Wild Pitch : Marriott Says It Erred Again at the Ballpark

So you’re at it again, huh? Most people would have learned their lesson by now but not you Marriott Corp. folks. Still, we fans can’t help but admire your nerve. When it comes to chutzpah, you swing for the fences. When it comes to corporate relations, well. . . . Steeeeee-rike three!

You swaggered into Dodger Stadium this season to take over the food concessions and immediately took on sacred cows. First you told Roger the Peanut Man he couldn’t hurl peanut bags to customers anymore. (Then you said it was just a misunderstanding. Please throw, Roger.) Worse, you stopped grilling Dodger Dogs. (Now you say Dodger Dogs are being grilled at more stands than ever.) But now we see all that was just a little warm-up. You were gunning for the sacredest ballpark heifer of them all--the national anthem.

How else do you explain the memo circulated two Sundays ago to food stand managers stating that “effective immediately . . . all food employees and ticket takers will keep working during the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

You even said it in boldface! Talk about a swing and a miss. This being the Fourth of July, a little muckraking seems in order.

Oh say can you see why the workers reacted like the rockets’ red glare? What so proudly they hailed, they would continue to hail, employees told you.

“I have no intention of working through the national anthem, and I dare them to fire me over it,” a Field Level worker huffed later. This might be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but she requested anonymity.

Concession stand manager Nick Kavadas, a shop steward for Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, said that when one of your Marriott minions showed him the memo, “I told her I’m going to honor the national anthem and my people are too. We’ve done it for 28 years and we’re not stopping now.”

One worker, Kavadas said, responded the way a Patriot missile responds to a Scud. “She tore the copy up and said she won’t obey it. Then she was taken to the office and accused of destroying company property.”

Conspiracy theorists were having a field day. What was going on? Had a cabal of Canadians waged a hostile takeover? Was Roseanne Barr involved? What next? Would fans be told to please remain seated for the seventh-inning stretch?

And then suddenly somebody somewhere realized that, gee, maybe Marriott shouldn’t take such an un-American position. With the big postwar patriotism kick and all, some genius realized this bonehead move could top the Dodger Dog fiasco.

So you went running around to the food stands, handing out new memos. “Stop all activities while the national anthem is being played,” it declared.

Meanwhile, you tried to collect all the old memos, according to Kavadas. Some people suspected a political cover-up. That may be a great American tradition in its own right, but the true patriots saved some copies.

And so now you’re telling us--not for the first time--that, gosh, we didn’t mean it, forgive us, we’re sorry. There is no joy in Marriottville, is there?

“There was some confusion between a Dodger supervisor and our supervisors,” explained Mel Clemens, who as Marriott’s general manager at the stadium has become an expert on confusion.

The second memo, Clemens said, “clarified” the first.

Like day clarifies night.

You say that stadium operations manager Bob Smith, who works for the Dodgers, was mixed up in the memo mess.

The way Smith tells it, it started with some complaints from the fans. (Right. Blame it on us.) Some fans allegedly complained that although food servers stood at attention during the anthem, food preparers kept on working. Smith said he told Marriott supervisors that if food was being prepared during the anthem, they might as well serve it too.

“The decision made by us and the Dodgers was with the fans in mind,” said Lon Rosenberg, Marriott’s Field Level supervisor. He was quick to admit the play was bungled. “When you rock a tradition like that, it’s wrong.”

But whatever the Dodgers’ role, it was your memo.

“The fault lies with the food corporation, not the Dodgers,” said union official Miguel Contreras. He suspects mercenary instincts were at work: “They try to cost out every single penny there and they figured to save a few pennies working through the national anthem.”

Workers have been very patient, Contreras says, enduring your indoctrination and payroll snafus. Veteran workers have been grousing for months about the new management.

That might explain why, on the second memo, instruction No. 5 was “SMILE!!” and why No. 15 was “SMILE!! It’s contagious.”

“The question that is in the workers’ minds,” Contreras said, “is how many strikes does Marriott get before they’re out?”

Lucky for you Bob Graziano is one of the umpires. The Dodgers’ vice president of finance said he doesn’t suspect pinko politics or profiteering. He accepts the “misunderstanding” explanation.

After that rough start, he says, “Marriott reacted very quickly to a lot of the problems . . . . In my opinion it’s smoothed out a great deal.”

But we fans know what happens often when a big-league manager on a losing streak gets the vote of confidence from the brass. Could it be--dare we say it--the proverbial kiss of death?

Hey, don’t sweat it. Strawberry’s been hurting too. But the Dodgers are in first and the Dodger Dogs are grilled.

So smile.

It’s contagious.