Dodgers Management Screws Up Ohtani's 1st Homer in LA
 

And there is already a follow up
 

Dodgers realize they screwed up and big time

https://nypost.com/2024/04/05/sports...tani-home-run/

I do hope the fans enjoy a much better experience for this game

Rich

Wow. Separating the couple is horrible. Sounds like something the government would do!

I used to love the Dodgers. My mother worked in Brooklyn at the Naval Shipyard while my dad was in Europe in World War 2. I love Reese, Lavagetto, and Jackie Robinson. Sandy Koufax is probably my favorite pitcher all time. But this Ohtani saga is horrendous. $700 million to play baseball? Then the Dodgers do this Nazi Gestapo crap over his first Dodger Stadium home run ball? You can have it. I don't need some stupid "on field fan experience" BS garbage to somehow make up for threatening to not authenticate the ball. Who FUCKING cares? There were enough witnesses, on camera. The Dodgers can go fuck themselves.

Ohtani could easily fix this himself as well. He makes 100k with his new deal in, I'm not joking, 2 and a half innings. He could've told the dodgers to write that 100k check for the fan with a few claps.
With what players are making you have to be insane to give something like this up. They can buy it with 30 minutes of their time just sitting on a bench.

Can't wait for this headline at the end of the year.


"Fan Catches Last Home Run Hit At The Oakland Coliseum. Athletics Owner John Fisher Threatens Lawsuit. Demands It Be Returned Out of Loyalty To The Team."

I'm not sure I see the connection to the Gestapo.

Dodgers
 

G1911- I am sure you're trying to stray from the point. Old habits...

Trent King

Could not agree more in the very same vernacular. As someone who has literally spent 100's of thousands there in my lifetime and my family before that , it is pathetic. I would have got myself kicked out over there. AND demanded they leave my wife and me the F alone until the game was over.

Read post 4. You’re really going to bitch at me for not thinking MLB teams are comparable to the Gestapo? Go ahead :rolleyes:

They could but I don't think you can appreciate just how cheap the Dodgers are with their employees and ex players alike.

100%. Expecting an average Joe or Jane to forego what is, in essence, a lottery win is, as you said, insane.

They (plural, people in the Dodgers organization) take the woman behind closed doors, somewhere within Dodger Stadium, separated from her husband, grill her about the ball, offer trinkets in comparison to it's potential worth, threatening to not authenticate the ball if she doesn't cooperate and give it to them for a few more trinkets. Perhaps they weren't going to take her out and shoot her, but other than that, how is this not Nazi Gestapo tactics? If you can offer some clarity, I will change my synonymous take on this.

I know the Dodgers have a long history (post O'Malley era) of their "aggressive" attempts to obtain home run balls from fans for their players. Most fans are there to enjoy the game and are not prepared to be taken out of their seats (for a game they came to enjoy) nor equipped to be interrogated. Definitely an uneven playing field. I would guess the couple who the ball belongs to might have a claim against the organization.

I rarely watch the games. Stopped going to them in the 1990s. Like many things, for me it was ruined by the overwhelming business aspect to it. How this couple was treated is simply an example of that, imo. And if the Dodgers actually threatened to not authenticate the ball for them, it is a really bad look. Maybe they should let everyone know that balls hit into the stands remain their property and they should all be retrieved by staff. If not then, if you are going to a game, instead of taking your spouse or your friend, might want to have your lawyer with you.

It is rather frightening how people seem to have forgotten what Nazism in actual reality was and did. Remind me when the Gestapo declined to authenticate memorabilia as one of their trademark cruel tactics? Remind me when they tried to trade game tickets for more valuable goods?

The Gestapo is not any tactic I don’t like. Nazism is not any idea I don’t like. Giving the most wildly extreme hot take to compare what I don’t like to the Nazi’s is stupidity and beyond ignorant.

It's a comparison to the way the Dodgers handled this, which is truly bad as well as stupid. Nothing more.

My father received the Purple Heart in combat in Europe with the 99th Infantry Division from 10 June 1944 (D Day +2) until several months after VE day. From him, I learned a thing or 2 about the Nazis.

