I try to make one major-league baseball game per year. Not always do-able, when you live in Abu Dhabi.

This one turned out well on several fronts … starting with the Maury Wills bobblehead doll we got upon entering the stadium.
I am a bobblehead fan, as has been noted on this site a few dozen times, and a bobblehead as you enter a stadium can be enough to make the outcome of the game almost irrelevant.

Being handed a boxed bobblehead of Maury sliding into a base as I enter, well, I’m promptly in an expansive mood. And the $6.50 Dodger Dog and $15 specialty beers … not as agitated as I might be.

Other topics of note.

–We had not been to Dodger Stadium since the new ownership group tweaked the site a bit. Most obvious is the far-more-welcoming approaches to the main gates. It was very industrial for the first half-century of Dodger Stadium … walk up to the gate, which was a break in the fencing, and hand over your ticket.

Now, the entrances appear to have some landscaping and even some displays — such as the arty “retired numbers” of Dodgers Hall of Famers outside the general admission level, at the top of the stadium. I posed next to Koufax’s “32”.

–Food and drink cost more, as they do year over year, but they seem to be dispensed in more efficient ways. On the reserve level, where we sat, you walk into the area, pick out your food, order a drink, and go to a pay station (almost a cafeteria set-up), and you’re out.

–The seating in most parts of the stadium, it seems, remains old, tight and not comfortable. The stadium was built for the smaller people of 1962, as opposed to the wider ones of 2015.

–The stadium is showing its age. Below my seat, (Seat 1, Row J, Section 8, reserve section), some of the concrete had been knocked away and rusting rebar was exposed to the air. And the handrail from the bottom of reserve up to the concourse, had been moved and refitted into a different bit of the steps — and the old anchor spots were inexpertly filled with cement.

I usually believe the Dodgers should stay in the stadium, the oldest in the National League, after Wrigley Field, but to look at some of the bones of the stadium brings to mind the L.A. Coliseum, which also has tons of history (and is 40 years older) and also seems to be falling apart.

–We happened to be there on a night when the Philadelphia Phillies, Worst Team in Ball, were in town, which might explain why we got a bobblehead for showing up. (A Hello Kitty plush toy is being given away for anyone willing to see Game 3 of the four-game series.)

–Don Mattingly, Dodgers manager, had an imaginative lineup. He had a promoted “starting” pitcher (Eric Surkamp) ready to go, but he thought he would use him only 4-5 innings, so had a reliever (Yimi Garcia) start the game and bat in the No. 8 spot in the lineup — so Mattingly could hit for Garcia in the second inning. Didn’t work out all that well; Philadelphia led 6-3 after three innings.

–I am no fan of Yasiel Puig, which I will get back to sometime soon, but he remains popular with most fans, if their reaction to him during the game was an indication. A mystery.

–And we had more Maury! He threw out the first pitch, and zipped it right to Jimmy Rollins, the current Dodgers shortstop. Maury wore a jaunty cap, and he moved well — for a guy who is 82 (!)

He was a fine shortstop and an excellent lead-off man whom many credit for reintroducing the stolen base to the bigs, after most of three decades of a decline in the stat. He stole 104 bases (against 13 caught-stealings) in 1962, the season when he played 165 regular-season games (a record), scored 130 runs and had 208 hits.

He was voted National League MVP.

He got quite a bit done, in his career, especially considering he didn’t appear in a big-league game until he was 26.

He later had problems with alcohol and cocaine, including while he was manager of the Seattle Mariners for parts of two seasons. He was fired with a 26-56 record and is often included in discussions of the worst managers in baseball history.

And the day got even better. A former colleague was covering the game, and a year ago he got a Sandy Koufax bobblehead, and graciously handed it to me when we met and chatted for an inning or three.

Two bobbleheads! Maury and Sandy in the same day!