Chavez Ravine

The drama of Chavez Ravine begins with what photo-essayist Don Normark called "a poor man's Shangri-La" -- the villages of La Loma, Bishop and Palo Verde, home to some 1,100 mainly poor, mainly Mexican American families. The terrain was rough and steep, the views picturesque, the community tradition-steeped and tightly knit as it lived in sight of City Hall's tower yet a world apart.

It's a developer's dream - nearly 300 empty acres above downtown Los Angeles, close to three major freeways and visited by millions each year. Could Chavez Ravine be the next big real estate play in town? The new owner of the Dodgers, Guggenheim Baseball Management, is keeping tight-lipped about its plans for the parking lots and hillsides surrounding Dodger Stadium, which it will own jointly with departing team owner Frank McCourt if the sale closes as expected April 30. INTERACTIVE: Breakdown of Dodger property The Dodgers disclosed some details of the McCourt-Guggenheim land partnership in the team's bankruptcy case, but those documents were under seal - and the team quickly withdrew them after The Times asked the bankruptcy judge to release them publicly.

The optimum use of Chavez Ravine has been a significant and vexing issue for nearly 50 years. At mid-century, the area was a pleasant, hidden, semi-rural Mexican American Brigadoon that, nonetheless, offered an ideal target for intensified "modernization." In the early '50s, a plan for using it as an innovative housing project became the victim of McCarthyite cold warriors, who killed it because it was "socialistic" and "un-American."

The price of power Re "Activists feeling burned," April 6 Southern California has many large, empty rooftops that could easily support a sea of solar panels. Exploitation of this vast resource, which is already connected to the grid, should be a top regional priority. Unfortunately, the decision-makers at our utilities prefer to stick with an outmoded business model that relies on corporate point-source energy production, in which solar power plants are substituted for coal-fired ones.

There are some things you never forget. Your first kiss. Your first fish. I'll never forget the February day, just two months ago, when I took a peek at what I expected to be the vivid greenscape of Dodger Stadium and discovered instead a giant sandbox, 330 feet down the lines, 400 feet to center. It was like catching Grandma in the arms of the postman, wrong on levels you didn't even know existed.

So Fox has decided to honor the Dodger tradition. Pull the other one, Rupert. To me, this is like the senator with three ex-wives talking about family values. The patches featuring great players from the past is an OK idea on its face, but may I suggest that they add the image of Mike Piazza to the list? And perhaps a mural on the outfield fence of Bill Russell and Fred Claire being handed their pink slips? Or does new management admit that last season was not an example of the Dodger tradition?

When I was an impressionable high school senior I looked down incredulously into a man-made pit in Chavez Ravine, five miles from where I lived in Highland Park. The memory is vivid and lasting, and as a result, I have more than a passing attachment to Dodger Stadium, the baseball park that emerged from that hole. News Corp., the owner of the Dodgers, wants to sell the team and has several bids for it.

So, the latest spin/damage control/tall tale from Dodger high command is that the off-season's puzzling and depressing maneuvers were really a heroic attempt to keep the Dodger organization (there's an oxymoron for you) steroid-free. I guess that explains their dumping of Ross Porter. Mike Eberts Los Angeles How can I possibly drive to Chavez Ravine and plunk down support in the form of hard-earned cash to this administration? McCourt and DePodesta's mangling of everything Dodger nauseates me. Joey Amalfitano with the San Francisco Giants is disheartening.

"We will maintain and respect the Dodgers' long history of tradition." --paraphrasing Fox management during the purchase of the Dodgers. Since then, we've seen: Changed road uniforms. Ditching the marquee superstar. Firing two managers in the same year. Starting the "retired numbers" on outfield wall idea. Ending the "retired numbers" on outfield wall idea. Buying talented mercenaries and abandoning Dodger system of stocking from a strong farm system.

I meant to call the Dodgers on Monday morning to ask about their players starting workouts at Chavez Ravine on Wednesday, the contract negotiations with Mike Piazza and Eric Karros and, oh yeah, whether Peter O'Malley was selling the team. I ask that last question often, about as often as I ask whether the sun rises in the West.

The people behind the $2.15-billion bid for the Dodgers haven't been especially forthcoming with details about their plans for the team and Dodger Stadium, but one conclusion is easy to reach: Fans and taxpayers alike will be well advised to keep their eyes on their wallets. It will be very difficult to make an investment on this scale pay off without two things happening. One is a cable or pay-TV deal that could be unprecedented in size, just like the bid for the team itself. The other is real estate development linked to the team and the site, the way downtown's L.A. Live feeds off the Lakers and Staples Center.

An NFL stadium at Chavez Ravine? You can bet the new owners of the Dodgers will at least kick the tires on that idea. In fact, a league insider said the buyers had preliminary discussions with the NFL while doing their due diligence on the investment. Peter O'Malley did more than that in the late 1990s. He was well down the road on a proposal to build a football stadium next to Dodger Stadium when the city let the air out of his balloon by supporting the Coliseum, which it partly owned.

Let's start with the hands, Ry Cooder's hands. They're large, expressive: hands you could see wrapped around a guitar neck, or in the act of making things. They move when he speaks, creating shapes in the air that take form and dissipate, all in the space of a few words. On a Friday afternoon at the Petersen Automotive Museum, Cooder is using those hands to help recount the saga of "El Chavez Ravine," a 1953 Chevy pickup he commissioned to be rebuilt in 2007 in the style of a vintage ice cream truck and covered with an elaborate mural, by the artist Vincent Valdez, depicting the eviction of Mexican American families from the neighborhood that is now home to Dodger Stadium.

What an interesting run we've seen the last couple of weeks — great games, magic endings, topped by word of a Dodgers sale. That whole NBA (No Brains Assn.) debacle aside, and starting with World Series Game 6, what we're seeing is the Gods of Sport being unusually benevolent toward a nation that needs something to cheer. Unprecedented? Maybe. Let's connect the dots: "Arch Madness" is how Sports Illustrated described the Cardinals' World Series win, but in 25 years what you'll remember most from baseball's sensational postseason is the streak of miracles that ended an epic Game 6. Four hours 33 minutes just didn't seem long enough.

I have reached rock bottom, and it is a hot bleacher in section 314 in the right-field pavilion of Dodger Stadium. I am sitting here Wednesday afternoon introducing myself to everyone else in this giant section. All six of them. "It's sad," says Jose Haro. "It's lonely," says Javier Casillas. In a season of bad, it's the worst. The crowd at this midday game between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres appears to be the smallest in a season of empty. It's the smallest crowd I've seen in my 23 years of following the Dodgers.

Remember who was playing second base for the Dodgers 45 years ago Sunday? If you said John Lennon, you're close. All the Beatles played the infield that night, on a stage set up at second base, draped in blue and white, of course. Yes, Sunday is the 45th anniversary of the "bigger-than-Jesus" Beatles at Dodger Stadium, the first concert in the history of the gleaming 4-year-old ballpark. The third-place Dodgers were off playing the first-place Giants in San Francisco on the day "Nowhere Man" rang out across Chavez Ravine.

So I called the Bobble Head to ask him about the Knuckle Head. "Which Knuckle Head?" said Tom Lasorda, and I forgot to take into consideration he was sitting in the Dodger front offices when I called. * I CAN'T TELL you how much fun I had Wednesday night looking into the faces of thousands of Tommy Lasorda Bobble Heads after the Dodger giveaway--every one of them just bobbing and nodding in agreement with everything I had to say. It was a rather pleasant experience, and I called BD&A Inc.