Fans Make the Call : In the Cellular Phone Era, Opening Day Is No Longer a Field Day

It was shortly after 1 p.m. Tuesday and Dodger hurler Orel Hershiser was on the mound, delivering the first pitch on Opening Day.

John P. Scolinos, meanwhile, was ensconced in his club level seat (Aisle 207, Row 3), dialing his first call of the 1994 major league baseball season.

Scolinos, food service sales manager for Farmer John meats, had just been beeped about a problem with a client, the Anaheim Pond. Seems the hot dogs delivered for sale at a Rod Stewart concert Tuesday night weren’t wide enough and the concession manager was requesting a thicker batch.

So with one hand on his ice cream malt and both eyes riveted on the baseball diamond, Scolinos took to his cellular telephone to solve the problem.

“Believe me, I’d much rather just be sitting here,” said Scolinos, who was dressed in a blue blazer, saddle shoes and a tie featuring a bevy of pink pigs. “But I am what you called wired. Truly wired.

“‘And not just because of the baseball game.”

For generations, Opening Day has been a time to play hooky from work, sip a brew or three, catch some rays and enjoy America’s national pastime up close and personal.

For plenty of spectators at sparkling Dodger Stadium on Tuesday afternoon, that was still the case.

But just as major league baseball has thrown out the record books this year by switching to three-division formats, many white-collar workers who showed up for a balmy afternoon at the ballpark did not quite uphold the tradition of fibbing to the boss about their whereabouts.

Rather, in this era of information superhighways, global villages and Dick Tracy-esque technological advances, some with choice seats at the field and club levels were loaded to the gills with pagers and portable phones, ready at the first vibration to turn their seats into extensions of the office.

“I’m just checking in,” said advertising executive R.J. Seggetti after hitting the “end call” button on his Motorola cellular as the Dodgers took the field for the fourth inning. “My office knows I’m here. It’s my son’s birthday so I just took the day off and brought him here. Before the communications age, I wouldn’t have thought about taking off. Now I can work from my seat.”

While Seggetti saw the era of mass telecommunications as a plus, others in the crowd viewed it as a distinct disadvantage.

Screenwriter Charles Klausmeyer, for one, had yet to take his seat when his beeper went off.

Because the Burbank resident was telecommunicatively challenged--he had a pager but not a cellular phone--he was forced to wait in line outside a Pacific Bell phone booth for nearly an inning in order to return the call.

“I can be reached anytime, anywhere,” Klausmeyer said. “But it’s not always good when I’m at a Dodgers game.”

In Klausmeyer’s case, the page was from his wife, whom he had called from his car phone, leaving a telephone message explaining that he had been offered a ticket to the game at the very last minute and made arrangements for friends to watch his children after school.

He could have reached her more quickly, Klausmeyer said, except that she had recently lost her pager.

“Let’s pray for a Dodgers victory and for a game that doesn’t go into extra innings,” the screenwriter said, worried that his wife would be angry that he had deserted his three children to attend Opening Day.

Others enjoyed the game the old-fashioned way--ditching work and leaving the high-tech hardware behind.

“Just say I’m Bill Clinton and if I could throw out the first pitch Monday in Cleveland and then go to the NCAA championship game in Charlotte on the same day, I can at least come to one game today,” joked a thirty-ish Dodger fan in a pressed white shirt and tie, who refused to divulge his true identity.

Still others had completed their workday by the time the Dodgers took the field.

“Our practice was from 9 to 11:30,” said Lakers coach Magic Johnson as he waited in line at a refreshment stand with his son and a nephew for hot dogs, pretzels, nachos and sodas.

“Opening Day in basketball doesn’t have this hoopla,” Johnson said. “This is like family day, a real tradition.”

For pure drama, the saga of Scolinos and the undersized hot dogs rivaled anything on the field during the Dodgers’ 4-3 victory.

Having determined the parameters of the crisis shortly before Marlins lead-off hitter Chuck Carr flied out to right field, Scolinos hung up his Motorola and briefly savored Hershiser’s fastball.

But as soon as the Dodger starter had retired the side, Scolinos clambered over a seat and made a mad dash for a pay phone to finish his business. The phone booth, he said, would be less noisy than his seat, and would allow him to conserve his cellular battery in case any additional emergencies arose during the game.

Calling the concessionaire first, Scolinos asked what size dogs would be suitable, considering the concerns about the ones that weighed in at eight per pound. “You want six-to-ones as opposed to eight-to-ones? We’ve got four-to-ones. You don’t want quarter-pounders? Let me call the plant and see if I have six-to-ones.”

“Hey, Mac, is Al there?” Scolinos asked after dialing the home office. “We’ve got seven-to-ones? All right.”

At that point, a loud cheer arose from the crowd. Center fielder Brett Butler had just hit a triple, knocking home the Dodgers’ first run of the season. Scolinos cradled the phone in his left hand, asking what had happened.

“Can we get 80 cases over to him today for the concert?” he continued. “Yeah, Al, I’ll hold.”

Moments later, the delivery plans were confirmed, the quality control department had weighed in with its approval and Scolinos sauntered back to his seat.

“Unless I get beeped again, it’s all taken care of,” he said, his voice exhibiting that touch of hope so common to baseball fans across America on Opening Day. “But you never know. There’s always something happening.”