Leaving the stadium down 7-0 with 7 outs left, trailing 3-1 in a 7 game series is “bandwagon” in your bitter book? That’s amusing. There’s a great difference between not wanting to see a visiting team celebrate on your home field after a long, extremely SUCCESSFUL season and being a fair weather fan. It’s actually quite uninformed of you to suggest Boston fans are fair weather as you can hear “Let’s Go Red Sox” chanted in almost every other city they come and play in all season long and frankly are there long after the Dodgers or Angel fans have gone home, gathering by the visiting dugout to give respect as they leave the field. Sorry you can’t forgive a few thousand die hards who didnt expect to see the second greatest comeback in professional baseball history.

As a devout 40+ year fan of the Sox it gives me great pleasure to irritate “baseball fans” like you. Winning baseball, strong farm teams, a commitment to every pitch, pure love of the game, strong history – I can see why you hate us. Deal with it.

What most people outside LA don’t know is just how poorly Dodger Stadium is integrated into the neighborhood. Leaving the parking lot for the Harbor Freeway is five lanes, but only one lane on the onramp. Same for the Golden State Freeway, the Hollywood Freeway at Echo Park or Temple, Scott Avenue to the Glendale Freeway (which was closed for many years). And in the playoffs, when lots of regulars sell their tickets*, then you get a crowd of folks who aren’t used to driving at Dodger Stadium. A sellout traffic jam for (say) the fireworks games or Opening Day during the season is never nearly as bad getting out of the stadium as a playoffs sellout. I have seen it take an hour to get from the parking lot to the streets (not even the freeways!) if there is an accident. And you can’t really hang out to let the traffic disperse; they stop cooking everything, so you can’t even buy a late snack unless you want something cold.

I have sold my playoff tickets exactly once in all the years I shared in our family’s season seats, going all the way back to the first year Dodger Stadium opened. I had a job that insisted I work basically all that weekend. I could not get out of it. Sure, I was paid OT, but it was 1981, and this rookie Fernando was supposed to pitch against the Yankees, and it was October and my birthday, for Koufax’s sake! Then I sold the two tickets for half of what my entire season tickets cost, and I realized why some folks sell their playoff tickets; they need the money. As soon as I found another job, I quit. Fernando won that game, the Dodgers won the Series, but I wasn’t there as I was in 1965 and 1988.

To understand Dodger Stadium traffic, they are within two miles or less of four different freeways (Glendale, Golden State, Harbor/Pasadena, Hollywood) going in almost every direction from downtown Los Angeles. But street traffic into the stadium on big games can be awful. There was no public transportation without a fairly good steep hike from Sunset Blvd. (the nearest). So in those days, you drove. Maybe you parked outside the Stadium and hiked in, to save on parking (and depending on circumstances, possible saving time leaving). But you drove.

I hate to give the McCourts credit for much of anything, because of all the bad stuff they’ve done to the Stadium and the way they’ve shafted folks who have been loyal fans for decades in search of a few extra dollars. But I’ll give them full credit for working hard on the traffic problem. There are now regular free shuttle buses to Union Station, about 15 minutes away assuming heavy but not insane traffic. From Union Station, you can take the metro (light train) anywhere, you can take CalTrain to lots of outlying suburbs, and you can connect with any large number of buses. They keep Scott Avenue closed before the games, so the neighborhood isn’t impacted early (especially with scalpers and parkers) but after the game you can drive out, bringing the Glendale Freeway back into service. They changed traffic flow within the parking lots to make it easier for everybody to get in and out without having to force your way into traffic. And so people stay later at the game. Sure, you’ll still see some folks leave early, for whatever reason. But in general, even in games that aren’t close, fans stay later because they aren’t going to get as badly stuck sitting in traffic. If they would let the Stadium Club restaurant stay open AFTER the game for general public service, then it would even be okay to stick around late and let traffic disperse.

The Rays will have walked off Fenway thinking they’d been kicked in the teeth — but all their concentration is now on Game 6. Momentum switch? Doesn’t happen. Won’t happen.

A hallmark of professional sportsmen is their single-mindedness; they treat every game as Game 1 of a one-game series. Any other approach leads to a lesser performance, which leads to defeat.

And nothing concentrates the mind better than a loss in a game that looked won.