This article was originally published in 2020.
It’s October in Los Angeles. The Dodgers’ hope to advance to the World Series is at an all-time high after another record-shattering season, and Dodger Stadium is a ghost town.
There are no fans in crisp Dodger Blue, no tailgate parties, front-lawn carne asadas, or pre-game drinks at the Shortstop before the long hike up with your Blue Crew to your upper reserve seats under gorgeous views of Vin Scully’s “cotton-candy skies” touching purple San Gabriel Mountains against the downtown skyline. No green grass, Tommy Lasorda, and Magic Johnson sightings, or ear candy from Dodger Stadium organist Dieter Ruehle.
Instead, the perennial Western Division champion Los Angeles Dodgers had to suit up in their white uniforms to play in their eighth consecutive postseason “home opener” not in Walter O’Malley’s baseball cathedral carved into Chavez Ravine, but at a neutral site, a sterile bat cave of a ballpark with a boring corporate name in Arlington, Texas.
For now, the ghosts of the Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop barrios have the place back to themselves again, a reminder of Frank Wilkinson’s haunting words to a high school history class in Culver City in the early 2000s:
“Dodger Stadium should not exist.”