There Are Games Again, But There Is No Escape

Walked into the visiting clubhouse to talk to the Arizona Diamondbacks Friday, but they weren’t talking.

Moments before taking the field for batting practice, they were listening to the national anthem being played at a baseball game in New York.

“This ain’t going away,” said Mark Grace.

Walked near the batting cage to talk to Dodger Manager Jim Tracy Friday, but he was stumbling.

He wanted to mention that Luke Prokopec had been throwing bullets. He wanted to talk about how this series was going to be a war. But he knew he could say neither.

“I like to talk in those terms, but out of respect for what’s happened, I’m now watching every word,” he said.

Walked into Dodger Stadium at the start of this week thinking, if we could only play a little baseball, everything would be better.

Walked out Friday night realizing that my knowledge of the sport was far greater than my understanding of the heart.

It’s not the same. It’s harder to watch. It’s harder to care.

The return of sports to our stricken country has initially been wonderful, as evidenced again Friday by the defiance and dignity that was New York’s Shea Stadium in the Mets’ first home game since the terrorist attacks.

But if the Dodgers’ first week here is any indication, the feeling doesn’t last.

The play has been sluggish, the crowd has been careful, the atmosphere hesitant.

I wanted sports to make a difference, but it really hasn’t.

I thought through sports we could escape, but we cannot.

And I began writing this before the Dodgers’ ungainly retreat against the Diamondbacks Friday, a 10-0 loss filled with bad pitching and shoddy fielding and jeers.

The Dodgers have lost four times in five games this week. But something else has changed, and it has nothing to do with a scoreboard.

The players don’t argue or celebrate as much. The fans arrive later, leave earlier, cheer less.

Angry boos, something rarely heard at Dodger Stadium, now fill the air like seventh-inning exhaust.

There is less concentration from the players, less patience in the stands, more reality in this house of play.

“We’re just a reflection of the rest of America,” said Dodger Dave Hansen.

A reflection that has often been America at its most triumphant is now America at its most troubled.

Dodger Stadium, once a sanctuary, is now just another living room filled with people wondering what the TV will show them next.

Moments before Thursday’s first game of the showdown with the Diamondbacks, the stands were strangely nearly empty.

Turns out, most were crowded around concourse monitors watching President Bush’s speech.

There was a complaint that the Dodgers should have shown the speech on the jumbo screen. The Dodgers said they didn’t want to frighten the children.

“We were also watching the speech in the clubhouse,” Hansen said. “Then, bang, it’s time to go play ball. It’s been like that all week. We are involved in this before and after every game, for every moment.”

The playing field, long immune to the real world, has seen its chalk lines blurred.

An example can found before every game, when there is a moment of silence, then the singing of “God Bless America” and the national anthem.

It has been so emotional every time, it seemingly takes the players several innings to concentrate only on baseball again.

In five games including Friday, the Dodgers and their opponent have combined to score six runs in the first five innings, or barely one run combined per game.

The fans, meanwhile, have also remained subdued for a couple of innings after the songs, as if feeling guilty about having fun.

“Everybody, rightfully so, is reminded again of what happened,” Tracy said. “And for a while, everybody is affected again.”

Part of the problem has been the weeklong layoff after the terrorist attacks. But a bigger part has been the players’ inability to separate themselves from a society that often celebrates that separation.

Until spilling out of the dugout after Shawn Green’s game-winning homer against the Diamondbacks in the 13th inning Thursday, many of the Dodgers had existed on spring-training emotion.

The Diamondbacks also seemed to walk through that game, accounting for one of the worst 4-hour 48-minute stretches of pennant race baseball in recent history.

“Everybody says we are playing again to provide entertainment for the fans. Well, that’s bull,” Grace said. “We are playing again only because it’s our jobs. The rest of America goes back to work, so do we.”

A job for some, an attempt at diversion for others, a long, long week for all.

A couple of idiots ran through the outfield the other night wrapped in American flags.

Used to be, we laughed and wondered whether those types of people were bombed. Now we cringed and wondered whether they were bombs.

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