Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
In any case, here's the actual story:
JoeD is correct that I mentioned Benjamin when I called the hotline. Last time this happened, it was a bobblehead night. I offered $20 to a number of people until one of them bit and sold it to me, and then gave it to Ben.
This time, I called up the hotline, told them (truthfully) that I keep missing these because of the incoming gate traffic, and that my son is highly disappointed. I also noted that each time I'm paying a premium for these tickets because these promo nights are popular, only to not get the item.
My plan was not to press this much, nor stay on the phone more than 5 minutes. If I was told no, I was going to give up and move on.
After the usual, "It's only 40,000, sorry for the inconvenience" spiel, the woman told me to hold on, and she would look into "maybe something we can do". She came back after about 2 minutes and said that they had "2 rally towels" -- those little blue towels you can wave, which you'll often see around playoff time. We already have a ton of these, and you look like a douche waving them on non-rally-towel nights, so I turned them down. I asked if they could find any hoodies "laying around in the back". I figured they probably had some of these for people who don't enter through the normal gates, or whatever.
She put me on hold again, and came back telling me they "found one". This kinda sounded like bullshit because the existence of one meant they did have extras around there, but were probably holding them back. I asked if they could look again and see if they could find a second one, because "80% of the people here got one per ticket". She said she'd look but they "probably won't find any others", which I knew was the polite way of saying no. I said, "Okay, but if you can somehow find a second, that would really be great. Thanks for doing this for us, either way." She asked for my location in the stadium, and I hung up, fully expecting one (not two) hoodies to be brought to me.
About an inning later, the same woman from the phone call showed up with a bag.
"We could only find one," she began, "But we threw in two of these commemorative coins, so maybe that will make up for it."
I thanked her, and opened up the bag. Indeed there was a hoodie, and two "coins". The coins were silver dollar sized, gold in color, and Tommy Lasorda was on both. But where did these come from? I hadn't heard of any commemorative coin promo, nor was I aware of these being on sale anywhere in the stadium.
I looked on the back of the coin packaging, and they were from 2017! I had thought maybe these were printed up in honor of Lasorda after his recent death, but apparently not. Tommy was alive and well when these were distributed 5 years ago! Apparently these were something you could earn in 2017 via a voucher system, after filling up at 76 Gas Stations during certain dates. You'd bring the voucher to Dodger Stadium on certain other dates, and you'd get the coins. I must have ignored this back in 2017, because I don't usually go to 76 for gas.
I was happy with this. So instead of two hoodies, I got a hoody and two identical Lasorda coins, one of which I gave to Ben. He was happy with this, as well. The "cost" was 5 minutes on the phone, mostly waiting on hold.
Sometimes it pays to speak up.
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