For summer parties, there’s no place like home field

SO HERE WE ARE BACK AT Dodger Stadium, our Grover’s Corner, our communal backyard. Mustard in the cuticles. Ice cream on your knee.

“You guys ready to eat?”

“In a little bit,” one of the kids says.

Sure, no problem. Out on the lawn, they’re playing some sort of game you can’t focus on because someone has fired up the grill and all you can think about is charred meat, black around the edges.

Charred meat predates baseball. It predates stadiums and Cracker Jack and probably even passion itself. I look at passing trays of hot dogs the way Adam looked at Eve.

“Want to eat now?” I ask.

“After the Dodgers hit,” the little girl says.

At the plate, the Dodgers’ Lo Duca is scissoring off foul balls.

Paul Lo Duca. Love the guy, but the ballclub ought to charge him for all those souvenirs he’s fouling into the stands. Doesn’t he know this place is for sale? No sense driving up expenses.

“Dodger Dogs here!” a vendor yells. “Dodger Dogs!” Now they’re stalking me. Since when are Dodger Dogs available from roving vendors? You’re supposed to stand in line for Dodger Dogs. It’s tradition. Dodger Dogs and beer. Everything else, they bring to your seat.

“OK, let’s eat,” I say when the first inning finally ends.

It’s a fine night here at Chavez Ravine, wherever you may be. From the high seats, you see the San Gabriel Mountains, purple as a bruise. Down lower, there’s that lawn. You could shoot billiards on that lawn.

Zuma’s great. Griffith Park has its moments. But Dodger Stadium is L.A.’s summer place. The biggest, busiest backyard in town.

“Next?” the woman at the snack bar asks.

Of course, everything’s still a la carte here. Beer, 7 bucks. Peanuts, $5. The vaunted Dodger Dog, $3.50. No one ever filled up on one Dodger Dog. One Dodger Dog is like one kiss. Like half a hug.

“Thirty,” the snack bar woman says.

“Dollars?”

“Thirty dollars,” she says.

Baseball: sport of kings.

Back in Aisle 142, we warm our hands on the food and make party talk.

“Spent three hours at the DMV today,”

my friend Steve tells me. “And I had an

appointment.”

“Three hours?”

“The post office I hate worse,” he says.

We chat about weekend projects and summer vacations. New bosses. Old cars. Finally Fenway, that great backyard back East. Time to tear it down, some say.

“Boston’s so strange,” says Steve, a native.

“Name a city that isn’t,” I say.

“But Boston is really strange,” he says.

Next to us, our daughters take turns braiding each other’s hair. That’s the nice thing about summer parties, all the idle time it leaves for hair care. With enough time, girls would braid each other beyond recognition.

“Like my new braids?” the little girl asks.

“Why do girls always groom each other?” wonders Steve, father to three.

Meanwhile, out on the mound, Kevin Brown is playing card tricks on the opposing hitters. One by one, they head back to the dugout, wondering how he does it. When he’s on, Brown is as good as Drysdale or Gibson. Tonight, he could throw a pork chop past a grizzly bear.

“Ninety-five miles per hour,” Steve says after one of Brown’s brutal fastballs.

“They couldn’t hit that with a rake,” I say.

In the seventh, everybody stands up and sings, then the Dodgers score a few runs. The scoreboard finally changes. Hosts 4, visitors 1.

In the ninth, King Kong arrives. That’s right, Eric Gagne, the Dodgers’ big closing pitcher.

“Here he comes!” yells the little girl.

In marches Gagne. Boom, boom, boom, across that perfect carpet. Boom, boom, boom. Fee-fi-fo-fum.

“Here comes Gagne,” says the little girl’s friend.

A strange thing is going on lately at Dodger Stadium. The fans aren’t fleeing after seven or eight innings. Most are sticking around till the party’s over, waiting for Gagne, the man with the golden gun. And no apparent neck.

“Au revoir!” screams a fan, as the French Canadian pitcher strikes out another batter with a mighty fastball.

“Au revoir!” he screams again, after Gagne throws a dead man’s curve and the fans all stand to leave.

Au revoir, Dodger Stadium, simplest of simple pleasures. The best backyard in town.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.