Joyce Takes Me to a Dodger Game (part 1)

Last week, Joyce gave me a super expensive Apple Watch, and told her I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful to someone who’s been extremely generous to me, but I also didn’t want an Apple watch. I reckon that, if someone is going to spend that much money on me, it might as well be for something that will make me happy.

Or I could have been a totally heartless whore and followed Keaton’s advice, taken the watch, and sold it on eBay.

Last Sunday, she called me and said she had tickets for the Dodger game the next night. Joyce knew I had the day off, and I’m always down for a ballgame.

That didn’t leave me a lot of time to get Joyce a Dodger hat, though. I knew she didn’t have one, and you don’t go to a ballgame with Hunter Block without some kind of gear on. I was in my Corey Seager jersey, blue shorts and my super cool new 4^th of July Dodger cap, which was making its first trip to Chavez Ravine. Lucky for me I found a hat for Joyce at Target.

I’ll admit that I’m a little vain about my hair. Keaton says I have a gayass complicated haircut, although the same dude cuts both our hair. I have that look where it’s short on the sides and a lot longer on top. I confess you need product and a blow dryer to make that work, but what I do is nothing compared to chicks, even Joyce. She has long hair (which I like) and I think it’s gotten lighter (which I like too) since we started going out. She didn’t get pissed off when I gave her the hat, but she did say that, if she’d known she was going to have to wear a hat, she wouldn’t have spent all the time she had on her hair.

(Okay, she had a point. Since I knew I was going to be wearing a ball cap, I pretty much went wash and wear with my hair. I figured the only person who was going to see it that night was Joyce…and she likes my hair when it’s long and messy.)

So we got into the Tesla and headed down the 110 to Chavez Ravine. I was a little surprised when she said she’d bought us premium parking (only a chick who doesn’t know a lot about baseball would do that.) I know you’re supposed to bitch and bitch about parking at Dodger Stadium, but I’ve never had a problem with it. I do get to the ballpark an hour early, though. That probably helps. Still, I don’t think that it was worth all that money just so we wouldn’t have to walk five minutes each way.

The expensive parking is close to the field level entrance, which is where Joyce led me. I reckoned she was going to get expensive seats, but I didn’t reckon just how expensive she was going to go. She went all the way to the third row, directly behind home plate. What’s called the Dugout Club.

(I probably shouldn’t have looked, but I did check out StubHub the next morning. Our two tickets cost almost the same as the Apple watch. I reckon Joyce felt that she still “owed” me something expensive after I turned down the watch. She honestly didn’t need to but, if you want to spend a lot of money on me to make me happy, you can’t go wrong taking me to a ballgame.)

I’ve spent a lot of time in dugouts, so I can’t say Monday was the closest I’ve ever been to a ballgame, but it’s certainly was the closest I’ve ever been to an MLB game. The seats were awesome and all that, but I reckon Joyce doesn’t know enough about baseball to know that the best seats aren’t the ones that are right behind home plate. You have to get used to looking through the  netting.  I mean, yeah, we were as close to the batter as you can possibly get, but we were even closer to the umpire. And maybe I’m a weirdass, but I don’t want to spend 3½ hours looking at some old white dude’s butt lol.

Keaton and I usually get tickets up in the Reserve. We can afford them lol. But you also get to see the whole game from up there. From the seats Joyce got us, you really can’t see the outfield. On the other hand, we got a very good view of some awesome stand on your head catches Brian Dozier made. (You gotta be happy he’s a Dodger now. We did lose a southerner in Logan Forsythe…but at least they replaced him with another southerner. Dozier’s a Mississippi boy.)

So they’re not the absolute best seats in Dodger Stadium, but you can probably say they’re the coolest. Even the seats themselves are cool: they’re big, blue and padded. I reckon they had the same idea as first class seats in an airplane. Only you get to see a ballgame lol.

I know Joyce well enough to know that she gets nervous when she’s doing something special to make me happy. Remember how she was fixin to cry when I turned down the watch. So I tried to look extra happy and remembered Meemaw’s advice about not telling someone they shouldn’t have done something when they already did it. And part of me really was excited thinking I’d be this close to the team.

I even gave her a quick thank you kiss. First time I did that with people around. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to stuff like that in public, but a kiss or holding hands is okay if you don’t make too big a deal of it. And it wasn’t totally because I felt I owed it to her. I just felt like kissing her.

Then we headed inside to check out the Dugout Club.