When my son was home recently, we took in a college baseball game and soon found ourselves having the usual discussion. At some point he always comments on a player's lame walk-up music. I then respond by suggesting that the team eliminate walk-up music entirely, and go with appropriate sound effects. In that spirit, I offer my ideas for the Dodgers.

Chad Billingsley: two peals of thunder

Chris Capuano: a pillow tossed onto shag carpet

Todd Coffey: a recording of a Denny's buffet, Sunday morning

A. J. Ellis: Joe West shouts "Ball Four! Take your base!"

Mark Ellis: an old Regina vacuum cleaner

Scott Elbert: Mr. Burns, "Damned infernal gizmo. My kingdom for a left-handed can opener."

Andre Ethier: an erupting volcano

Dee Gordon: WHOOOOSHHH!

Javy Guerra: a slamming door, followed by the mouse click of the Cheers "We Win" posting

Matt Guerrier: from an old movie, a calendar's pages turn, thirty-six times

Tony Gwynn, Jr.: The San Diego Chicken, choking

Jerry Hairston: A knock at a door, followed by a free copy of The Watchtower

Aaron Harang: Lasorda discussing Dave Kingman's performance

Kenley Jansen: a bazooka

Matt Kemp: a rampaging bison charges across Yellowstone

Adam Kennedy: a rocking chair and a walker on linoleum

Clayton Kershaw: Vin says "public enemy number 1"

Ted Lilly (DL): Namesake Theodore Roosevelt: "Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft."

Josh Lindblom: Albuquerque traffic

James Loney: 50,000 people sigh

Mike MacDougal: Lisa Simpson, "Dad, that's Mac Tonight."

Juan Rivera: a cash register

Justin Sellers: a tattoo needle

Matt Treanor: a beach volleyball game

Juan Uribe: many coins circle a drain

Jamey Wright: Bones McCoy, "He's dead, Jim."

Way back when I was an undergraduate, I bought a Hiroshima Carp T-shirt, pretty much because the name amused me.  Carp.  What kind of nickname was Carp?  It never occurred to me then that I might actually see the Carp in action, but such was the case last Thursday night, August 19, in Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium, as former Dodger Eric Stults and his new team took on the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.

My son teaches in a small city north of Hiroshima, so Japanese baseball and the Carp of my old T-shirt in particular had been on my radar since we started planning the trip.  It didn't hurt that we arrived in Tokyo just as the nation was growing transfixed by the annual high school championship series.  As we went from Tokyo to Kyoto to Hiroshima over the next week I also discovered that despite being pretty bad, the Carp are amazingly popular.  Throughout the trip I saw one person wearing a Yomiuri Giants cap and a few first-place Hanshin Tigers caps, but Carp fans were everywhere, like the pre-Manny Red Sox Nation.  Indeed in and around Hiroshima itself, support for the Carp is overwhelming, with player posters and other team images all over town.

As Bob Timmermann warned me months ago, August in Hiroshima is darned hot, with daytime temperatures in the upper nineties.  It was still stifling at five o'clock when we started walking from the train station to the stadium.  Mazda Zoom-Zoom is new, having replaced the old municipal stadium across from ground zero only last year.  Nonetheless, a sort of Wrigleyville has quickly grown up around the new yard, including baseball-themed restaurants and stores, and waiters and clerks all in Carp jerseys.  After a quick run at souvenirs, we bought upper deck, third base-side tickets and settled into our backless seats.  Over the left field wall was a surprisingly attractive view of the rail yard, the lovely city behind it, and the mountains in the distance.  I soon noticed two upper deck sections unconnected to the rest of the tier.  I quickly learned that the one out in right field was for the Carp's loudest boosters, the cheering section.  A smaller section in the left field corner was reserved for the visitors.  We purchased beer from one of the woman vendors, all of whom carry a keg on their backs, and waited for the game to start.  A kid came out to throw the ceremonial first pitch, and I learned that in Nippon Professional Baseball, a member of the visiting team is supposed to stand at home plate, swing, and miss the ball.  The Swallow so honored didn't seem too enthusiastic.  It also was throwback uniform week in the Central League, so the Carp came out in their faux Pete Rose Big Red Machine unis they wore when last a good team.

The game itself went bad quickly.  Stultsie couldn't find home plate, walking three straight batters after getting the first out before giving up a two-run single and a home run.  Somewhere, Ned Colletti murmured "I told you so."  All this time, the Swallow fans in their perch had been cheering along with their brass band, but after the homer, they all happily pulled out umbrellas, something that Yakult fans do traditionally when a pitcher seems on the way to the showers.  Showers, get it?  Stults got out of the inning, and only gave up one more run, but the damage was done.  Still, the home crowd of maybe 25,000 stayed in the game.  Every home at-bat was accompanied by music, cheers, and the constant banging of thunder sticks.  Heck, they stayed in the game even when Vinnie Chulk came on to pitch.  A woman in front of us was so amused to see three gaijan cheering that she gave us some watermelon cubes she had brought with her to supplement our hot-dogs-on-a-stick.

