The Curse of Aurora Vargas, Part 2


AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Dodger Stadium - Tuesday March 27, 2018


36,937 baseball fans witnessed an unusual event at Dodger Stadium the other night - after 5 innings the game was called off on account of shit.  Halfway through the game a wretched bubbling pool of raw sewage suddenly appeared in front of the Dodger dugout, grew steadily in size and stench sending both teams in retreat to their locker rooms.  Thirty minutes later an announcement was made to the few remaining fans that play would not continue.

Since that night Dodger officials, not wanting to take the focus off of the upcoming season opening game, have been quite vague both as to the cause of the incident and whether refunds would be offered.  However, they were quite insistent that the problem had been addressed and would not resurface.

As reluctant as I am to question anybody’s positive attitude, I think certain facts need to be considered.  

  1. The construction of Dodger Stadium was completed in 1962.  Since then, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the weight of an average American adult has increased 25 lbs.  Dodger games often draw in excess of 50,000 which amounts to nearly 700 tons of additional weight that may never have been anticipated by the original engineering calculations.  In addition, this added burden is not static but in constant motion throughout a game. Just imagine the pressure brought to bear on the stadium bowels by an energetic crowd performing the wave.
  2. In 2007 the Dodgers introduced “All-You-Can-Eat Tickets”.  For a fixed price, Dodger fans can watch the game while consuming “UNLIMITED” amounts of hot dogs, cheese nachos, peanuts and popcorn.  
  3. In 2016, despite doubling the price of a hot dog (from $5 to $10), the LAWeekly quoted head concessioner Buck Fredrickson "Even as we've raised prices, the average number of dogs eaten per fan has been increasing at a rate that just isn't sustainable." ...
  4. The 5th inning is also significant in 2 ways.  
    1. Los Angeles fans are famous for arriving late and leaving early.  The 5th inning represents the point in a game where the greatest number of people who paid for a ticket are actually in the stadium.
    2. Dodger games are torture to sit through because of a micro-management approach with endless visits to the mound, player/pitcher replacements, and excessive use of pinch hitters and the bullpen.  All of which add to the length of a game and as a result last season, the average length of a Dodger game was longer than any of the other 30 major league teams. Consider that the end of the 5th inning is usually nearing the 3 hour point and you’ve made good progress on your unlimited quantities of hot dogs and chili-cheese nachos.  You don’t have to be a gastroenterologist to know what happens next.

There is of course another quite different explanation.  The Dodgers are on the receiving end of some really bad karma.  The City of Denver suffers from a similar fate after having built its airport on top of burial grounds and spiritual sites used for centuries by the native tribes.  One of many unexplained difficulties surrounding the 5 billion dollar airport to date was the 1993 opening which had to be delayed 2 full years because the “automated” baggage handling system would not operate properly.  Even after the airport opened in 1995, bagage continued to get misrouted, delayed, or simply disappear. Despite spending more than a million dollars a month for ten years the problems were never solved and the system was abandoned in 2005.  In recent years the city and airport in desperation resorted to contracting with the Montana Cheyenne for shamans to visit the site and calm the ancestral spirits.

The source of the Dodgers’ karma comes from having  yanked a 60 year-old community out by the roots with the help of Los Angeles politicians.  Dodger Stadium sits atop what used to be Chavez Ravine - a name which has been expunged from local records as though it never existed.  The area where the Dodgers play was re-named “Dodger Town” with its own zip code. The village that was Chavez Ravine is gone but the soil remains.  The same soil, where for six decades, mothers buried the umbilical cords of their newborns.

Note: For part I, click on link below.