Dodgers drop the ball … again

Let me qualify what I’m about to say with two things. First, it’s the home opener, and there are a lot of kinks to be worked out. Second, the average fan isn’t affected by this and never will be, so you probably won’t care, so I apologize in advance if this comes across as me whining. But here goes: The Dodgers have a longstanding policy concerning the only two elevators in the stadium, which are side by side. Three to four hours before home games, the media and a few hundred team employees begin arriving AT THE SAME TIME AS THE PLAYERS. The media parks outside Top of the Park and accesses the elevators on Level 9 and takes them down to the press box on Level 5. Most of the employees seem to access the elevators on Level 8 or below and take it to whichever floor they need to get to. And the players access it on Level 8 and take it down the clubhouse on Level 1. But here’s where the policy comes in: if ONE player gets on the elevator in Level 8, that player automatically is taken directly to Level 1 without stopping on any other floor. There could be 20 OTHER PEOPLE on the elevator, and all 20 of them must ride all the way down with THAT ONE PLAYER before they are taken back up to their respective destination floors. Meanwhile, if there is a series of players getting on elevators one or two at a time (the players tend to arrive at around the same time), those elevators NEVER STOP ON ANY OTHER FLOOR. The result is that non-playing personnel are routinely left waiting for an elevator to pick them up for 10-15 minutes at a time. Today, I ended up taking the stairs down, from Level 9 to Level 5, which is farther than it sounds, and this isn’t an easy trip because it’s not one continuous stairwell, it’s a series of zigzags as the stairwell switches locations. Try doing that while carrying a computer bag stuffed not only with a computer, but with several books, reference guides, etc. At any rate, when I complained (for about the 2,567th time in the past four years) to a club official, this club official said to me, “We have to take care of our players.” To which the obvious response is, “You ARE taking care of your players IN THE FORM OF A $115 MILLION PAYROLL.” Exactly how making your players stop for 5-10 seconds each on one or two or three or four floors on their way to the clubhouse to avoid inconveniencing any number of other people constitutes a failure to “take care of our players” isn’t exactly clear to me at this point. … But other than that, hey, it’s opening day. Let’s all be happy.