Then came the seventh inning stretch, which beggars description.  No "God Bless America" here.  Instead, the Carp fans first all sang their fight song.  In translation, it goes:

"Carp, Carp, Carp, Hiroshima, Hiroshima Carp, If you fly to the sky heaven will open it's breast.  Certainly fighting at this time today, Far and high, far and high, Raise the flag of glory, Carp, Carp, Carp, Hiroshima, Hiroshima Carp!"

After the singing we released the balloons.  Yes, I said balloons.  These balloons are specially designed to inflate quickly and then fly to heaven's breast before falling back to earth.  Manufactured in red, they become pink when inflated to over two feet in length, which meant that right before release the stadium looked rather pornographic.  Thank your lucky stars that Charles Steinberg never saw this.

Eventually the Carp went down to another defeat, final score 7-2.  On the way out we encountered a disgusted fan who kept saying that fifth place was unacceptable, and that big changes had to be made.  I felt like I knew the guy--surely he comments on baseball blogs.  Nonetheless, I had a great time at my first game in Japan, and would recommend the experience to any baseball fan lucky enough to do so.

There is much gnashing of teeth in the Dodger World these days.  The annual meltdown in St. Louis only magnifies the usual complaints: the continuing tawdriness of the McCourt divorce, the growing unease that seems to surround Ned Colletti at every trading deadline, the apparent decline of Manny Ramirez and Casey Blake, the head scratching that follows every questionable on-the-field decision of Matt Kemp or bad game on the mound.  Moreover, there is the growing fear that the ship has sailed, that the promise that began with the so-called "Jacksonville Five" will ultimately prove false, lost in a Matt Stairs-induced haze.  At times like these--and at age 52 I've experienced many times like these--I like to remind myself why I'm a Dodger fan in the first place.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson came to the big leagues.  Who doesn't know that?  That fall, the Dodgers took on the Yankees in the World Series, the first of those epic contests that were to define post-World War II baseball.  A long way from New York City, in a small, unremarkable Virginia town called Elliston, the employees at the local meat-packing plant decided to have a World Series pool.  But there was a problem--no one in that southern plant would put any money on the integrated Dodgers.  Finally, the organizers approached the woman who would someday be my grandmother.  Until that moment, she had never paid any attention to organized sports.  But as her co-workers explained the situation, she found herself growing angry.  And she finally exploded, saying in the polite vernacular of the times, "Good Lord!  We don't let the colored people do anything else.  Why can't we at least let them play baseball?"  And with that she pulled a dollar out of her purse and placed it on the team from Brooklyn.

They lost, of course.  They usually did lose to the Yankees.  But over the years, she stayed with the Dodgers.  It wasn't easy.  She never told her son or her husband, worried about what they would think.  But every year she followed them quietly, and every year she pulled out that dollar.  The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.  She didn't care--as she said years later, she was never going to see Brooklyn or California, so it didn't matter to her.  Along came other players who became her favorites--Roy Campanella, and then Sandy Koufax.  In 1965, Koufax pitched the Dodgers to another World Series victory as she sat on her sofa, her grandson--me--at her side.  "That's Sandy Koufax," she told me, "he's the greatest pitcher who's ever lived.  And those are the Dodgers.  That's my team."  By the end of the series, as the Dodgers celebrated in Minnesota, they were my team too.  I went out in the back yard and tried to become a lefthander.

Tough years followed.  The Orioles swept the Dodgers in 1966, and then what I remember as the dark sports nights of my childhood's soul followed.  My classmates teased me without mercy.  But as I got to high school, something amazing happened--the Dodgers started winning.  New names appeared in the box scores of the Roanoke Times: Garvey, Lopes, Russell, Cey, Ferguson, Yeager.  Sports Illustrated called them "The Little Blue Bicycle," chasing down the Big Red Machine.  Meanwhile, when it came to baseball, I was still my grandmother's confidant.  For the next years we rode the roller coaster of feast and famine.  I was at college when Reggie Jackson ended two dreams, but I was back at my grandmother's kitchen table keeping score when the Dodgers finally beat those Yankees in 1981. By 1988, I was away at grad school, trying to rock my son to sleep when Kirk Gibson hit that home run.  The phone rang.  

Four year later I was on the phone again.  As much as I refused to admit it, she was dying.  So we talked about the Dodgers prospects that year.  She was not hopeful.  It was the last real conversation we ever had.

Close to two decades later, I find myself shaking my head as the Cardinals come back to win.  Another series lost.  Fourth place.  Broxton!  And yet, there we are, I am a Dodger fan, there's no getting out of it, and sometimes that's how it goes.  If the Dodgers can't boast twenty-seven pennants, the Yankees can't boast a place in American history textbooks.  For me, the Dodgers have never been the hometown team, or the easy team to root for.  Nor are they Frank McCourt's team.  I know, it sounds pie-in-the-sky these days, but to me the Dodgers are still about Robinson and Rickey, Campy and Koufax, and a quiet woman's courage not only to say "enough" to the hatred of segregation, but to raise me to believe in justice too.  That's my team.