Section Gets a Grade of FF

Don’t do it. Don’t go there.

Fans told me, if you must watch a Dodger game from the stands this season, watch it from the reserved level with the die-hards, watch it from the pavilion with the trembling Giant jerseys, or just stay in the bathroom listening to Vinnie.

But do not -- do not! -- watch it from Aisle 30, Row FF.

The row that Frank forgot.

No-batters’ land.

“Great location, pretty section, it looks like a great seat,” longtime season-ticket holder Phil Sperling said. “But then you sit down.”

And then, folks warned, you are as lost as Hee-Seop Choi against a left-hander.

Down the right-field line, just past the visitors’ dugout, six rows from the field, the row is part of owner Frank McCourt’s clumsy, $20-million, 1,600-seat renovation.

It must have been one of those parts where project manager Drew McCourt was taking a seventh-inning stretch.

For $70 to $85 a ticket, welcome to life on the FF:

You cannot always see the hitter. The incline between the rows is so slight, and the seats are so jammed together, if a person taller than 6 feet is sitting in front of you, you might never see a swing.

You cannot always see the right fielder. If the person sitting in front of you has a large head, J.D. Drew becomes only a rumor.

You are not even guaranteed an easy restroom break. Because the row is 25 seats long -- is that a major league record? -- it takes courage and dexterity to even trek to the aisle.

And, oh yeah, sitting blind and bloated, you are at constant risk of beheading by foul balls that scream through the seats.

“If you want to have a few beers and soak in the atmosphere and feel like you’re part of the game, it’s great,” Sperling said. “If you want to actually watch the game? No.”

Complaints have been flying from foul pole to foul pole since McCourt’s new configuration was foolishly rolled out without a test drive two weeks ago.

Some new seats have fan-obstructed views. Some old field-level seats have fan-obstructed views. And because of an obstruction by the new wraparound video board that seemingly sells a variety of Steve Garvey products, those poor folks in the last row of the field-level seats cannot see a scoreboard.

“What’s the score?” I asked John Metters, a mortgage banker who paid $75 for his seat in Aisle 1 on Monday night.

“Lemme check,” said Metters, tapping the fan in front of him.

That’s bad.

“That’s not just bad. For this kind of money, that stinks,” Metters said.

But perhaps only down in Row FF did one man pull out his cellphone during the middle of the home opener to demand that his credit-card company refuse the season-ticket charges.

Perhaps only in Row FF did another man, Sperling, walk away from his seat vowing to never sit there again.

“The idea was good,” Sperling said, “but then you get there and it’s like, ‘Oh man, you can’t see!’ ”

So, of course, I had to see.

Walking down there Monday night during the middle innings of the Dodgers’ loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, I spotted four nice folks sitting in Row FF’s four end seats, 22 through 25.

One of them was bobbing and weaving like a boxer.

“I’ve been doing this all game, it’s exhausting,” petite Lisa Osborne said. “It’s the only way I can see anything. And I still can’t see anything.”

Another was sitting stoically, shaking her head.

“I’m a lot taller than Lisa, and I haven’t seen a thing either,” Kathy Anderson said.

A man was offering an informal anatomy lesson.

“I have a theory about the people who sit in front of you in this section,” said Gary Anderson, the Long Beach City College basketball coach. “Long necks, big heads, you’re dead.”

The fourth was a man with a plan.

“What they need to do here is have the usher seat everyone by height,” said Mike Osborne, a Long Beach businessman. “Either that, or have everyone in the front rows take off their caps and shave their heads like me.”

Moving down the row, I found someone who, because of an odd mixture of small necks and tiny heads, could see most of the batter.

“Actually, it’s great, I can see everything ... except the pitcher,” student Louis Eisner said.

Sitting next to him, businessman Will Levine shrugged.

“It’s just annoying,” he said. “If you’re not that tall, you shouldn’t have to strain to see the batter, should you?”

I needed to find out. So I threw my 6-foot-2 frame over the back of Seat 17, apparently tearing my groin in the process.

For the last four innings, sitting in Seat 17, I watched the Diamondbacks defeat the Dodgers. Well, I watched at least some of them defeat some of them.

I never saw Troy Glaus bat. I couldn’t see Luis Gonzalez bat. If I rocked back and forth, I could catch full but occasional glimpses of Drew playing right field.

I poked the shoulder of the dude in front of me, an apparent giant who was blocking my every view of the batter’s box.

“I’m just 6 foot 1,” said Billy Abel, a contractor, shrugging, smiling. “I feel bad but, hey ... “

Even though I was sitting seemingly mere feet from the right-field line, I couldn’t see balls hit into the corner.

Even though I was seemingly on the back of the first base coach, I still needed to stretch or strain to see the swings.

But I can tell you all about Billy Abel’s ratty black cap.

It could have been worse. Ginger Henry, who sat on my left, reminded me that I could have been a child.

Henry brought her son Raymond, 8, to a game recently and sat in a similar seat down the right-field line. She became worried when she heard him cheering five seconds after everyone else would cheer.

“Then I realized, he was watching the entire game on the video screen, because he couldn’t see the real game,” she said. “If you’re coming down here, do not bring kids.”

Her friend Jim Spishak laughed.

“Wait a minute. I’m lucky kids are here, because kids are sitting in front of me, so I can see,” he said.

By the end of the game, I had seen enough, so I called the Dodgers to ask the obvious, intelligent, probing-journalist sort of questions.

How in the heck could something this boneheaded happen?

How could you spend

$20 million on stadium renovations and not ensure that

everyone could, um, er, see the game?

One would think, if there are only two parts of a baseball stadium that must be in plain sight of all paying customers, that would be the batter’s box and the scoreboard.

How could the Dodgers muff both?

Drew McCourt, the son of Frank, seems to be a really good kid, smart, well-intentioned.

But perhaps he was overmatched here as project manager.

Marty Greenspun, the club’s chief operating officer, acknowledged that there were issues that needed fixing.

He said 86% of the new seats have been sold, and said there have been only 80 ticket-holders who have asked to be relocated, although I’ve received that much e-mail about the issue alone.

“There have been a few complaints, we’ve addressed those, and we’re going to look at a long-term solution in the off-season,” Greenspun said.

In other words, more digging, more money, less chance of Frank McCourt using the increased seat revenue to buy an important player.

Greenspun wouldn’t say what they were doing, although here’s hoping it involves lowering the field.

“We’re evaluating everything,” he said.

Greenspun refused to place blame, but one must wonder if the Dodgers didn’t let green blind them to blue.

In cramming so many seats into such a small space, they were trying to reap more dollars at the expense of common sense.

If there were one fewer row in the 11-row section that includes FF, maybe there would be enough elevation between seats to make a difference.

If there were one aisle in the middle of those 25 seats, maybe that also would make a difference.

And if only that wraparound video board were just a tiny bit smaller ...

But some of that would mean less revenue.

Of course, now, with the forced reconstruction, it’s going to mean less revenue anyway.

Greenspun said the team would not sell the FF tickets, or any other tickets, as “obstructed view” seats. He said any customer need only complain, and their problem will be heard.

“Any time a fan is unhappy, we take that very seriously,” he said.

He said no season-ticket holders have asked for their money back, and no single-game ticket buyers have even complained.

That is hard to imagine, considering the number of folks scattered throughout Dodger Stadium every night who are frustrated from the moment they hear the first and most basic of all baseball commands.

Batter up?

At what was once the finest baseball park in the land, the answer has been reduced to a maybe.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.