Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Highlights From Friday's Dodger Stadium Tour


Following up on my post from Saturday featuring previews of some Dodger promos and new stadium foods, I now share highlights from a Dodger Stadium Tour provided by the team on Friday.  (BTW, you can go here for information about taking a stadium tour yourself.)

First of all, I'd like to say that our tour guide, James, was fantastic.  He was enthusiastic and fun to listen to.  Best of all, he hilariously made fun of the Giants at every opportunity, and we tour-takers lapped it up like a thirsty horse at a trough.  You can see him in the below photograph.

Typically, tours of the stadium begin at the "Top of the Park," but since we were there for a luncheon on the field level we got got started from there.  So the first thing we got to check out was the Dodger dugout.  Unfortunately, I just plain spaced when it came to taking a pic of this area.  Instead, check out the helmet rack in the photo below.

From there we meandered around the bowels of the stadium (near the dugout club), but never got into the Dodgers actual team clubhouse.  We were not allowed in the locker rooms, gym or batting cages -- to my great disappointment.  Several years back I had a chance to see the clubhouse before the recent renovations and was hoping to get a gander at what it looks like now.

We did however, get to see a bunch of awards given to the Dodgers over the years; including Hall of Fame plaques, Silver Slugger bats, Gold Gloves, MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year Awards. 



Of note is the the below Jackie Robinson Award (Rookie of the Year Award) for Corey Seager.  James, our tour guide, explained that this had just arrived, so we were some of the first to see it.  As you may have guessed this and nearly all of the awards on display are replicas. 

Here are a handful of the MVP Awards on display.  Below are Roy Campanella's three MVP's.

Here are the MVP Awards for both Clayton Kershaw and Kirk Gibson.

The next two awards, the 1981 and 1988 World Series trophies, are the real deal.  Unlike everything shown above, these two items are not replicas.

From here we headed to the club level to check out a stadium suite and the numerous museum-like memorabilia items on display there. The highlight was the below Vin Scully display case that is near the Vin Scully Pressbox.

I thought the hangers (shown above and below) were a nice touch to the display.  These were crafted by Ann Mims -- a daughter of a longtime Dodger employee.  She gave these to Vin so that he could hang his coat onto something "Creative and Inviting" everyday he was working.


Here is a display honoring Josh Beckett's and Clayton Kershaw's recent no-hitters.


They also had some old dressing stalls on display.


Notably, one of the stalls had a pile of Baseball cards on the seat and an Sports Illustrated magazine featuring Wayne Gretzky.

Below is a key to the city given to the Dodgers by the mayor.

During the first season fans in the right and left pavilions used tokens as entrance tickets to games.  However, this practice was soon abandoned.  Enterprising fans started hoarding coins in order to ensure a seat for future games that were sure to be sold out.  Soon, there were overflow crowds and the use of tokens was scrapped.  On the below left is a display of some of those tokens.  To its right are some fantastic vintage cases.

The base you see on the below left is from Ebbets Field and is the last base ever used by the Dodgers in Brooklyn.


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