At Dodger Stadium, the Players Aren’t All on the Field These Days

When pharmaceutical representative Mark Shuster wanted to brief doctors on the latest in depression and anxiety treatments, he invited a dozen of them to a Dodger game.

As twilight descended and game time neared, the Pfizer Inc. rep hosted a round-table discussion in a conference room in the belly of the ballpark. Then, he adjourned his guests to a prime rib and turkey buffet, and finally led them to their game seats in the stadium Dugout Club right behind home plate, close enough to see into the pitchers’ eyes.

“I’m sure if you polled the people tonight at Dodger Stadium, there’s a lot of business going on, so it’s not unusual,” said Shuster. “If I don’t do it here, I do it on the golf course. That’s just how business is done in America.”

This season, corporate clients and well-heeled fans can, for the first time at Dodger Stadium, watch the action from sparkling new luxury accommodations. The 564-seat Dugout Club has reduced the size of the foul territory behind home plate but has created what some are calling the best seats in baseball.

There also are 33 new luxury suites at the press box level of Dodger Stadium, where fans can sit on a terrace in Herman Miller Aeron chairs or inside where it is air-conditioned and fully furnished, with concierge service and food catered by Wolfgang Puck and Levy Bros.

The Dodgers are the last team in the major leagues to offer such luxury accommodations. For a club that has the second-highest payroll in baseball, the $50-million renovation project has created a critical new source of revenue, reflecting the lucrative and expanding relationship between business and sports.

The suites range in price from $195,000 to $300,000 a season, among the most expensive in baseball, and 85% are sold. For a set of four season tickets in the Dugout Club seats behind home plate--90% sold-out--the cost is $95,000 and includes use of a suite for eight games. The remaining seats and suites are available on an individual game basis for anything from birthday parties to corporate events.

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The price for the 15 seats and conference room used by Shuster was $3,225 for the night. The buffet, refreshments served throughout the game and use of a business center offering copy, fax and other office services were also included.

A Dodger victory was not.

From the luxury suites, the view is spectacular--the field a perfectly lined diamond, the ball a veritable pearl zipping, bounding and soaring above the carpet of Santa Ana Bermuda.

“Look at this view,” said Gary Goetzman, a season suite holder and longtime Dodger fan who, as a child, would sit in the stands down the left-field line, hoping a foul ball might come his way.

“I love seeing this game, and I love seeing this game be successful. . . . I love that it’s pretty much a gentle, human game,” he said, as fans rose for the national anthem, “and you have to be patient, and you have to wait for the exciting moments. Yet there’s this duel going on constantly throughout it. I love that there’s no clock.”

It was his passion for the game, along with the nature of his work as partner with Tom Hanks in Play-Tone, an entertainment production company, that led him to the pressroom-level suites.

Included in the suite are six television monitors (45 channels), VCR, stereo, live game feeds in both English and Spanish, Sub-Zero refrigerators. If you’re not interested in the game, you can check out a video and sit inside to watch a movie.

Goetzman was hosting a couple of Hollywood executives, Wendy Selig-Prieb, CEO of the opposing Milwaukee Brewers, and Chris Connelly, a magazine writer and on-air personality for MTV.

“In entertainment, there’s a theory that you should be lunching and dinnering and going to some kind of power breakfast,” Goetzman said. “We’re in a situation here where you don’t have to arrange a restaurant and a time. You can just say, ‘Let’s go to the Dodger game. You can come when you get here, early or late.’ You can talk about what you want to talk about and you can enjoy the game. . . . I think that’s what it’s become most useful for. It eliminates a lot of lunches and dinners.”

The suites are also great for watching baseball, said Connelly of MTV. A native New Yorker, he has lived in the Los Angeles area for 10 years. “It’s such a beautiful ballpark,” he said. “You feel very close to the game [in the suites]. The other thing is, this doesn’t have like an oppressively corporate feel.”

The one disadvantage, he noted, is that the suites are too high up to be within earshot of the field, depriving him of the opportunity to adequately heckle players, umpires or, even, at times, the bat boys.

He didn’t let it stop him, though others were more subdued.

“You can yell if you want, but everyone’s pretty polite,” he said. “This is Los Angeles.”

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Down the third-base line, in the Clear Channel suite, Greg Ashlock was hosting representatives from Volkswagen, a software company, an advertising agency and NAPA Auto Parts. Also there were his wife, in-laws and 18-month-old daughter, Abby.

Ashlock said the suite is used primarily to thank clients and “build relationships,” a term used often by suite holders as they watch the games. If business is to be done, it is completed before the opening pitch, said Ashlock, a sales director for the media conglomerate, which owns radio broadcast rights to the Dodgers and Angels.

“You have some of the executives for certain groups that do business with us who have grown accustomed to this kind of hosting,” said Ashlock. “The cost of the suite, when you first hear it, is a little hard to swallow, but I think what we’ve seen is increased business.”

Of course, it’s not all about business. There was, after all, a game being played, and it isn’t only the Los Angeles Lakers that attract Hollywood stars.

