Dodger Stadium Tour

Jill's Journal: Whether you’re a Los Angeles Dodgers fan or a baseball fan or even the most casual of sports fans, a tour of Dodger Stadium is a slice of Americana well worth taking. We absolutely loved our close-up tour of the stadium.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest major league baseball park in the United States. Only Fenway and Wrigley have it beat. But no one is bigger; with 56,000 seats, Dodger Stadium is the largest in the country.

In this day and age when even the iconic Yankee Stadium has been rebuilt, Dodger Stadium remains fresh and modern, even at age 50. It was the first stadium to feature a cantilevered design, meaning each and every seat has an unobstructed view of the playing field (a very new concept when it opened in 1962).

Here’s the view from the top of the park. Yes, that’s the unusual sight of dirt over the playing field. Dodger Stadium hosts all sorts of events in the off-season, ranging from concerts to papal visits to motorcross and monster truck rallies (hence the dirt!).

This is the Dodger dugout from above…

…and the bench from inside the dugout. How cool is that?

The girls don’t appreciate yet how awesome it is that they got to sit in the dugout!

And drink out of the players’ water fountain…

And get a glimpse inside the players’ tunnel. Seriously, how awesome is this?

Or how about a walk through the Vin Scully Press Box?

The official scorer sits at this table. The legendary Scully is behind the far wall.

Here’s where the organ player sits and plays…Dodger Stadium still has a real, live person on the organ. The current organist has been here for 25 years and she knits in between songs!

This is one of the luxury suites. Three-quarters of the front glass wall slides open for easy access to the attached balcony.

The Dodgers have won five World Series, six if you count their time in Brooklyn.

Speaking of Brooklyn, the Dodgers took their final home plate with them to Los Angeles when they left Ebbets Field.

We’ve never taken the girls to a baseball game, but we would like to now after touring Dodger Stadium. Amazingly, Rob's paternal grandmother bought season tickets (eight rows behind home plate!) when the stadium opened in 1962. The tickets were transferred to Rob's maternal grandfather around her death in 1969. He is gone now too, but his family still has the tickets. They are planning to let them go this year...after 50 years! Baseball isn't inexpensive family entertainment anymore. It costs big money to go to a game now and the price of season tickets rivals that of a small new car.

The views from the stadium aren’t too shabby either. There’s downtown L.A.

One can also see the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory from Dodger Stadium, if you can make them out through the smog. The air looks much worse in pictures than it does in person…really!

Griffith Park Observatory

Jill's Journal: Most major cities, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world, have an iconic park associated with them. Los Angeles is no exception, although the legendary Griffith Park almost didn’t happen. In 1896, Welch immigrant and wealthy mine speculator Colonel Griffith J. Griffith bequeathed 3,015 acres (or about five square miles) to L.A. for use as a park. At the time, L.A. had only 100,000 residents and the land was about a mile outside of the city. The city hesitated briefly, declaring it too far out of town, but soon accepted anyway. If only they could have seen into the future. In the century since, the 10+ million inhabitants of the L.A. area cover every square inch surrounding Griffith Park, which itself now covers over 4,200 acres.

The showpiece of Griffith Park is Griffith Observatory, one of the most visited landmarks in Southern California and the most visited public observatory in the world. The same Griffith who donated the park land had a great interest in astronomy and donated $100,000 a century ago to the City of Los Angeles to build an observatory on top of Mt. Hollywood. He wanted to make the sciences, particularly astronomy, more accessible to the public. The Observatory wasn’t formally opened until 1935, long after Griffith’s death.

Today it houses all sorts of science exhibits with a strong focus on astronomy and, with the exception of the planetarium, is free to the public. However, I suspect most of the millions of annual visitors are there for the iconic building itself – which is truly beautiful – and the surrounding views, some of the most spectacular in the city.

Did I mention the views? One has an excellent view of downtown L.A., which you can just barely see at the horizon in the middle of this photo due to the almost ever-present smog. It really did seem like a clear day until we tried to look out a distance. I don’t think air quality in L.A. is quite as bad as it’s supposed to be in Beijing, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for you either.

Hundreds of scenes in movies and television have been filmed at the Observatory, most notably some pivotal moments in “Rebel Without a Cause” with James Dean in 1955. It was “Rebel” which brought the Observatory into worldwide consciousness outside of L.A. Although this monument is of Dean, a plaque notates its more of an acknowledgement of the Observatory’s long and prosperous relationship with Hollywood. Note the Hollywood sign just over to the right of the monument in the background.

And here it is closer up. There’s that pesky smog again.

Like the Hollywood sign, the unique Observatory can be spotted from many places around L.A. I’ve heard it called the city’s “hood ornament,” which seems to be extra fitting since L.A. is such a car society.