It’s been one year since I quit the Dodgers, and it’s now six years and counting since most people have seen a Dodgers game on TV. In an era when watching live sports is ubiquitous – literally ingrained in the fabric of society – the fact that the Dodgers make it impossible for millions and millions of people to watch their product is the biggest “fuck you” in the history of professional sports.
I used to eat Dodgers peanuts. I’d laugh at the losers who ate Angels or Padres peanuts. The Dodgers peanuts just tasted better and they’d always be the first ones gone from the peanut display at Ralph’s, leaving sack after sack of lame Halo nuts that no one would ever buy. But when you’re team kicks you in the nuts, well, you need to reevaluate your nut consumption.
I quit the Dodgers today. No, I wasn’t on the team … well, I was kinda on the team for a really long time, but about five years ago the Dodgers told me they didn’t need me anymore, that they didn’t really need my support and that they were perfectly capable of NOT winning the World Series without me. They said that I could still hang around if I wanted. I think they still want me to go to their games, yeah I think they do, me and the millions of other saps that they’ve been kicking in the balls for the past five years. But they’re not willing to do anything else for me like holding down ticket prices or selling me one beer for less than the price of a thirty-rack or allowing me to tailgate in their parking lot after making the three-hour drive to the stadium … or making it possible for me to watch them play baseball on my TV. I thought I could hold on. I can’t. I thought it could still be fun to follow them armed only with a newspaper and a transistor radio. It’s not. So I quit.