When it’s Boys Night Out, almost everything flies

SO WE’RE DRIVING to that bawdy little hot dog stand on the hill, Dodger Stadium, which we hear may be closing soon for the season.

“I miss you,” the toddler says from the back seat.

“I miss you too,” I tell him.

I’ve never understood Dodger Stadium. They say it’s in a ravine, yet you go up-up-up the hill to get there. Once there, you look down upon the Los Angeles skyline. Even when parked, you take an escalator farther up to the family seats. It’s not a ravine; it’s L.A.’s Mount Olympus. A house of heroes.

“Hurry, Dad,” says the toddler.

“This is as hurried as I get,” I say as we hoof it across the parking lot.

“Me like escalators,” the toddler says.

“Me like them too,” I say.

Before you know it, we’re in our seats: me, the toddler, his larger-than-life big brother. Three guys with mustard on our breath even if we haven’t had mustard in a while. Three guys spending a Boys Night Out together. For good measure, the boy brings along his lovely girlfriend.

Which leaves me with the toddler as my date. Great. We sit two rows behind a guy with “Sexual Healing” tattooed across the back of his neck, in a font I don’t recognize at all. Sexual Healing. Apparently, there’s a lot of that going around.

“You my friend,” the toddler tells me.

“Yeah, whatever,” I say.

In fairness, the toddler is not a bad date. He is frisky and full of life. In fact, he behaves as if he’s been marinating overnight in Mountain Dew. “No soft drinks!” his mother warned as we left the house. Duh.

And what a night we are having here at Dodger Stadium. The local kids stake out a first inning lead. Beach balls fly. Paper airplanes too. It’s a Saturday night ball mitzvah, the best party in town.

“Dogs?” I ask.

“Two,” says the boy.

“Right back,” I say and head to the snack stand.

At the snack stand, I age about two years. It’s not just that the line isn’t moving. It’s that it’s not moving as I grow hungrier and hungrier while thumbing $20 bills between my fingers. The guy at the head of the line is saying, “No, I didn’t order that” and sending food back. He thinks he’s at Le Cirque.

When they finally get to me, the soft drinks puddle over as I snap them into the too-small cardboard tray. I smile and hand the clerk the money.

“Twenty-two fifty,” the clerk says, which is a steal if you ask me.

Back at the seats, they eat the dogs in 30 seconds, sliding them home without chewing, then drill open a bag of peanuts. The toddler opens the peanut shells in an almost scientific manner, pounding them with his fist against the seat of his light blue chair. Pound-snap-pound. A peanut squirts out and almost hits the tattooed man two rows down. One of the bonuses to living in L.A.: Because of all the tattoos, you’re never short of reading material.

“Here, let me help you,” I tell the toddler.

“Yeah, before you get us killed,” says the boy.

“You my friend,” says the toddler.

Here’s the thing about a Boys Night Out. They are productive in ways that women don’t really understand. They give us a chance to put our feet up, a chance to throw the peanut shells on the floor -- all the things we can’t do at home under the authoritarian rule of you-know-who, don’t make me say her name.

A lot of great things have been accomplished under the guise of a Boys Night Out. Awhile back, Alexander the Great conquered Persia. And Columbus discovered the West Indies during a Boys Night Out. It was sort of a bachelor party situation.

In fact, most of mankind’s most hallowed discoveries were made because of a simple male need to get out of the house.

“Now,” I tell the toddler, “the moment you’ve been waiting for.”

“It’s over?” he asks.

“We’re gonna sing,” I say.

By far, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is the toddler’s favorite song. He sings it in church, at football games, at weddings, in the checkout line at Vons.

Each time he sings it, he’s careful to change the words a little so that it never gets stale. It’s sort of like Miles Davis interpreting “ ‘Round About Midnight,” never the same song twice.

On this cool September evening -- possibly the last of the year here at the house of heroes -- the toddler leans against his strapping big brother and serenades the crowd, sings to all of L.A. from his little stage high on this diamond-studded hill.

“Me don’t care if I never get back ... ,” he yells.

Me don’t care either, pal. Now sit down, OK?

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com or at myspace.com/chriserskine.