The Show Goes On

From the left-field pavilion you could see it, a jet, soaring through the dusk high above Dodger Stadium.

Sitting on a cracked bleacher with his wife and three young children Monday night, Jerry Guzman craned his neck.

“You look at that plane now and you wonder, what if it makes a U-turn?” he said.

He looked back down. He shook his head.

“You can’t do it, you just can’t do it,” he said. “You cannot live your life afraid.”

And so they didn’t, 40,676 flag-waving, USA-chanting baseball fans, filling Dodger Stadium like fingers fill a fist.

There were roars, and nobody ducked.

There were cracks, and nobody ran.

There was dust, and nobody hid their nose.

In this city’s first major sports event since last week’s terrorist attacks, unafraid fans cheered and booed and even left early as the Dodgers played the San Diego Padres.

By the time Guzman looked up again, the plane had disappeared.

It felt like any other game.

And it didn’t.

Sitting in the press box Monday afternoon, I could hear the joyous howls of the Dodgers taking batting practice.

Just before I felt the warm breath of a German Shepherd being led through my row by a policeman.

I greeted workers and fans and old friends with the excitement of opening day.

Yet a baseball press pass that I have used for the last 18 years no longer worked without proof of identification.

Paul Lo Duca is still the Dodger catcher.

But he needed to convince a parking guard of that fact, because the pass was in his wife’s car.

“I told the guy I had been here about 70 times this year,” said Lo Duca, laughing. “But it was no big deal. He was doing his job, and I’m glad he was.”

The security will be a little tougher, but nobody seemed to mind. There is more of a uniformed presence around the park, but everyone seemed to adjust.

As this first game perhaps showed, we will now endure the extraordinary in hopes of regaining a piece of the ordinary.

Take Rick Monday. I approached the Dodger broadcaster looking for a recounting of his 1976 flag-saving incident, but discovered a weary man with a much more current story.

On Friday morning, Monday received word that his mother Nelda Stoore, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, was near death after a long illness in Vero Beach, Fla.

There were no available flights. So Monday and wife Barbaralee climbed in a car and drove east.

On Friday evening, on some highway in the southwest, Monday received word that his mother had died.

Knowing that nothing more could be done, he stopped in El Paso, sent his wife ahead to Vero Beach by train, and turned back for Los Angeles.

He arrived late Sunday night, much to the surprise of Dodger officials.

“This is a good way for me to keep going,” Monday said from the Dodger dugout. “To see all those flags on the highway, all those people standing by the road and waving, all the brotherhood for all those miles ...”

Inside the clubhouse, there were more flags, on the backs of uniforms, caps, batting helmets ... and covering the entire shirt of clubhouse manager Dave Wright.

Wright and his crew worked overtime this weekend hurriedly carting uniforms to the tailors and sticking those flags on the helmets. He shrugged.

“What’s the big deal?” he said.

It wasn’t a big deal.

And it was.

The fans in long lines outside the front gates were talking baseball.

Robert Paterson, a member of the LAPD honor guard that marched across the field before the game, was talking America.

“People come up to me and say, ‘Thank you,’ and I say, ‘No, I am the one who is honored,”’ said Paterson, a former Gulf War tank driver. “Tonight is a way to show strength and honor and help us make the transition.”

It was fittingly another LAPD member, policewoman Rosalind Iiams, who before the game sang the National Anthem as players from both teams combined with local police and firefighters to unfurl a giant American flag.

Before that, she sang, “God Bless America.”

Before that, organist Nancy Bea Hefley filled the air with stars and stripes and Woody Guthrie.

Combined with the flapping flags and stomping feet, it was enough to make one dab his eyes and forget that this was regular baseball game.

Then Chan Ho Park relieved Kevin Brown in the seventh inning with the score tied.

And it all came back.

Park was awful, not retiring a guy while giving up four runs, leaving with what was called a “left Achilles’ strain.”

Jim Tracy was curious, putting Park in a position he hasn’t been in four years, a starter out of the bullpen in a pennant race.

Some might wonder if I’m actually daring to raise real baseball issues for the first time since last Tuesday.

Am I ever.

Welcome back, Dodgers and baseball and a least a little piece of normalcy.

Now, about that bullpen ...

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