Monday, Memorial Day, I went to see the Dodgers play the Milwaukee Brewers.  I grew up in L.A., and the last time I went to a Dodgers game was 10 years ago when I was 16 years old.  I went with a friend of mine from Elementary School, and we sat behind home base within 30 feet of Dr. Drew Pinsky.

I went with some coworkers, and we took the Dodger Stadium Express, a metro bus from Union Station downtown.  It totally set the mood.  Some guy hit on the woman bus driver and made her laugh, and a young girl with long brown hair and crooked teeth was happily clapping “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”  I admit I was just as giddy.  I watched A League of Their Own a few weeks ago, so I was pumped.

In college I paid more attention to the Red Sox than any other team because I was living in Boston at the time.  It was the perfect time to be going to school.  The fall of my freshman year is when the Red Sox broke their historic losing curse against the Yankees and won the World Series.  I ran down to Kenmore Square with thousands of other BU students, cheered, and hugged the drunk guy who was wearing a Winnie the Pooh costume.  It was a thrill to be a city filled with such pride.

As for L.A., back then they weren’t called “The Doyers” and I couldn’t drink a 32-oz Corona with chili-lime salted rim.  With all of the post-game violence that has occurred in the past 5  years at Dodger Stadium, I felt like I needed to get what they were talking about.

Of course the game hasn’t changed, but it nice to see the experience through new eyes.  They’re still men standing in a field trying to hit and throw a ball.  And you yell at them (“HIT THE BALL!”) both when they do good and when they do not so good, like lose, for instance.  (Which they did.)