum effort to subscribing to all the heartache associated with being a real fan… hence the less-invested approach. This same sentiment continued through the end of the decade and into the new millennium as I continued to observe from a distance the biggest stories in baseball like the Yankees return back to their rightful mantle atop the sport , Mark McGwire & Sammy Sosa going “super saiyan” on a 37 year old home run record and all the (of course) steroid controversy that soon followed . Even if I still hadn’t fully warmed myself back up to the great pastime that I loved so much as a kid, there could be no doubt that baseball as a whole was slowly inching further and further away from its shrouded strike past and providing all sorts of interesting entertainment that I simply couldn’t get enough of though I still wasn’t motivated fully to associate myself with a favorite squad… yet.

Then, in May 2003, everything changed for me… quickly as I was invited out with a group of a friends to a L.A. Dodger game during the regular season though I wasn’t expecting to have as good an experience as the other 3 major sports (, , ) since at that point I considered myself more of a diehard fan of those leagues. Not having been there since my early childhood, many of Dodger Stadium’s features and architecture seemed foreign to me at first as I perused the grand hallways that adorned the great baseball cathedral on top of Chavez Ravine, doing my best to absorb as much lore as possible like a tourist sticking to a strict itinerary. As we sat at our seats (nose-bleed section behind first-base), I can remember distinctly just how beautiful that California sky looked as it displayed a usual fireworks show of awesomeness transitioning from dusk-to-dawn amidst an appropriate menagerie of rolling hills and palm trees behind the outfield wall. Without a pitch even being thrown yet, I gelled with my surroundings in a very abstract and emotional way that finally helped me get rid of the “baggage” that had prevented me from realizing where my heart truly lied in baseball . I was home!

Once the p.a. announcer started his usual montage of hyperbole and the players hit the field, I dove into my program to try and learn more about the collection of dudes that adorned the eye-appealing blue and white L.A. Dodger uniforms on this day. Much to my delight, many familiar faces (such as Robin Ventura , Hideo Nomo and Rickey Henderson ) were there to help link the game back to my childhood and add a veteran presence to an up-and-coming unit of young studs (led most notably by Odalis Perez , Adrian Beltre and Edwin Jackson ). While they certainly weren’t the greatest team in the league at the time, there was definitely a style of unorthodox effectiveness that associated itself with this intriguing Dodger squad that spoke directly to The ‘Tude Dude’s soul. Regardless of the final outcome, these guys were fighters from the front office down to the bat boys which garnered instant respect in the baseball universe while simultaneously inspiring hope for potential World Series glory in the future for their fans nearly every single season. Combining this newfound comprehension of the Dodger aura with the fact that they were my hometown team made it feel like all of the tumblers fell into a perfect unison which, at last unlocked the answer I had been searching for as a fan of Major League Baseball!

Though that individual game’s outcome turned out to be a disappointment (a shocking come-from-behind loss in the 9th inning to the Atlanta Braves ), I left the stadium that evening with an unmistakable pride that radiated off of me like nuclear fallout despite my previously hardened sensibilities. All it really took to swing the pendulum fully was the first time I heard Vin Scully utter that iconic opening statement “It’s time for Dodger baseball!” live and I was hooked (though a belly full of Dodger Dogs certainly deserves an honorable mention). I guess I hadn’t fully closed the door on figuring out where my loyalties lied and this one single event jump-started everything for me in a very simple and cool way. Finally, I had a true favorite baseball team and it was the one that had made the earliest impression on me as a child – the Los Angeles Dodgers . Time to start acquiring some merchandise and represent!

Since then, I’ve been riding first-class on the L.A. Dodger fan train partaking in as many games as I can to hopefully catch a glimpse of the “boys in blue” ascent back to the top of the baseball mountain. From the super-slugging Shawn Green and the “bull in the pen” Eric Gagne in the 2000’s up to the latest incarnation led by Clayton Kershaw , Cody Bellinger and Justin Turner , The ‘Tude Dude has been there with his blue and white covered heart cheering on his beloved team as much as any of his other favorites. It may have taken a little longer to figure out than the other 3 sports, but something magical happened when I went back and took in that first game physically as an adult and there can be no denying that my relentless loyalty knows no bounds when it comes to these sorts of things. Now I know where I belong. Thank you for everything Los Angeles Dodgers, you will forever be my favorite MLB team.