If I'm stupid and beyond ignorant, so be it. Oh well. Don't care. You, on the other hand, seem to know everything about everything. I wish you continued success.

Greg does seem to know a lot about a lot of things but I bet Greg does not know how ebay operates and where their interests lie. Or do you, Greg? If so, can you please give us predictions for calendar years 2025 and 2026? Wanna know if I should short the stock or not.

If the couple's story is right, the Dodgers' staff acted inappropriately. That said, the analogy is also inappropriate.

Then you should be fully aware that the Dodgers organization is really not comparable to the Nazi's :rolleyes:. There's a reason your father had to go invade Europe and not the Dodgers office. Come on lol

In your opinion, and Greg's. Opinion is not fact.

It was a comparison to Nazi tactics. The Nazis got what was coming to them, in the end.

The Dodgers, if the story is true, acted in a manner similar to their tactics. In my stupid, ignorant opinion.

I do not think it takes being knowledgeable about many things to be aware that the Dodgers wanting a home run ball and being a dick about it is not comparable to the Nazi Gestapo. I am an idiot but I am vaguely aware of what the Nazi's actually were.

If this is your guys bar for intelligence, we must have a lot of sub-room temperature IQ's.

I have no idea what this has to do with predicting eBay stock values, which I have never made a single claim on in my life to a single person as far as I can recall.

Fully inappropriate and wrongly. But inappropriate and wrong is not a synonym for Nazism, although the online world apparently loves to believe anything they don't like is or is just like Nazism. There's a lot of things I don't like, but that doesn't mean it's like the Nazi's.

I would agree with you (and Peter) that the comparison of the Dodgers' tactics to what historically has been one of the greatest atrocities man has witnessed, namely the Nazi movement, is neither a valid comparison or an appropriate one.

Ah! And the eBay reference was to a post https://www.net54baseball.com/showpo...4&postcount=17 on another thread in which you commented and was an attempt at humor. Note to self...leave the funny stuff to others.

Dodgers were being total dicks to that couple.

I hope my position on the matter will be perceived as accurate, straight to the point, well thought out, and not hyperbolic to the extreme.

;)

I have been to over 30 different major league ball parks
 

and many of them used to announce "fan ground rules" before the game. This usually included something like "balls hit into the stands are the property of the fan." I was at a game at Yankee Stadium when a player lost his grip on a swing and the bat sailed into the stands. Later, I was downstairs at customer service when the fan brought the bat in and successfully traded it for some quality items. I think the player was David Ortiz. Balls sure to be big ticket items like Alex Rodriguez's 3000 hit are no different. Remember Zach Hample? I think he gave the ball back because of the adverse publicity, but he was remunerated in other ways. The Yankees didn't "demand" it back, they negotiated. But on the ownership side, whenever it looks like a home run might be an item for the stadium showcase, the balls receive a special hologram, and special security guards appear in likely locations to compete for the ball.

I think the comparison is fair.

The Nazi were in kahoots with the Japanese. The Dodgers just got in kahoots with the Japanese this off season.

Yoshi "Admiral" Yamamoto is on the hill today against the boys in blue today at Wrigley.

Don't they have an Italian shortstop in A Ball named Ben Mussolini. Once he comes up all bets are off.

The Axis is forming in LA folks.

I think the comparison is fair.

The Nazi's were in kahoots with the Japanese. The Dodgers just got in kahoots with the Japanese this off season.

Yoshi "Admiral" Yamamoto is on the hill today against the boys in blue today at Wrigley.

Don't they have an Italian shortstop in A Ball named Ben Mussolini. Once he comes up all bets are off.

The Axis is forming in LA folks.

an autod game used ohtani bat is a decent trade?

If one of you wealthy guys gave me a signed Ohtani card, or ball or whatever, I would sell it as fast as possible. I feel the same way about Tesla. I feel the same way about both. 'Nuf Ced.

I think it would be awesome to have an autographed Tesla card. 👀

This just makes my blood boil.

When a fan catches a ball hit into the stands it is legally their property. These damn players are not poor. If they want something that belongs to somebody else they can bloody well do what everyone else does and offer to pay them the fair market value of the item.

