The Rite of Chavez Ravine

For serious Dodger fans, opening day is a rite of spring with one nagging inconvenience: It comes on a work day.

Faithful Angelenos deal with this in a variety of ways. Some drag out an arsenal of cellular devices to keep in touch with the office. Others come up with elaborate and clever excuses that would make any hooky-playing teenager proud.

Some, like a Duarte man who asked to be identified only as Jorge, weren’t so creative or industrious. Just hours after giving his boss a tried and true excuse, he sat tanning in a lawn chair in the stadium parking lot.

“I’m sick,” he said, forcing a cough that sloshed the morning swig left in his Corona bottle. “Hey, there was no more vacation time available.”

Around him in Lot 37, barbecues emerged from their winter hibernation, smoldering with hot dogs, chicken and carne asada. Fans from all walks of life--loan officers, tow truck drivers, hospital administrators--reunited on tailgates and lawn chairs, bound by their common success in escaping the daily grind.

“I told my boss my girlfriend was in labor,” said Sean Mendoza, a machinist in Los Angeles, adding that he would later say it had been a false alarm. His friends, three veteran drivers for Walnut Valley Towing in West Covina, said they simply called a long meeting and left the towing to the rookies.

For Lorraine Cameron, 69, who owns an income tax company, opening day comes at a particularly trying time with April 15 approaching.

To carve a slot in her increasingly hectic schedule, she worked from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday, but planned on making no effort to stay in touch with her clients Tuesday.

“I’m at the IRS right now,” she said, sipping a drink. “That’s what I tell my clients.”

Of course, some fans just couldn’t make a clean break from work. Rene Castro, 37, a loan officer for C & G Financial in Upland, sat in the nosebleed section behind home plate, a hefty alphanumeric pager hanging from the collar of his T-shirt.

Long before Chan Ho Park threw his first pitch against the fledgling Arizona Diamondbacks, Castro had called work on his cellular phone three times. And although he said that last year he wasted a good part of the game on the phone, he doesn’t regret being in touch with the office.

“I feel like I’m getting away with something because this becomes an extension of my office,” Castro said. “I’ve had a pager for so many years now, it’s hard for me not to have it.”

Some went to extremes in meshing the two previously mutually exclusive worlds of the work cubicle and the ballpark. Brian, a salesman who said his “head would be chopped” if his last name appeared in print, dragged along his portable computer.

“If I get paged and end up having to send an order in, I’ll be able to do it,” he said. He, like most of the fans--the liars, the devoted workers and the many who simply planned a vacation day in advance--said opening day is more than just a game. It is a valued Southern California tradition.

“I can see Catalina from downtown!” said Mark Friedlander, admiring the view from the parking lot. “This is the closest thing to having a religious experience that I can think of.”

Even city officials skipped out to attend the game. City Hall was devoid of many mayoral aides, council staffers and department officials.

When one committee began work, Councilman Richard Alarcon was absent. He was at the stadium attending a pregame reception. For a brief time his colleagues grumbled, but Alarcon showed up in time for the meeting.

“Then [the committee] decided to continue the item I was there for anyway,” Alarcon said with a laugh.

For many fans, the day meant gathering with old friends in a venue that has changed little for decades.

“It’s the best day of the year,” said Ruth Lepke, who meets friends from high school once a year next to the trees in Lot 37. “It started out just as a baseball game and turned into a reunion. A lot of times, it’s the only chance we have to see each other.”

Her friend, Jeff Coulter, 39, came from Miami to see the game. Barbecuing and sipping champagne and beer, the group pondered the future of their favorite day in the hands of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. While some fans in the parking lot thought Murdoch would sign better ballplayers, others suspected he would litter the stadium with advertisements.

“We’re all concerned about the sale of the Dodgers,” said Coulter. “Will this be the last opening day as we know it?”

Then they watched the Dodgers win 9-1.