The Catholic Chapel Beneath Dodger Stadium
For tonight’s home opener, the lights will once again illuminate Dodger Stadium. The fans will no doubt welcome the defending World Champions with an ovation that will demonstrate that in a city saturated with sports, the Dodgers remain L.A.’s favorite team. Generations pass the game down as an inheritance. Scorecards are kept like family records. Los Angeles summer evenings are measured in innings.
Baseball, more than any American institution, understands memory. It proudly keeps its past close. And yet, beneath this field — beneath the cheers, the rhythm of the game, the perfectly aligned park dimensions — there was once another kind of inheritance.
Not long ago, Chávez Ravine was not a stadium but a collection of villages: Palo Verde, La Loma, Bishop. It was, as one observer would later recall, something closer to a world apart.