This system where you have a business owned by a consortium of billionaires using their hired muscle to effectively extort a valuable item from a regular person solely for the purpose of giving another billionaire a trophy souvenir is absolutely outrageous.

That ball could have provided that fan with a life altering amount of money. Instead they wanted to rob her of it in order to give the 700 million dollar kid another memento to gather dust on a shelf.

Everything about this just stinks.

Well, that's WAY different! It would indeed be awesome.

The Dodgers Hate Us All
 

The Dodgers hate their fans, opposition fans, you, me, nazis, pacifists, tall people, short people, Randy Newman, fat people, skinny people, white people, black people, blue people, red people, green people, the list goes on.

I'm a life long San Francisco born Dodger fan. Since Sports Illustrated was still mostly black and white.

Thru thick and thin.

I saw game 5 of the 1974 WS in person with my dad. I was 11. ALL of my friends were rooting for the Sacramento A's. Horrible day.

When I moved to LA I became a season ticket holder.

Best stadium in baseball to watch a game. I've seen regular season games in 49 parks.

I travel for a living. A lot. One year I went to 67 home games. Never missed a pitch.

Constant run ins with security from the parking lot to my seat illustrated how little they cared for me as a fan. Lot's of effort put into protecting other stadium attendees from my "Pitch To Barry" shirt (which was under a Dodger's Hawaiian shirt), they should have put as much effort into protecting Bryan Stow.

Finally, on April 29, 2010 they caused me to make a vow, which they later tried to bribe me break, and failed.

I vowed that day to never give them any money (besides their cut of my MLB radio yearly subscription) and to never set foot in Dodger Stadium again unless any of my bosses had a stage set up in the outfield, and I was on salary. I wasn't working for anymore Green Day when they played there, and I didn't get the Guns & Roses gig, so potential crisis averted.

The biggest argument I ever had with my current boss involved me not accepting his numerous offers to attend a game with him, with would have meant anyone watching on TV would have had to see my smiling face during every pitch of the game.

I'm still a Dodgers fan. I understand that probably makes no sense to you, but no other team would care about me either, so I stick with my love of 50 years.

In three weeks it will have been 14 years since I was there, and I don't miss it one bit. It's nearly impossible for me to watch their games on TV, much like most residents of LA.

I listen to most games on the radio.

I miss Vin.

Last time I saw them play in AZ (after my vow, because road games aren't home games) I met Vin at the airport after the game, what a genuinely nice man. Too bad he wasn't in charge of the whole organization.

Fuck them.

But I'm glad they beat the Cubs today, although my previous bus was not.

Insert smiley face here.

Doug

I don’t like the Dodgers but they have always had the most fan friendly spring training complexes so I don’t necessarily think they aren’t fan friendly. This was a really weird thing to do though and I don’t support it.

Maybe the lady that picked up the ball will lawyer up; and then there will be raised issues of false imprisonment, and coercion as a reason for voiding the exchange of the ball for the other stuff.

The issue of MLB refusing to authenticate an item if a fan leaves the ball park with a ball is a bit more problematic.

But here I am on the 7th of April, still annoyed with what MLB has done to Opening Day. Tradition is something that cannot be bought. Tradition is something to be respected. Opening Day is supposed to be a day game in Cincinnati, preceded by the Findlay Market Parade. Other teams "open" the next day. I can tolerate a game being started a couple of hours later in Baltimore. But that's it. The Dodgers' owners took more than a baseball from that lady, they took Opening Day out of the country, and probably made bank in the process.

One more thing about tradition, once you let go of it, you can't get it back.

The threat of not authenticating the ball seemed pretty hollow to me. You’re on television catching the ball.

Frank, I was in the Navy for 26 years. They have tinkered around with tradition there too. They got rid of the "Cracker Jack" dress blues for E-6 and below, and brought them back. They got rid of dress khakis for Chiefs and Officers, and brought them back. The Navy is huge on tradition. I +1 agree with you about opening day. MLB needs to open the season in Cincinnati. This needs to be fixed, along with a great many nonsensical, tinkering with the game rules changes. But it all comes down, in the end, to $$$$$$$.