The Right and Left Field Pavilions are the names of the outfield bleachers at Dodger Stadium. I was familiar with them before I started selling concessions. This is because the Pavilions were the only seats that I could afford when I went to see a game. I don’t know why I’m speaking in past tense here. Shit has not changed.
The Pavilion seats generally provide a lot of bang for the buck, however, because the fans in that section really know how to have a good time. In addition to endlessly enjoying the wave, fans in the pavilion like to play the beach ball game. The object of the beach ball game is to keep a beach ball aloft in the stands for as long as possible without allowing it to fall onto the field or get confiscated by security. Most people in the Pavilion believe that the beach ball game is the game they paid $11 to see.
If I seem to be a little snarky here, let me explain. I learned to watch baseball at Fenway Park. And anyone loony enough to bring a beach ball to Fenway will find himself hanging from a gibbet over Lansdowne Street. Maybe this is because the fans at Fenway paid a great deal more than $11 for their outfield seats. In any case, they aren’t in any sense confused about which game they came to see.
However, if all of the ballparks in America were just like Fenway, the game of baseball would suffer; the unique character of each park is part of the beauty of the game. I personally think anyone going to a Dodgers game for the first time should sit in the Pavilion and experience the park from there. I did, and I wouldn’t trade that particular experience for anything. Not even seats at Fenway. (Except Monster seats, maybe. No, not even that. Not that it's worth debating anyway, since trading experience for baseball tickets is about as possible as trading thumbs for a writing career. )
The first time I went to Dodger Stadium and sat in the Pavilion, I was surprised to hear that the people sitting in the Pavilion would be invited out onto the field to watch the fireworks after the game. That’s right…the field. You don’t even have to stay on the warning track. They let you out onto the grass. Just about everyone who walked out onto that grass that night either bent over and touched it with their fingers or took off a shoe to feel it with their toes. I was no exception. I felt it with both my fingers and my toes.
After admiring the springy turf, I scampered over to the baseline between second and third and took a seat, considering that I might bend a blade of grass upon which Nomar himself had trod not five minutes before. Then there were fireworks. I watched the fireworks, sitting on the field, while the stadium speakers played Ray Charles’s, “America the Beautiful.” Just like in “Sandlot.” I’m pretty young, and there are a lot of pitches that I haven’t seen yet. But for my money, it doesn’t get much better than that.
As much as I recommend the Pavilion for spectators, I don’t recommend it for anyone peddling ice cream.
Tickets in the Pavilion, as I have mentioned already, cost only $11. The ice cream that the vendors sell at Dodger Stadium costs $6.50 per pint. The value-seekers among us will already know that most people don’t want to pay 60% of the price of the entire ticket for a single, non-alcoholic, not-so traditional baseball snack that’s only available in one flavor. I could have guessed that too, but I was told that I could sell less but make more, and that made mathematical sense.
But after seven innings of not selling very much, I learned one of the basic axioms of hawking: not selling is a lot more work than selling. Put another way, selling concessions at a ballgame is one of the rare jobs in which earning more money is a result of less effort. Consider the following scenarios:
A. If you don’t sell anything, you have to keep carrying your product around with you, which is heavy, and you have to keep walking up and down stairs from section to section, which is tiring, and you have to keep shouting, which is embarrassing for people with little voice boxes.
B. If you’re selling, you get to stand still, put your bag down, hand out product, and rake in money. You’re taking on cash, which is paper, and unloading ice cream, which is ice cream. One of these is much nicer to carry in a bag around your neck than the other.
Selling is Easy. Not selling is Hard. That’s why “sell less but make more” is bullshit. To that end, it’s probably a bad idea to sell something as expensive as ice cream anywhere, but it’s especially stupid to sell it in the Pavilions.
At the end of the night, I returned my unsold product, insulated bag, carrying strap, uniform, and cash (including the borrowed bank) to the commissary. Instead of having my commission parceled out to me in cash and deposited directly into my sad little empty pocket, I was given a receipt for my earnings. $48.04 was not quite the $100-$150 range that the ad on craigslist had boasted, but I was happy to have earned even that. Plus there was the parking and the free meal to remember. But I asked the Permanently Displeased Troll Woman if I should keep the receipt. All she replied was, “around here?” and shrugged. I decided to file it away in a safe place, especially since I had no idea when or how I would be paid.
I did have enough faith to return for the next game of the homestand, but vowed to avoid ice cream unto eternity.
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