The kid’s first Dodger game

Last night was my two year-old’s first Dodger game. Sharing a trip to The Stadium with someone for the first time is always an important day. To do it with a child for the first time can be pretty special.

To be clear, she just turned two a few weeks ago. Her usual bedtime is 7:00. I wasn’t sure she’d last.

It was hot early-on, but it’s the summer and it’s Dodger Stadium, so… . By Owen Main

But there’s something about the atmosphere of having 40,000-plus people in one place, isn’t there. Even if she isn’t paying direct attention to the game, the ebb and flow of the crowd’s cheers were stimulating enough to have her bouncing off the walls well past 9:30, when we left after the 8th inning. I had to respect the 3 1/2 hour drive and how tired I felt.

It was a family, group outing to the stadium. There were 14 of us on the reserved level. Your experience may differ, but here are a few do’s and don’ts for bringing a super young kid to the game, based on my vast experience roughly equivalent to a single Friday night.

Do: Bring some little things for the kid to play with.

We brought a little mini etch-a-sketch type thing with a magnetic pen attached. You can get minutes at a time of something to do. Five minutes of still attention is a good thing, whenever you can get it.

Do: Sit in the reserved section.

The section is super steep, which gave me the heebie jeebies at first. After a minute though, it was fine. We could keep the kid between the adults and, as luck would have it, there was a little playground at the top of the section we were sitting in at Dodger Stadium. The kid spent a lot of time up there with the in-laws.

The other thing about the reserved section — at least where we were — is you didn’t have to worry about foul balls. Later, we will make sure we sit where foul balls ARE possible, but for now it was nice to know that my toddler wouldn’t get inadvertently domed by an errant foul ball.

Do: Bring reinforcements.

Corralling a two year-old isn’t easy work, especially you kind of like to watch the game. For this night, the kid got passed between two in-laws, me, and the wife. I was fully prepared to hang with her all night, but it was nice to also be able to pay attention to the game for some of it as well.

Don’t: Have anyone in your group buy slushies. Or have a four year-old climb rows in the reserved section with a slushie.

You can probably imagine what happened here. My wife got most of a grape slushie poured on her by her nephew. It was an honest accident and hey, at least it was grape. It’s both the best tasting and it will come right out in the wash, right?

Don’t: Lose track of where the mother in law and kid are during important moments.

These include Adrian Gonzalez homers and also the seventh inning stretch. Two year olds like to sing and I should have found her prior to the seventh inning stretch and made sure I sang with her. I’ll have to keep that in mind for next time.

Do: Make the Dodgers win

There isn’t really any way to guarantee this, but it’s a nice feeling when the Dodgers win. Actually, if you figure out how to make this happen, let me know, k? Everybody’s a little happier when the home team wins.

Do: Get plenty of photos. The first trip to Chavez Ravine only happens once.

This one is self explanatory.

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All in all, it was a successful trip. We were home in San Luis Obispo before 1:00AM, which is a small feat unto itself, and the kid let us all sleep past 8:00 today. She probably won’t remember the trip but for all the photos, but like I said before, you can only do something for the first time once.