Dodger Stadium

I used to detest Dodger Stadium because of the time I went there with GG for Mormon night. We went early so that he could scalp some tickets. I didn't realize until we were there and he was trying to get me to stand out on a street corner outside of the stadium and approach people about tickets that it's totally illegal to scalp tickets there. I refused, and told him that the best he could expect from me is that I would trail along after him while he approached people.

We were out there for an hour, and GG had turned down a couple of offers because he wanted to make a bigger profit. He got greedy, and wound up trying to sell his tickets to a couple of undercover police officers. At first I was just kind of amused by the whole thing, but then they separated us, and one of the officers hauled GG halfway down the block for questioning. Then the officers switched so that I could be questioned to make sure our stories matched. The conversation went something like this:

Officer: I understand your boyfriend over there is selling the tickets because you don't want to go to the game?

(Me silently to myself: My boyfriend?! He's going to pay for this...)

Me to the officer: Uh...yeah, that's right.

Officer: You know that's against the law and he can be arrested for that?

Me: No.

Officer: Yeah, we're supposed to take him in. Do you live in LA?

Me: No, we live in Orange County.

Officer: Well you don't want to have to go bail him out of the jail here. It's a rough place over on...blah blah blah...Do you know how to get there from here?

Me: No sir, I don't know the area.

Officer: Is there someone that can come pick you up?

Me: I don't think so, and I don't have my phone with me. (This was back in the days when I actually never left my phone at home.)

Officer: Why don't you have your phone with you?

Me: I didn't think I would need it, he has his phone.

Officer: Ok, your boyfriend has great tickets, why don't you want to go to the game?

Me: I don't really like baseball.

Officer: Why not?

Me: I think it's boring.

Officer: So you don't like sports?

Me: I like other sports, just not baseball.

Officer: What's your favorite sport?

Me: Football.

Officer: Ok, well what was it you wanted to do tonight instead?

Me: I just wanted to go to dinner.

Officer: No movie or anything?

Me: No, I'd just like to go to dinner.

Officer: I see. One last thing, how long have you two been dating?

Me: Ohhh...about a year.

He seemed satisfied, confiscated the tickets, wrote GG out a citation, told him to take me out for a nice dinner, and let us go. All the way back into the stadium we compared questions and responses, and GG could not stop congratulating me for somehow managing to produce the same answers to those questions that he had given which apparently kept him from being arrested. I asked him why he lied to them in the first place, and he said that he was trying to keep them from hauling him off by telling the officer it was my fault he was having to sell the tickets. He had no idea that the officer would come over and verify the story with me. When we got back into the stadium we were forced to waste a lot of time playing some little ridiculous cat and mouse game darting in and out of the crowd so that the same police officers who had since moved into the parking lot didn't see us buying tickets and going to the game. It was summer, but for some reason it was really cold that night, I was freezing, hungry, and someone near me barfed which made me start to feel kind of ill. I made GG take me home early and swore I'd never go back to Dodger Stadium.

It took a guy flying in from Utah a few years later who insisted on taking me to a game there to get me to reconsider, and I'm glad I did. I had a great time and decided that I actually really like Dodger Stadium. It's old, but that's why I like it. It feels to me how a baseball diamond should feel, classic.

Anyhow I write about this now because yesterday at linger longer GG and I were standing there talking and a man in the ward came up, put one hand on each of our shoulders and jokingly asked "so how long have you two been together?" I took the lead and responded as straight faced as possible, "Ohhh...about a year." GG burst out laughing and the poor guy looked super uncomfortable, and even more so when GG said to him "would you believe it if I told you that we were once separately questioned by a police officer who asked us that same question, and we both came up with that answer?" The guy just gave us both a weird look, said that he wouldn't believe that, and hurried away. It happened.