Off the Slopes: Think blue

Steve Garvey may have hung around first base a lot, but he was always looking to score with the ladies. (Photo: Shauna)

French dips, Dodgerdogs and a shot

Chris Erskine is a hell of a writer.

As luck would have it, on the very day I was slated to go to my first ever Dodger game, Erskine wrote a terrific column for Page Two of that Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Sports section. It was about a little bar in L.A. that’s become a Dodger fan hangout called the Short Stop.

For weeks, I’d been asking around for just such a baseball fan friendly place to grab a beer as part of taking in a Dodger game, but I was down in the count.

So it seemed like kismet was falling out of the sky like pop flies on that warm, sunny Sunday when Uncle Dean handed me the sports page and said there was a terrific article on just the type of place I was looking for.

“The ups and downs of this Dodgers season have already driven me to drink,” Erskine wrote.

And not being a Dodger fan, I hoped to join a few folks driven to drink just a little bit more after my day trip to Chavez Ravine to see the Dodgers play Pittsburgh.

After reading Erskine’s article, I was as giddy as a Little Leaguer about to go to his first big league park, even though I’ve been lucky enough to see big league games all over the country.

But this is Dodger Stadium we’re talking about: the third oldest park in the big leagues, the home of legendary announcer Vin Scully, and the place where Kirk Gibson hit arguably the most famous home run in the hallowed history of the game. As Scully so famously called it:

“All year long, they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight—with two bad legs.”

Vin Scully has been calling Dodger games for over sixty years now, and still, the silky voiced play-by-play man is the new kid on the block compared to the first stop for most Dodger fans on their way to the ballpark, a little place called Philippe’s.

Just down the street from Union Station, Philippe’s was the one “must-do” Dodger fans recommended—and it’s pretty easy to figure out why.

One of the oldest restaurants on the west coast, Philippe’s has been a staple in LA since 1908. But it’s what happened in 1918 that really put Philippe’s on the culinary map.

During a busy lunch one day the French-born owner of the place, Philippe Mathieu, accidentally dropped a roast beef sandwich into a roasting pan full of savory juices. Instead of calling an error on the owner, the customer bought it—then came back the next day with some friends and voilá, the French Dip sandwich was born.

The delicious sandwiches, classic deli counter, and lost-in-time look and feel of Philippe’s makes it as good a pre-game stop as you’ll find anywhere in the country.

“And, with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice … this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So, the Dodgers are trying to catch lightning right now!”

Breaking the hearts of legions of New Yorkers, the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles back in 1958.

Breaking the hearts of legions of Dodger fans in the Golden State, the team’s owner, Frank “No relation to the nice old guy who wrote ‘Angela’s Ashes’” McCourt, spent the off-season in the midst of a bitter divorce. Because of the messy public divorce, the Dodgers middling record or perhaps because of the stench of Manny Ramirez’s dreadlocks, less than 40,000 people attended the Sunday afternoon matchup with the Pirates that my cousin, Chuck, his fiancé, Shauna, and I caught. The park seats 56,000, so there were a lot of empty seats—unlike that fateful October night in 1988.

“He was, you know, complaining about the fact that, with the left knee bothering him, he can’t push off. Well, now, he can’t push off and he can’t land. … 4-3 A’s, two out, ninth inning, not a bad opening act!”

For a mere $15 apiece we picked up some nice seats on the top deck. It was odd entering the park in the second inning and feeling like you were early.

It was also odd entering a park at the upper deck level and instantly looking down on the field, instead of across or up to it, the way you do at places like Fenway Park or Wrigley Field (the only Major League parks older than Dodger Stadium). But it wasn’t quite as odd as the fact that they were charging $12.75 for a beer and weren’t even offering a kiss before serving it to you.

“Gibson was so banged up, he was not introduced; he did not come out onto the field before the game. … It’s one thing to favor one leg, but you can’t favor two. 0-and-2 to Gibson.”

What Dodger Stadium lacks in beer prices, it does make up for in charm. Tucked into Chavez Ravine, awash in faded Dodger blue, the park has a cozy, old-school style to it. It feels intimate enough that you could get a foul ball almost anywhere you sit. Dodger Stadium just seems to smell like baseball history, although that might have something to do with the ancient trough urinals.

You can even hear Scully calling the game while you’re in the john. The bullpens are lined with shrubs, pictures of Dodger greats like Steve Garvey, Fernando Valenzuela and Rafael “Rarely Plays” Furcal are plastered about. In the bushy hills beyond the left field foul pole, THINK BLUE, proudly stands like the Hollywood sign.

“Gibson, shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly. 2-and-2!”

Despite the sparse crowd, the park was still abuzz. It’s almost as if the history of the park has seeped into its foundation. This is the field, after all, where Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitched, where Bill Russell and Davey Lopes turned double plays and where Orel Hershiser bested the record of former Dodger Don Drysdale by tossing 59 consecutive scoreless innings.

As we settled into our seats, I turned to my fellow first-timers to Dodger Stadium and asked if they could feel the energy of the place, too.

“Can’t you just see it?” I asked in a hushed tone, “Kirk Gibson comes hobbling out of the dugout. He strides up to the plate like a beat up hero from an old western, a modern day John Wayne, riding in to save the day.

“At first, he looks overmatched. It looks like the fire-balling A’s hurler, Dennis Eckersley, has too much gas for Gibson. The tying run is in scoring position, Gibson meekly fouls a couple of pitches off, and then it’s all Vin Scully.”

“High fly ball into right field…she i-i-i-is… gone!!” (followed by 67 seconds of cheering)

The Dodgers won on this day as well, although we chose to follow Southern California baseball tradition and left after the seventh inning.

From the park, we bee-lined it to Sunset Boulevard in search of the Short Stop, a bar Erskine compared to the Holy Grail of all baseball bars, “Cheers.”

Apparently, Erskine has never been to “Cheers,” or even the Bull and Finch Pub for that matter.

If the Short Stop is like “Cheers,” then Rusty’s in Bishop is like a bar at Disneyland. The Short Stop’s exterior is an unmarked façade of black paint, giving it the mafia-style look of the cop bar it used to be. The interior is just as dark. It’s so dark you can barely see the pictures of old Dodgers hanging on the walls or the bullet hole in the front door. There was hardly a soul in the place except for the three of us, let alone throngs of Dodgers fans resembling Cliff, Normie or Sam “Mayday” Malone.

Erskine refers to it as “an L.A. institution in the making.” He just never bothered to point out what type of institution. The Short Stop pretty much has all the charm of a prison cell. We quickly downed a round and took off.

“In a year that has been so improbable … the impossible has happened!”

When we got back to Uncle Dean’s house in Mission Viejo, the first thing he asked was, “Did you go to the bar? How was it?”

“We did,” I replied, “And that Chris Erskine is a hell of a writer.”