Tagged: Facebook

Inside the Dodgers catches a home run

Many of you who read this on Inside the Dodgers (as opposed to Facebook) will recognize the man who caught Uribe’s home run last night. It’s FanSince53, Ron Cervenka and there’s even a slow motion replay of his grab.

Ron is a Dodger Stadium regular who was featured in Bluetopia and if you didn’t get a chance to see that flic a few years back, you should grab a copy at Dodger Stadium’s merchandise stores. It really shows how much this team means to its fans.

Nice grab, Ron!

 

Opening Day just got one day closer…

And that’s how we kick off the Inside the Dodgers blog for 2011…

We head to Camelback Ranch in just six weeks and after six more weeks at baseball’s best Spring Training site, we are back here at Dodger Stadium for Opening Day against the Giants.

As you have probably heard, ESPN wanted to get the Dodgers/Giants rivalry as their marquee game on Opening Day, so they asked us to move our home opener, April 1, to the night before so that it could be televised nationally. So, we’ll have three of our first four games on national or regional TV — Thursday and Sunday on ESPN and Friday on FOX. And pretty soon, we’ll be able to give you the whole TV schedule for the season with KCAL and Prime Ticket.

The energy and buzz at the stadium has ramped up significantly since we returned from the holiday break. And as promised, I’m going to work harder to make this blog more exciting, more relevant and with more of your input throughout the year. Please know that your comments about the blog’s commenting functionality are being addressed as we speak. I’m very, very hopeful that the good people at MLBlogs.com will have a solution before Opening Day.

So check back often or keep an eye on our Facebook or Twitter pages, where new posts show up whenever I send them live.

MLB Industry Meetings

Those who have followed Inside the Dodgers for a long time probably recall that every couple years, our industry heads to one spot to share best practices and talk about the future of the game on the business side of things. No different than what most of you do in your own jobs at various conferences around the country.

So, we find ourselves in Orlando, having talked about the international future of baseball (the Dogders’ trips to China and Taiwan came up several times), the changing landscape of media (lots of talk about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, flip cam videos, etc), the World Baseball Classic and even those who cover the business of sports.

It’s always a great way to network and pick up some ideas from others in the industry and tonight, there’s a team building event in which we’ll all be building 100 bikes for young kids from the local Boys & Girls Club. Pretty cool way to tie into their theme of “Going Beyond” which you’ve seen throughout the postseason.

 

Gibbons re-signs with Dodgers

Just got word that we’ve signed Jay Gibbons to a one-year deal for this season…he was a pleasant surprise throughout the minor league season and when he was recalled to the big leagues for the first time since 2007, he came up with five homers in just 75 at-bats. Tack on the 19 he hit for Triple-A Albuquerque and he’s obviously got some good power potential.

The news comes just shortly after the team was informed that Scott Podsednik has opted for free agency (we had a mutual option and had exercised our side to bring him back for $2 million, had he agreed).

And to answer the question that was posed in the comments about Facebook, the best thing I can tell you is that we don’t really have any sort of technical control over that website’s comment functions. While we continue to ask those who post here to be professional in their criticism and to remember that kids read this site, too, we do have the ability to block those who violate that request on a regular basis. When it comes to Facebook, that’s not a website we control but we certainly feel it’s important that the nearly 400,000 fans we have on that site are able to get the same information we post here at Inside the Dodgers.

I’m all for being frustrated when the Dodgers lose and things don’t turn out the way we’d like…I’d just like to think that Dodger fans have enough respect to be able to convey those thoughts without profanity…and we thank you for your cooperation.

 

A salute to our troops…

Here’s hoping that some of our troops overseas reads Inside the Dodgers or will get this message via Facebook. On behalf of the entire Dodger organization, thank you for all that you do for those of us here in the States and we hope to see you home soon.

To all those who have served in the past, we thank you, too, and hope that you’re one of the many veterans who will be at Dodger Stadium tonight. We’ve given about 1,000 tickets out to branches of the military and three of the team’s most high profile veterans will take part in the first pitch ceremony.

Former Dodgers and proud U.S. veterans Don Newcombe, Rick Monday and Roy Gleason will be accompanied by veterans from various branches of the military. In honor of Memorial Day, the team will also wear white hats with stars and stripes for the LA logo.

We’ll also have a moment of silence for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defending our nation.

On a much lighter note, Andre Ethier is back in the lineup…and the team has a chance to finish the month of May with a 20-8 record! Last year, the Dodgers were 20-9 in May.