“We don’t push the celebrities sitting in the Dugout area because we want all our fans to feel they’re important,” said Kris Rose, Dodger executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “It’s not like the NBA slant.”

That didn’t stop them from showing Henry Winkler’s mug on the scoreboard as he watched the game.

Meanwhile, Mary Hart, co-host of “Entertainment Tonight,” was seated four rows back from the playing field. Dressed in T-shirt, Dodger-blue sweater and blue jeans, she focused on the game. She has been coming to the stadium for 20 years. Eighteen years ago, at the invitation of Tommy Lasorda, she sang the national anthem. Hart, husband Burt Sugarman and their 8-year-old son, A.J., have season tickets for the first time. Prompted by their son’s interest, the Dodgers have become a familiar topic of conversation around the house, she said, “and I want to be a part of that.”

For Hart, baseball has to do with family. She remembers the soothing sound of the game on television as she was growing up in South Dakota, family trips to Minneapolis to see the Twins. And, even now, the game comforts. “It takes my mind off show business, which is great,” she said.

Seated in front of them was Dennis Gilbert, a former baseball agent who now runs an insurance agency. He had come with one of three daughters, Hailey, 9, who was sampling the cotton candy, as Milwaukee’s Geoff Jenkins launched a shot into the outfield bleachers.

Gilbert represented players for 18 years, among them Mike Piazza, Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco. He has been attending Dodger games since 1958, when the team moved from Brooklyn. “This is wonderful,” he said of his prime vantage point. “There’s nothing else in baseball that puts you on the field like this. It makes you feel like you’re a part of the game.”

From his Dugout Club seat, he could see the speed, the angle of release of a Kevin Brown fastball, hear chatter from the dugout. “The closest anything comes to this is the old Seattle ballpark. They had private seating for people in the baseball business, but nothing like this for the fans.”

Michael Andreen and Toni DeVito of Los Angeles had brought their two sons to the game. Their four dugout club seat tickets were purchased for $600 at an auction to raise funds for Community Magnet School, a Los Angeles public school their sons attend. Depending on the opponent, tickets for these seats average $220.

“It’s fun to be down here,” DeVito said, “but the people aren’t as involved in the game, and that’s what I miss. It’s also a more homogenized crowd. . . . This seems more social, but I’m not complaining.”

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At Edison Field in Anaheim, the Angels offer 76 suites ranging in price from $51,500 to $175,000 per season, including 10 dugout-level suites behind home plate. The Angels also have about 2,000 Diamond Club seats behind home plate. A seat here costs almost $4,000 a season and includes privileges at a restaurant behind the seating area. The suites and club seats are sold out.

In one suite along the first-base line, Jackie Filbeck was at work for Corporate Images Sports Marketing, an advertising agency based in Rancho Santa Margarita. As client services manager, she plays an important role in the agency’s operations. As a tool to help clients sell their goods and services, Corporate Images offers its suites at Edison and the Arrowhead Pond, home of the Mighty Ducks, for entertaining.

Filbeck keeps notes of names and clients’ tastes, what kind of wine they drink, if they like to start with a beer, then switch to iced tea. If she senses business is being discussed, or if Mo Vaughn’s batting with a runner in scoring position, she knows not to interrupt.

One recent night, the client was Hewlett Packard, and their guests were representatives of key customers Taco Bell, Kaiser Permanente and Riverside County. Fred Valdez and Dave Robb, Hewlett Packard sales account representatives, said it’s a chance to, once again, “build relationships” and thank key customers for their business.

“It’s phenomenal,” said Valdez of the suite’s effectiveness. “When you can get a customer out of their work environment and into their own personal space, you develop really strong relationships, which is important because at the end of the day, people buy from people they like, people they know and understand.”

Filbeck pays close attention to details, a client’s nod of the head that could mean it’s time for a refill before conversation shifts to business. If there’s a lull or a change in mood is needed, she goes hunting for the dessert cart--laden with cheesecake, brownies, cookies and a host of toppings and liqueurs--to make an early entrance and liven things up.

Timing can be everything.

“You can go to a restaurant for a business meeting,” said Corporate Images president Mike Durnerin, “and you’re constantly being interrupted. If you try to meet over a round of golf, I probably slice the ball, and the guy I need to talk to probably hooks the ball, and we never get together.”

A suite and a ballgame, he said, makes more sense. Filbeck, in conjunction with Angel staff, also arranges for souvenirs, sometimes even visits by ballplayers before a game, anything to facilitate the objectives of the meeting.

One Corporate Images client, a computer manufacturer he didn’t want to name, recently was negotiating with an auto manufacturer in a program that would provide the auto manufacturer’s employees with home computers. It was a series of meetings, said Durnerin, one of which was hosted by Corporate Images at the Pond, another meeting at Edison Field.

“We were told by the principals that that environment was particularly effective in moving the discussions to the next level. . . . It’s not like you’re sitting around a table and are expected to think nonstop about business. Sometimes, I think that creates deadlock.”

Of course, one doesn’t need a luxury suite to enjoy a warm summer night--the kind of night there will always be in baseball. Up in the stands, for $6 a seat, you can still heckle the bums, toss down a hot dog and even “build relationships.”