The Beach and a Ballgame

For my second day off in the City of Angeles, I got the best of both worlds: a trip to the beach AND a trip to the ballpark!

Roy and I started the day off with a trip to Santa Monica. First, we stopped off at 'The Shack' for the Shack Burger, which came highly recommended by Erik Hayden, one of Spamalot's resident beach bums. The Shack Burger lived up to its reputation, big, juicy and topped with a butterflied Louisiana hot link! We did a bit of shopping along the 3rd Street Promenade - a really nice pedestrian mall just a few blocks from the beach. From there, it was just steps to the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and a long staircase down to the giant, white, sandy beach. We strolled along the beach and put our toes in the ocean on the way to the famous pier. We ate lunch on the pier and rode both the West Coaster and Pacific Wheel at Pacific Park on the pier.

Even on a Monday, the beach at Santa Monica was hopping

Pacific Park is an amusement park built right on the Santa Monica Pier! It's mostly kids' rides, but also features a small roller coaster (the West Coaster) and a giant solar-powered ferris wheel (the Pacific Wheel).

The view from the Pacific Wheel was spectacular!

The ocean end of the pier features a restaurant, a bait shop and a several souvenir shops. It's also a busy fishing spot and home to all manner of buskers.

From Santa Monica, we ran back to Hollywood, collected Scott and headed straight to Dodger Stadium. All I'd been hearing about the Stadium was that it wasn't a very nice ballpark - but I found the opposite to be true! The park opened in 1962 (making it, sort of strangely, the 3rd oldest park in the Major Leagues behind Fenway Park and Wrigley Field) and has much of that space age feel still in tact.

The sun sets behind left field

The evening was cool with a nice breeze and the hometown fans were jazzed to see Manny Ramirez back in the line-up. The Dodgers held a comfortable lead in their division and the Reds looked like they were going to be another sacrificial lamb. Things got interesting pretty quickly, though. The Dodgers starting pitcher, Jason Schmidt, was making his first big league start since an injury in 2007 and gave up 3 runs in a very messy first inning. The Dodger's bats responded in the home half of the first, driving in four runs to take the lead and energize the Dodger faithful. The rest of the game was fun (the Reds made it close again in the 8th, but fell short) with a final score of 7-5. The highlight of the night was Manny Ramirez's 10th home run of the season. It was career home run number 536 and tied Ramirez with Mickey Mantle for 15th on the All Time Home Run Leaders List.

Roy, Havasi, Jen Mathie, Alexa and Scott joined me at the ballpark

Merle lead the singing of 'God Bless America' at the seventh inning stretch & she sounded great!

We were sitting in the Right Field Pavilion under some of the retired numbers. Of course, number 42 is retired throughout baseball, but the Dodgers are the only team that Robinson ever wore number 42 for.

Did I forget to mention that the Right Field Pavilion is home to the "All You Can Eat Seats"? We enjoyed all the Dodger Dogs, peanuts, popcorn, nachos we could eat! Here we all are with the first round of Dodger Dogs.

It was a great night at the ballpark and a wonderful capper to a pretty great day. Dodger Stadium marked the 12th Big League Ballpark on my lifetime list and the 28th ballpark I've visited on the tour!

JV