L.A. crowd loud and proud
Or was it Saturday morning? When Game 3 began, at 5:10 Pacific time in the teeth of a Friday L.A. rush hour, people were still entering the parking gates, but much of the announced crowd of 53,114 were already in their Dodger Stadium seats and energized. (And yes, we are well aware that the number included a good number of New England expatriates wearing Red Sox gear. Trust me, they let us know when they’re in our midst.) It ended at 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning, on Max Muncy’s walkoff home run off of Nathan Eovaldi. And the impressive part? More than 40,000 people, by my estimation, were still in the ballpark and they were yelling, screaming and roaring. The noise level didn’t dissipate all evening, and while some is artificial — the Dodgers are notorious for turning the speakers up to 11 on a 1-to-10 scale — much was organic. “The fans were unbelievable,” Muncy said afterward. “L.A. kind of has a reputation of fans showing up late, leaving early, but that wasn’t the case tonight. They were there early and they were there for the whole game, and they were loud for the entire game. Every time we got into a big moment on defense, they got loud and we got the out. The stadium was rocking. Same thing on offense; any time we got something going, they were loud. They were unbelievable tonight.” Would Red Sox fans have stayed through a sevenhour game at Fenway? I have no doubt that many would, though the idea of hanging around until 3:30 in the morning to see a game to its finish might be a tough call. There are advantages to living in the Pacific time zone, after all.