Sometimes, spending 30 bucks can be the worst feeling in the world. It can buy you some shameful things: a few minutes of phone sex, some bad Thai takeout, or two tickets to a Nicolas Cage movie plus a small butterless popcorn and a syrupy Sierra Mist. And then, sometimes, you buy a loge seat to watch Greg Maddux take on Jason Schmidt in the best pitching duel seen in Dodger Stadium since Orel Hersheiser decamped his Mormon ass to Cleveland.

Maddux went eight innings and threw 68 pitches.He gave up two reasonably hard singles in the first and then made a spectacular spear of a Barry Bonds line drive, turning it into a double play. Not one more Giant reached base on his watch. Schmidt was just as good, if not as economical; the Dodgers looked like they were swinging sticks of butter against him. As the anonymous, underrated comedian who runs the Dodger Blues website wrote, "Once in a while there's a game that makes you remember what baseball used to be like before steroids, shitty pitching, and the disappearance of fundamentals. Sunday was that game--a pitcher's duel straight out of the 1970s."

Speaking of the 70s, my grandfather used to take me to games in that godforsaken decade. We didn't go to Dodger Stadium, because he lived in San Diego. So I cut my teeth at Jack Murphy, with a little Dave Winfield and a lot of Ed Spezio.

I only mention this because my grandfather used to pretend to talk to the Padres manager on his watch. He'd tell me that the skipper didn't make a decision until he called it in. I believed him, largely because I wanted to but also because the Padres were, for a time, managed by their play-by-play announcer, Jerry Coleman.

On Thursday night, I passed the baton down to my son.

With a man on first in the middle innings, and the game nearing a turning point, I whipped out my cell phone and told Elijah that I had to call the manager in the dugout.

"What's a manager?" Elijah asked.

"He's a guy who tells the players what to do. He's usually fat and fights with the umpire."

"Oh."

"I need to tell him what to do."

I leaned into the phone and said,

"Hey, Grady, Drew should pull the ball to right...hang on, my son wants to talk to you."

Elijah stared at the phone blankly.

"Talk to him," I said.

"Pull it right!" he said.

Later, at home, we were telling Regina about the evening.

"Elijah, what did daddy do with his phone tonight?"

"Oh god, "Regina said. "Please tell me that you didn't."

"I did," I said.

Elijah said, "Daddy talked to the director!"

"The manager. And what did I say to him?"

"PULL IT!"

And now back to our regularly scheduled game story.

At the Maddux-Schmidt game, I did what I usually do on those meditative evenings when I attend alone: Switch seats a lot. Tonight, I didn't have much of a choice. I happened to land next to a droopy-eyed man who seemed, from the frequency with which he was grabbing his girlfriend's boobs, to have graduated from The Joe Francis School Of Lady Treatment. Also, whenever Barry Bonds shifted his jockstrap, he'd put his hands to his lips and bellow "STEROIDS!" at the top of his lungs. I bailed before I got into a fight.

By the end of the game, I was on the first-base side of the loge, away from most of the anti-Bonds bellowers. I share their sentiment, but not their tactics. Also, I'd managed to inch my way down to the padded rows. If you wait long enough at a Dodger game, you'll be able to snag premium seats. As the game turned into a 0-0 tie in the 9th, at least 2,000 people rose in unison, heading for the parking lot.

Well, they missed a game-winning homerun by a rookie catcher whose middle name is Coltrane. I've seen some good Dodger moments in person, albeit most of them in 2004, but this game really iced the cupcake for me. But I don't know if I'm going to bring Elijah again or not this season. The playoffs loom. No more of this leaving after the seventh inning crap. Still, if I'd been talking to the manager on my cell, I definitely would have advised him to have Russell Martin pull the ball.

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