Call him Dodger Bob
Bob Arthur stands in front of his collection of Dodgers memorabilia. He has watched and listened to the Dodgers since 1955. Photo by Alex Dominguez
NORWALK – October 11, 2023 was a night of utter disaster for baseball fans in Los Angeles. After 100 wins and leading the National League West for the tenth time in 11 years, the Dodgers had been swept out of the playoffs in the first round.
But back in California at his Norwalk home, Bob Arthur was setting a calendar countdown. Actually, he was setting several.
There were 122 days until pitchers and catchers reported for Spring Training, and 135 days before the first spring training game. Opening Day was 162 days away.
Most importantly, it would be 170 days before Arthur would be back at Dodger Stadium for the home opener.
“Yeah, I can’t wait,” he chuckled.
Arthur has been a life-long fan of Dodger baseball, first finding his allegiance at the age of 6 while listening to the 1955 World Series with his grandfather. The then still Brooklyn Dodgers were taking on the New York Yankees.
“I don’t remember as a little boy if I had a ball and bat, I know I’m sure I had a ball, whatever it was. But I knew absolutely nothing about baseball,” said Arthur. “My grandfather is sitting on his front porch, and he’s listening to the Dodgers / Yankees World Series on the radio…I’m sitting on the front porch with my grandfather, and he’s telling me about baseball. Just a deer-in-the-headlights kind of thing; I knew nothing.
“So, he goes into his house and he gets a pad of paper and a pencil, and he starts drawing the diamond. He says, ‘pitcher, catcher, first, second, third’; marks the paper on this, numbers the positions. And then he starts explaining each play – single, walk, strike, whatever it was – and he’s drawing the figures on this pad of paper. And he taught me the game of baseball, using the pad of paper and a pencil.”
Arthur’s grandfather was a Dodger fan, so he followed suit. Since then, the now 75-year-old has never wavered.
“That was ‘55, and just three years later the Dodgers are playing here in LA,” said Arthur. “I do remember the huge public welcoming of a major league team. I mean, my grandfather had taken me to see the Hollywood Stars, and the Angels; the Padres played here in the old Pacific Coast League. He had taken me to baseball games, so I knew more about it, what it was. But the Dodgers coming to Los Angeles, and the Giants going to San Francisco, and that rivalry of those two teams, from Flatbush to the Polo Grounds, it just was one of those things.”
Luckily for Arthur, his father – a salesman – worked for a company which bought season tickets (then at the Coliseum) to entertain clients, and Arthur would get to go “every once in a while.”
“In ‘58, I was 9 years old, and I’ll never forget it,” said Arthur. “Everybody in the stands, I had never seen anything of such magnitude, and the thrill of watching baseball players play a game…I was in little boy heaven.”
One game sticks out in particular, while watching pregame warmups.
“ I remember my grandfather taking me to one game, and Willie McCovey was walking off the field going back into the locker room,” said Arthur. “Here’s McCovey walking off the field, my memory tells me there couldn’t have been 100 people in the stands. My grandfather yells out, ‘Hey Willie, how about a ball for my grandson.’ He looked up, looked in the direction, and he just [said], ‘Sorry, I don’t have a ball.’ He held up his hand and his glove.
“Somewhere early in the game, an usher came over and says, ‘Young man, here: an autographed baseball of the San Francisco Giants. Willie Mayes. Willie McCovey. Juan Marichal. All these players from either 58 or 59, I don’t remember. An incredible baseball; all these autographs.”
Arthur has since amassed quite a collection of his own of autographed baseballs, photos, autographs, bobble heads, and other memorabilia, primarily of the Dodgers.
But the San Francisco Giants ball from all those years ago?
“We as kids in our neighborhood, we were religiously about playing baseball in the street,” said Arthur. “We played baseball in the street with that ball all summer long. We literally wore the cover off of it, wrapped it in electrical tape, and played more baseball. I was the king of the neighborhood because I had a real major league baseball. Gospel truth, true sandlot story.”
