Chavez Ravine

The Red Sox are in town this weekend for three exhibition games against the Dodgers, so we took Tessie to see the 2007 World Champions. She's been to two other baseball games already (and one in utero), but this was her first time seeing the team in whose honor she was named.

I certainly hope they'll do better next time: the Dodgers beat them, 3-1.

Even though the Red Sox have already begun their regular season with two games in Tokyo, these three games in L.A. are exhibition games, so it's a good thing this one didn't count. Nor will tomorrow's game, a throwback extravaganza to be held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in front of 115,000 fans.

We decided to skip that one because, like so many other things in Los Angeles, the traffic and parking hassles are likely to more than cancel out any enjoyment of the actual event.

So we went tonight to Dodger Stadium, in Chavez Ravine, just north of downtown Los Angeles. A much sparser crowd of only 34,404 was in attendance, making the experience more pleasurable and giving Tessie plenty of room to roam and make new friends.

We left after the seventh inning stretch, which is normally something we would never do, but the game was late and we wanted to get Tessie home before it got too far past her bed time. Besides, the Red Sox left the game long before we did - all of the starters had been replaced by the seventh inning by what one of the Dodger announcers called the "Witness Protection Lineup."

Since it wasn't the same team, we broke with tradition and left before the final out. We actually even arrived home before the final out, which we saw on TV.

Tessie didn't get to see the Sox win, but she did make it to the seventh inning stretch: