An Uneasy Return

So the Dodgers open their doors and a community opens its eyes and everything is the same and nothing is the same.

So now what?

The Dodgers play host to the San Diego Padres tonight in the first major sports event here since Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, the first game of the rest of their season.

We can predict only the first 10 minutes.

An L.A. policewoman named Rosalind Iams will sing the national anthem, and half of Dodger Stadium will weep.

She will then sing “God Bless America,” and the other half will weep.

Flags will be passed out at the turnstiles, and some folks on the field will form a giant flag, and we’ll all promise each other to never take this sort of stuff for granted again.

After that, it will be all baseball.

About which, we have no idea.

Neither does Manager Jim Tracy, who sounded drained Saturday in a phone call after their closed workout.

“A bad, bad week,” he said.

A week ago Sunday, Tracy learned that a favorite player he coached on a Catholic grade school basketball team in Naples, Fla., had died after a long bout with cancer.

Then came Tuesday morning.

Then, two days later, during a somber workout, Tracy realized he could have made Commissioner Bud Selig’s decision for him.

“We couldn’t have played this weekend anyway,” he said. “Looking around the clubhouse at the guys, mentally, we were in no shape to go out there. It was too soon.”

Now that they have no choice, Tracy called them together Saturday and made it simple.

“I told my players that come Monday, we have to show the same spirit, the same competitive nature that our country is being asked to show this week,” he said. “I told them, after all that has happened, how hard is it to go out and give every single thing you got? How hard is it to run out a ground ball? How hard is it to leave everything of yourself on the field?”

The effort will be the easy part.

The schedule is where it gets difficult. Some might say, nearly impossible.

With the postponed week being attached to the end of season, the Dodgers will finish with a nine-game trip with visits to each of their three best division rivals.

Three at Arizona. A quick breath. Then three at San Diego. A quick flight. Then the final three games of the season at San Francisco.

That’s not a trip, it’s a tooth extraction.

It’s like ending a six-month spelling bee with supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Just wondering, but has any team not in first place with 19 games remaining made the playoffs by finishing with nearly half those games away from home?

“Since the end of May, there’s been a lot of people waiting for us to fall off the planet,” Tracy said with a sigh. “But we’re still here.”

The Diamondbacks, incidentally, finish with three games at vacation-planning Milwaukee, while the Giants finish with six of their final nine games at home.

The only positive for the Dodgers in that schedule is that if Barry Bonds enters that final series short of Mark McGwire’s home run record, he definitely won’t get it.

Fifty years after pitching to Bobby Thomson, you think they’re going to pitch to that guy?

The Dodger pitchers should be better in these final three weeks, even more than most teams’, because they were more sore and tired.

Maybe Kevin Brown’s elbow won’t hurt so much. Maybe Matt Herges will regain his energy. Maybe Luke Prokopec and Eric Gagne will rediscover their arm strength.

Then there’s Chan Ho Park. No injuries here. But hey, maybe he used the time to visualize $20 million circling the drain.

The hurting Dodger position players also could benefit from the rest: Eric Karros’ back, Mark Grudzielanek and Gary Sheffield’s fingers, and Shawn Green’s shoulders, which certainly must be sore from carrying the team.

Then again, there are guys on the team who can get too much rest. Watch Jeff Shaw. The reliever thrives on work. His pitches actually move better when he’s a little tired. Can he get comfortable again before the end of the season?

So many questions. So little time. Everyone being so careful.

“For some of our guys, the rest will be beneficial,” Tracy said. “I mean, if you can even use that word ‘beneficial’ at this time.”

A lot of sports phrases will initially sound strange during these new days of war.

No longer can you say the Dodgers have been “devastated” by injuries. No, they are not playing a “killer” schedule. Having seen real monsters, how can you use that adjective to describe a Green home run?

There are two words, however, that we will recognize immediately tonight. It’s no big deal, but it is a start.

Play ball.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.