Kurt Streeter: Game 5 is about to begin but crowd is a little sleepy
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4:20 p.m., Tuesday, Chavez Ravine, a somewhat dour and emotionally drained Chavez Ravine. The air is warm and a little breezy, but the fans are not. It’s the 3-1 deficit, the way the Dodgers have been out hit, out hustled, out managed, and just generally beaten and whipped around the ballpark, the fact that to overcome being down this far requires a complete reversal of fortune for three straight games – all of this together seems to have sucked much of the juice out of fans here. Remember Sunday, when Dodgers fans showed up early and far before first pitch the fans pulsed with electricity?
It’s not that way today. There are certainly more fans in the stands than you would ever see this early before an LA regular season game, but the fans I’ve seen so far tend to be walking around slowly in the aisles or sitting in the stands quietly chatting. Everywhere, it seems, there are blank expressions, grimaces, puckered lips. I’m not hearing many -- no, let me take that back -- I’m not hearing any of the ‘Let’s Go Dodgers” chants that swirled around this stadium on Sunday and Monday.
How to get the fans charged up again? Give them hope, or at least a temporary jolt, right off. That’s the solution presented by one of our favorite left field bleacher fans, Ron Cervenka, the guy with the Dodgers jersey that reads “Fan Since 53” and the leather glove always at the ready, in case a home run comes: “It’s one of those deals where the Dodgers need to score fast and score a lot of runs,’ Cervenka said. (I didn’t have the heart to remind him that was his exact prescription for Game 4.)
‘That’s what it’s gonna take because the Phillies have a bunch of momentum and the fans are feeling it … [The last few innings of Game 4] it was like a church here, wind out of your sails, devastating.” He looked around at the fans in his section. “It still feels that way.’
-- Kurt Streeter
