It seemed pretty straightforward.

Dodgers at home against the Pittsburgh Pirates, a 12:10 p.m. Wednesday day game. Just zip on up to Chavez Ravine, pick up the Manny Ramirez bobblehead — which was a representation of Manny tipping his hat after hitting a pinch grand slam in the first Manny Ramirez bobblehead game — and stay till, oh, 2:30, to get out ahead of traffic.

That was the plan. Seemed easy. It wasn’t. And it makes me wonder, again, about the effort and expense required to follow the Dodgers in person.

This was a sort of last-minute thing. Leah hadn’t seen a Dodgers game this season, and it’s getting late, and this looked like a logical date. Day game. In and out. And a bobblehead. Our friend Sam Teaford would come along, too.

The bobblehead would drive attendance, sure, but the third Wednesday in September? No way the Dodgers could sell it out, right? Kids back in school, everyone home from vacation.

Ha.

We left downtown Long Beach at about 11:10 a.m. for what should have been, maybe, a 35-minute commute. It turned into a 70-minute grind. Traffic was bad most of the way, and genuinely awful the final three miles, as we did the 101-west-to-110-north thing that involves three merges in about 500 yards and the loss of three lanes. That stretch has been awful forever, before Dodgers games, and has never been fixed.

So, we already were edgy and annoyed when we got close to the parking lot. Which was a mess, as well. Whatever improvements the McCourts might have made to the lots, in terms of getting in … well, they broke down as a medium-sized crowd tried to get into the place between noon and 12:30.

By the time we parked, it was the second inning. But the fun was just beginning.

During our lap of the park (required to get to the parking lot we needed), we could look up into the stands and see thousands and thousands of empty seats. Seemed amazing that a park that empty could cause traffic that bad. Tickets wouldn’t be a problem, anyway.

We went up to the Top Deck, figuring we’d pick up three $11 tickets, and just go in,  collect the Manny bobblehead and take a couple of hours of abuse from the sun, and watch the  Pirates, a stupendously bad team …

But no.

We got to the ticket window, and the woman behind the window said, “All we have is tickets at 70 dollars.”

Yes,  $70. To see the Dodgers and Pirates on a Wednesday afternoon.  That was not going to fly. We thought about it for a minute, and the sticker shock never did wear off. We tried using a coupon we had, a buy-one-get-one-free thing, thinking that maybe we could handle the concept of $35 a seat … but, no, the coupon didn’t apply to the areas still open.

So, after spending more than an hour in horrible traffic … we turned around and left. (At least the ride out of the park was no problem.) We salvaged the trip, a little, by stopping for lunch at the Wurstkuch, a trendy brat house on the east side of downtown. I had a house specialty brat with sauerkraut for $6 — and how much more is that than a Dodger Dog these days? A buck?

So, yes, I should have bought tickets ahead of time. But that always is such an annoying concept, with the Dodgers (and maybe everyone), because there is the laughably twisted concept of a “courtesy fee” applied to every ticket, in addition to a handling fee. That’s how $20 tickets become $25-30 tickets, when you buy them beforehand. That’s why you want to buy at the park, if you can help it.
Or I could have checked the Dodgers Web site and done a search for tickets in the Top Deck and seen that, perhaps, they already were sold out … and saved myself two hours of driving around in heavy traffic on a hot afternoon.

What kills me is … knowing that there were thousands of unused seats in Dodger Stadium for that game. Maybe tens of thousands. The Dodgers called it a sellout, of course, and maybe it was, eventually — if someone bought up those $70 seats that were still available in the second inning. The club also announced attendance at over 53,000 — which it absolutely was not, in terms of actual bodies. The club really does need to start calling it “tickets sold” rather than attendance, because “attendance” of 53,000 is a lie. Scads of season-ticket holders didn’t use their seats.

And the prices! The idea of spending $70 for a baseball game? And the knowledge that the club sells several varietes of tickets that are even more expensive?

How do you fans stand it? How do you make that investment?

I concede I have been ruined by too many years in sports journalism; I never paid a dollar to get into the ballpark and go work in the press box. To me, good seats still cost about $6, because that’s where my ticket-buying history ended, in the 1970s.
But the rest of you? Doesn’t $70 seem like a ridiculous sum of money to see the Dodgers (or any team) play? And if you have, say, a party of three or four, and you’re looking at $200-300 just to get in the door and sit in narrow seats with jammed aisles? Holy mackerel. That’s a lot of money.

And at Dodgers games, you also face the tortuous commute, coming and going, and those shorten lives. Of that I am certain. It is the horrible traffic that prompts Dodgers fans to arrive late and leave early. They aren’t bad fans because of that … they’re just trying to save themselves hours in the car.

Anyway, bravo to the 3-plus million of you that buy tickets to see this team every year.

Or perhaps I should be offering condolences,  instead.

Oh, and Manny didn’t even play. Day game after a night game, I guess. Maybe they can do a third Manny bobblehead, and in this one they can show highlights from the second bobblehead game — Manny hanging over the rail, eating sunflower seeds.