Dodgers Give These Kids Their Walking Papers

I’m learning more and more about what the Dodgers mean when they say, “This is L.A. baseball.” I got the latest lesson from parents of autistic children who e-mailed over the weekend.

The last two years, Cure Autism Now (CAN) had staged a 5K walk in the Dodger Stadium parking lot to raise money to find a cure for autism. Last year’s event drew 4,000. In exchange for buying 3,000 reduced-price Dodger tickets, parents and children got to use the empty parking lot, enjoying the safety of a confined and secure area for their fundraiser.

Last week, though, the L.A. event co-chairs, Eva Woodsmall and Priscilla Picard, e-mailed participants, saying, “ ... it was our fervent desire to keep our event at this signature location. Unfortunately, the new stadium owners were unable to approve or commit to a contract for this year.”

The 5K walk still is on -- but this year at the Rose Bowl. Some parents, however, are disappointed with the Dodgers.

Rob Peters and his wife have two boys, Robby and Frankie, both autistic. When I said something like, “That’s got to be tough,” Peters said, “If you gave me the chance to start off differently, I wouldn’t do it. I love what I have.”

The proud father later sent along a picture of his cute kids -- one of them was wearing a Red Sox T-shirt, and you would’ve thought that would’ve sealed the deal for the parking lot with Frank McCourt.

“The past two years it’s been kid-friendly and safe at Dodger Stadium; this doesn’t seem like a good way to make friends with the community,” Peters said. “This is the L.A. chapter; I guess it’s going to have to be the L.A. chapter of Pasadena.”

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THE FOLKS in the national CAN office, which is here in L.A., made it clear they didn’t want to upset the Dodgers, fearing the team might ban the autistic kids from the grounds forever. I guess they saw what happened to Ross Porter.

CAN executives said the Dodgers tried to help, although it appears CAN never got past a low-level Dodger executive in group-sales who doesn’t return calls.

(In the old days, one call to the Dodgers’ Derrick Hall, and well, no other calls would’ve been necessary.)

Elizabeth Kilpatrick, CAN’s director of development, said she was not criticizing the Dodgers, and I told her, “No problem, I am.” She said the e-mail from disappointed parents didn’t necessarily represent the feelings of the 100,000 members of CAN.

There’s something wrong here, though. CAN wanted to use the Dodgers’ parking lot on April 10, but the Dodgers said they couldn’t allow that because opening day is April 12. That still leaves the parking lot empty on April 10.

I wanted to call the Dodgers. Kilpatrick said, “They’ve changed all the high-level executives with the team, which has made it more challenging. We’ve been talking to Trey. “

I called Trey, got a tape recording, left a message and heard back from Josh, a PR guy. He said he was calling “because technically, I don’t know if Trey is allowed to speak to the media.”

I asked if Trey was a Dodger executive, and Josh said, “It depends on how you define executive,” and if I’m Trey, I don’t want this guy talking for me.

“Can’t Trey speak for himself?” I asked.

“Yes, he can,” Josh said. “He just can’t speak to the media.”

A couple of hours later, Howard called on behalf of Josh and Trey. He said he was a senior Dodger VP, and Trey was busy “signing mortgage documents.” Good thing Trey didn’t talk to the media.

Howard said the Dodgers couldn’t help on April 10 because the team needed the parking lot to stage equipment for opening day. That didn’t make sense until he explained that the team wants to be prepared just in case it hasn’t finished work on the new field-level seats. Truth be told, that’s why there will be no 5K CAN walk at Dodger Stadium this year: new seats.

“We told CAN that May 8 was available, but they had to do it in April,” Howard said. “Under no circumstances were we saying no to this great group.”

While I had Howard on the phone, I asked why the team required CAN to buy 3,000 discounted tickets to use an empty parking lot -- especially noting that many of the autistic children, and therefore their parents, couldn’t even use the tickets.

“We have built-in costs,” he said, mentioning security and staff requirements. “More often than not, on events like this, we lose money.”

You can imagine how difficult it’d be for Howard to report to the Boston Parking Lot Attendant that the Dodgers lost money on their own parking lot, and to a group of people who might never buy tickets to a game unless forced to do so.

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THE HOME Depot Center offered to play host to CAN -- even though it has its own construction work going on, while the Rose Bowl cut its $10,000 rental fee in half.

“I just want to make it clear, the Dodgers were as helpful as they could be,” Kilpatrick said. “They just didn’t have the setup in place to do community events.”

That’s surprising, because when I listened to Jamie McCourt give a speech recently, she told everyone the Dodgers were dedicated to community service.

In fact on the Dodger website, there’s a nice story about the Muscular Dystrophy Assn. “honoring Frank and Jamie McCourt at a big All-Star dinner and auction.” Obviously, if CAN wants the date of choice at Dodger Stadium next year, it probably should honor the McCourts.

I’m not sure, however, that I’d ask Trey to relay the message.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Matthew Kerster:

“Did you see the choking Masters champion, Phil Mickelson, win his second straight PGA event? After he won, he asked his daughter for a big hug, and she gave it to him. If you ever win anything, would your daughter give you a big hug?”

If I won money like Phil, I’d have both daughters and the Bagger hugging me.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.