Tradition Takes a Back Seat

This might sound a little silly.

But I always sort of liked it that the ushers and ticket takers at Dodger Stadium looked as if, at any moment, they might pull out a harmonica and play, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

This is probably too sentimental.

But I always thought it was neat that the ushers and tickets takers at Dodger Stadium looked as if they could have been dropped from a box of Cracker Jack.

The boater straw hats. The starched white shirts. The crisp blue blazers.

For all but one of the last 23 years, the folks who worked at Dodger Stadium looked as much like baseball as the folks who played there.

This old fool finds it a little bit sad that today they don’t.

The usher and ticket taker uniforms have changed.

From Cooperstown to Disneyland. From bubble gum cartoon to fashion magazine. From kindly to slick.

The ice cream hats have been replaced by Greg Norman hats.

The collared shirts and jackets have been replaced by designer golf shirts and sweater vests.

The blue pants and skirts are now khakis.

And the moving museum pieces are now walking billboards.

Yep, the shirts and pants contain the name of a clothing company.

It’s one thing to sneak advertising on the outfield fences. But advertising now greets you at the Dodger Stadium door and shows you to your seats.

Oh, and the new uniform is brown and dark blue, colors that are seen on several athletic teams today, albeit none of them the Dodgers.

After years of hearing employees complain about the uniform’s comfort, the change took place during the last homestand, just after the all-star break.

With the exception of a “throwback” uniform worn only in 1990, it is the first change since 1977.

But if you weren’t there, you didn’t know. There was no press release, no fanfare.

“Honestly, we didn’t think it was worthy of a big announcement,” said Bob Graziano, club president.

It probably wasn’t. After all that has happened since Peter O’Malley walked away, why would it be?

What does a straw hat mean to an organization that has, piece by piece, lost so much more?

What is a thin tie to fans weary of complaining about everything from longer concession lines to fewer organ riffs?

A wardrobe, perhaps, is only as powerful as the spirit that moves beneath it.

I asked a friend who is a season-ticket holder what he thought about the new outfits.

He said he didn’t notice.

“I’m wondering why they can’t play fundamental baseball, and you’re writing about straw hats?” he said.

He was not alone.

The Dodgers have had few complaints. The ushers and ticket takers, who like the sharper togs except for the advertising, mostly have heard from people asking where they can buy the stuff.

(Answer: You can’t, because then you couldn’t tell the ushers from the fans, right?)

“There are a few people who say we look like we should be working Mark Twain’s riverboats, but not many,” one usher said.

Not that there aren’t still a few who remember.

“An usher was walking in with us today, and I looked at her, and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s different,’ ” Jim Heaton, a longtime fan from the central coast, said before a game during the last homestand. “I really miss the boater hats. Wasn’t that part of tradition?”

But more are like Bill Kelsberg from Calabasas.

“At least they don’t look like they are selling ice cream,” he said. “You’ve got a new stadium, new luxury boxes, why not have a new uniform? Tradition be damned.”

For the male employees, that tradition included a hat that fried them in the summer.

“There was no ventilation in those hats, they were really uncomfortable when it became hot,” said Ray Alvarado, a six-year veteran. “And there’s nothing worse than wearing ties in the summer.”

For the women, it was a matter of modesty.

“Our females would have difficulty sometimes climbing stairs or climbing on platforms because they knew people could look up their skirts,” said April Thompson, manager of ushers and ticket takers.

Indeed, the only thing another friend could tell me about memories of the uniform was that, as a youngster, between innings, he would stand on the first level and look up the skirts of ushers manning the aisles on the second level.

Local comedians used to even make jokes about that view.

So the skirts were lengthened. Fair enough.

But was it absolutely necessary to restitch every other inch of what had subtly become part of the Dodger soul?

An organization that can dig a restaurant behind home plate cannot make cooler uniforms without changing their style?

Graziano, who had been working for three years on the change, including using employee surveys, said there was no other choice.

“The old uniforms were frankly getting old, some of them were held together with pins,” he said, “We wanted to make the employees feel comfortable and good about themselves.”

Graziano said the advertising is, um, a sign of the times.

“By having a sponsor, we are able to give the ushers several different items of clothing so they can mix and match,” Graziano said. “I suppose you could avoid a sponsor on anything, but the reality is that they are needed.”

The reality is, this is the Dodger reality, and we are numb to it. The owner changes, the players change, the setting changes, three years later that accelerating Fox train is speeding out of control, and everything is blurred.

“These uniforms are still traditional,” Thompson insisted. “They still have ‘Dodgers’ on them.”

This may sound a little silly. But if that’s supposed to make us feel better, then we should feel very bad indeed.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].