Arthur continued to go to games “sporadically” throughout the late 50’s and early 60’s. Though many of the stats and results have faded from memory over time, the players remain vivid.
“I remember Drysdale, the Wally Moons and the moonshots, and the Larry Sherrys, and the Davis Brothers,” said Arthur. “I remember it a lot. Frank Howard, Duke Snider is one of my all-time favorite ballplayers. Yeah, I remember those guys. I remember it vividly, being there and who they were.”
As Arthur got older and his father approached retirement around 1991, the fate of the company Dodger tickets came into question.
“My father had explained that his replacement taking over all his duties and responsibilities was going to be based out of Portland, so who’s going to entertain their clients here in LA,” said Arthur.
That’s when he came up with an idea.
“The next day, I wrote a business plan and gave it to my dad,” said Arthur. “I would manage his company”s season tickets for them. I would distribute them to their clients, I would take them to the games if that’s what the company wanted me to do. Entertain them in the Stadium Club, wine them, dine them, whatever they needed, and for that I wanted a 10-game share of their season tickets. And oh, by the way, I’d pay for the 10 games. Well, they accepted the offer.”
When time came for renewal the next season, Arthur was offered 20 games. Then half. Then came the next hurdle.
“The fourth year, they said, ‘We’re probably not going to renew the tickets,” said Arthur.
Now a business owner himself, Arthur tried to get the seats transferred over under his company. The Dodgers, unfortunately, had an ironclad policy against doing so.
But his ticket representative gave him a suggestion.
“He says, ‘You didn’t hear this from me, get your father’s company to write a letter making you the official point of contact between all business between their company and the Los Angeles Dodgers. You will get the invoices, you will get the tickets, you will get every communication sent to whatever address you want.’”
It worked.
“That next season, here comes that Federal Express package for 82 home games,” said Arthur.
To this day, the tickets are still listed under his father’s former company, though now he has 10 partners who buy into the seats, each divvying up every home game amongst themselves.
He estimates that he’s been to “thousands” of games; If you have a favorite moment in Dodger history, he may have been there.
“Watching [Sandy] Kofax pitch his perfect game, what was that? ‘73, ‘64, I can’t remember,” said Arthur. “There was one night, a weekday night, and the Dodgers were trailing three runs going into the bottom of the ninth. You could see the taillights leaving the stadium, and fans still listening to Vin Scully on a transistor radio.
“Dodgers come up. I can’t tell you who the first batter was, I don’t remember, but Nomar Garciaparra was batting fourth. First batter, homerun. Second batter, home run. Third batter, home run. Vin Scully is saying, ‘You wouldn’t believe the cars that are coming back into the stadium.’ Garciaparra comes up, homerun. That was just an incredible win.”
With Spring Training in full swing, Arthur is excited – as many fans are – about the Dodgers upcoming season; especially considering their bombshell offseason, where they signed Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and acquired Tyler Glasnow.
Still, he remains cautiously optimistic.
“I love the game of baseball. I love the Dodgers. I love the team that they have formed,” said Arthur. “They played well yesterday; everybody, no injuries. They played exceptionally well yesterday. That doesn’t mean that when ‘play ball’ comes tomorrow for 12:05 in the afternoon, that by the end of the ninth inning that’s going to be the same thing. There’s always that unknown.
“Look at what happened to Dustin May. He played the first season. I saw him, I was at that game when he stepped off the mound, and the arm is dangling. Then he had his surgery and came back, and is reinjured again. There’s no guarantees about baseball. Next man up.”
He continued:
“Being the optimist, you hope everything comes through. You hope it’s a successful season. You hope that it’s a World Series trophy coming to Dodger Stadium, but there’s so much information about the team that we don’t know as fans.”
But one thing is for certain: When Opening Day rolls around on March 8, Arthur will be ready, and it will once again be time for Dodger Baseball.