Ethier, Yankees and other such stuff…

Andre Ethier jammed the pinky on his right hand during batting practice and was scratched from the lineup. Garret Anderson moves into his place…

On a happier note, by the time this blog posts to Facebook, we’ll probably be at 200,000 fans so nice work, people! We’re about 30 fans short but it never ceases to amaze me how many people out there love the Dodgers. Just looking around the ballpark here in SD tells you that.

And as a response to 636566cy’s post about tickets to the Yankees series, I’m glad you asked about why we aren’t putting individual tickets on sale. Here’s the deal.

Every year, for games like Opening Day and the Postseason, we offer our Season Ticket holders the opportunity to purchase additional seats prior to the public on sale. It’s a very common practice for sports teams across the country. As we stated in our news release, the volume of requests that we’ve already received from our season ticket holders has been extremely high. Obviously there are a lot of people who want to come to this series. While we have Opening Day every year and we’ve been fortunate enough to be in the postseason in four of the last six, the Yankees don’t come to down that often. Demand for these tickets is quite large.

At this point, we can already tell that once we give those season ticket holders the opportunity and take care of our internal ticketing needs, there will not be seats available to put on sale for the public. We obviously can’t sell what we don’t have and we have to take care of those who commit to season seats.

A side benefit that this also helps assure is that we will have Dodger fans in the house for those three games and that the ticket brokers won’t snap up every seat in the house. If we were to put them on sale to the individual public, I think it’s fairly safe to say that an enormous portion of those seats available would wind up on eBay or other such sites and begin selling for four or five times face value, if not more. And a huge portion of the people who will buy them will be Yankee fans in Los Angeles, whereas Dodger fans are much more interested in seeing seven games over the course of the season.

The seven-game plans start for as little as $9 per game, or $63 for an entire week’s worth of games. We believe that’s a very fair price, and there are plenty of other options, too (including some that have food included in the right field pavilion).

I hope that helps you understand the reasoning behind our approach…and now here’s to another win tonight in San Diego! First pitch is a minute away…

The hottest team in baseball…

A big win tonight and it’s really cool to see the sea of blue not only at PETCO Park, but at the team hotel. Dodger fans came out in full force tonight to show their love and it was a really fun game to watch.

And there’s another place where the fans are out in full force…Facebook, where we’re about to top 200,000 fans (we’re about 500 fans shy at the moment). That’s pretty incredible when you think of how recently we really started updating that page on a regular basis. But of course, there are a lot more than two hundred thousand Dodger fans out there. You guys are millions strong, all around the world.

Keep the streak alive…we’ve won 10 of the last 13 for the first time in about a year…

 

100,000 fans

Pretty cool that our facebook page has topped 100,000 fans. Are you one of them? We should be in the millions if you think about how many people out there bleed Dodger blue.

Out on the field today, Kershaw through a simulated game and Joe Torre told the media he’ll throw a bullpen on Sunday. According to Joe, he looked good and if he comes out of the bullpen session well, he’ll pitch out of the bullpen in Washington, then take it from there. Chad Billingsley will start Wednesday in Washington and could be used tonight out of the ‘pen, if we needed.

Also, Steve Lyons weighs in on Jonathan Broxton over at Psychollingy.

Meanwhile, the regulars are back in! Glad I could stir up some debate yesterday and that we won while resting the regular crew…

Here’s tonight’s lineup:

Furcal, SS

Martin, C

Ethier, RF

Manny, LF

Kemp, CF

Blake, 3B

Loney, 1B

Hudson, 2B

Padilla, P

We showed some heart in San Francisco…

The lame headlines have to end at some point, but why start now. Believe it or not, this blog is the feed for the Dodgers’ Facebook page, too, so we have to make sure it’s something remotely exciting, right? I’m assuming you’re all Facebook friends of ours by now, but in case you’re not…

Also, for those of you so inclined to listen, KABC’s DodgerTalk is now being podcast online. It’s usually up within 24 hours of the show, so listen in the next day if you’re not in Los Angeles or just want to hear Ken and Soosh talk about the team with your fellow fans.

And don’t forget, Friday is the sleepover. Have any of you been to this before? It’s a pretty cool annual event and this year is even better because we’re showing Field of Dreams after the Dodger game (and then you and dad can have a catch on the field, right?)

Here’s tonight’s lineup:

Furcal, SS

Martin, C

Ethier, RF

Manny, LF

Blake, 3B

Loney, 1B

Kemp, CF

Castro, 2B

Wolf, P