Field Daze

Those guys really do know football. The NFL bosses showed up in town Tuesday and leveled two of our expansion worries with one pancake block.

They announced that our potential team would play in the Coliseum, smartly giving the Staples Center a bookend around which to build this city’s new soul.

They then surprisingly announced they are considering setting a price for our dream team instead of holding an auction. So their handpicked owner will not necessarily be the richest guy, but the guy with the best chance to succeed.

With a confirmed site, and probably a confirmed price, does anybody doubt that within mere months, football in Los Angeles will be a confirmed product?

Hooray, and all that.

But remember, these guys really do know football.

Which means we should not be so enamored with their smile that we fail to notice them suddenly trying to swat Dodger Stadium out of the hands of Chavez Ravine.

I visited our old friend the other day, when it was quiet, when we could talk.

I drove into Chavez Ravine on a sun-coated afternoon, and its first words were chirps. This may be only the place left where you can attend a major league baseball game and still hear the birds.

Our old friend then spoke with its scent. Was it the jasmine? The wildflowers? Watching baseball at Dodger Stadium is like watching baseball in your backyard.

I walked inside, to the top level behind home plate, and there, like always, our old friend sang.

Behind me were the skyscrapers, to my left was the Hollywood sign, in front of me were hills that blended into mountains capped in snow, the most wondrous $6 ticket in all of sports.

Returning football to Los Angeles will be a smart and inspirational move by city and league leaders.

But it will be unconscionable if selling out our old friend is eventually part of it.

“A long-term issue,” say the Fox people of the possible move.

Like Bill Russell was their long-term manager?

Fox has already paid somebody to make a model of a new Dodger Stadium at the Coliseum.

There have already been meetings between Fox and city leaders about the proposal.

Behind it all is the NFL, hoping to make it politically and financially impossible for Fox to refuse.

This is not because the owners are fans of the Dodgers or baseball.

This is because they are fans of covering themselves.

The most powerful sports league in the world needs plenty of insurance. The move by Dodger Stadium would give them that insurance.

It would quell their small-town fears that the Coliseum neighborhood is not safe--another stadium means more stability and credibility--while giving the owners hope that baseball fans would eventually walk across the street to become football fans.

The Fox Group is going to need to essentially build a new stadium with new luxury boxes anyway, the NFL reminds us.

It might be impossible to build one at Chavez Ravine while still playing there, they note.

It’s synergy, they tell us.

The downtown buildings will feed off each other. The streets will become lined with gold.

But why won’t this happen with simply the Staples Center and Coliseum?

A couple of years ago, the city was dancing at the prospect of one new downtown sports building. Now we can’t survive without three?

Though aging and bundled up in a green afghan of hills, our old friend knows something about synergy.

There is synergy 81 times a year at Chavez Ravine when people from all over the city come for their escape to the country.

There is synergy in the different-colored faces that make Chavez Ravine this city’s greatest working model of diversity.

There is synergy the other afternoon between Marilyn Smith and Susie Lew, two downtown office workers who stopped by Chavez Ravine for lunch.

People do that, you know. They visit the Dodger gift shop, then wander out to those $6 seats with their sandwiches.

The women sat in Row R, seats 2 and 4, clutching shopping bags and looking out over a vista that has seemingly been unchanged since the place opened 37 years ago.

“Is there any stadium like this in the world?” asked Smith. “You come here and say, ‘Geez, this is where I should be.’ ”

There was not a baseball player in sight, but Chavez Ravine is about something bigger than baseball. It is about giving the people in this town a sense of belonging that no baseball team can ever give.

“You sit here and look out and you see all of California,” said Smith. “You see palm trees. Mountains. Snow. Skyscrapers.”

All that, plus a Union 76 ball.

How many of us have met under that giant rotating ball beyond the center-field fence? How many other Los Angeles landmarks have brought so many people together?

OK, so when Fox gets through with the stadium, the ball might be one of the few things left standing.

They need luxury suites that will allow big businesses to foot the bill for competitive salaries. Only an essentially new stadium will give them those.

If you want the Dodgers to return to glory under current baseball economics, you should have no problem with this.

But a company that developed “The Titanic” should be creative enough to figure out a way to keep that stadium in Chavez Ravine.

They could renovate half of it during the season, as the Angels did in Anaheim.

Or, as crazy as it sounds, they could gut the joint and just use Edison Field for a year.

Right. Like enemies Michael Eisner and Rupert Murdoch would ever agree to work together. Like Dodger fans would ever agree to make that drive.

But if it meant keeping Dodger Stadium where it belonged? Crazier things have happened.

The powerful local neighborhood groups, which should be applauded for their consistent will, will also complain if the Dodgers stay put.

But then maybe they will realize that in this case, their victory could be a loss.

The day they finally get rid of Dodger Stadium could be the day that Fox sells the land to somebody who will figure out a way to use it more than six months a year. If they think traffic and noise are bad now . . .

“Maybe there’s oil under here,” says Marilyn Smith, still staring out at her California from Row R. “Maybe that’s why the owners want to sell it.”

She and her companion looked at their watches. It was time to go.

“You know, I wish they would open the snack bar,” Smith said stretching under the Chavez Ravine sun. “We’re hungry.”

They came for lunch. They forgot to eat. Visiting an old friend is like that.

Everyone here is ready to welcome you back, NFL.

Just keep your hands to yourself.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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COLISEUM IS IT: NFL picks expansion site and favors setting a price for the franchise, rather than auctioning it off. A1