Dodger Stadium

The battle for the soul of Dodger Stadium is about to be joined. It is a battle for your eyes, for your ears, for your wallets. It is a battle over what it means to attend a baseball game in the new millennium. It is a battle sanitized by jargon: This is about the "fan experience. " The Dodgers' new owners all but canonizedPeter O'Malley during their introductory news conference, so this would be a good time to recall that O'Malley did not employ mission statements or talking points or the term "fan experience.

PHOENIX — As hockey fever grips Los Angeles, Dodgers President Stan Kasten said he plans to explore whether the Kings could play in an NHL Winter Classic game at Dodger Stadium. "Facility-wise, we could certainly handle it," Kasten said. The NHL has yet to award its New Year's Day showcase to a warm-weather city. The Dodgers could offer baseball's largest stadium and the iconic backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains. Kasten, former president of the NHL Atlanta Thrashers, said technology would allow ice to remain playable for an outdoor hockey game at Dodger Stadium but said he was unsure if the league would be interested.

Nancy Hefley looks like the meek lady behind you in the supermarket checkout line unloading a week's worth of groceries for the family. Tall and trim, her brown hair cut short and neat, butterfly-shaped glasses riding the bridge of her nose, Hefley hardly looks the part of a musician who gets standing ovations 80 nights a year from crowds that sometimes top 50,000.

A man was recovering Monday after a fight in a Dodger Stadium parking lot following Sunday's game, renewing questions about how quickly and effectively security responds once a game ends. The fight began about 9 p.m. after a minor traffic accident. According to Los Angeles police, Arthur Morales, 30, knocked the victim to the ground while his pregnant girlfriend watched, stunned. At that point, Morales' friends got out of the vehicle and joined in. "They held the victim down on the ground and ... the fourth one kicked and punched him in the head," LAPD Cmdr.

The Los Angeles Police Department announced plans to bring aggressive crime-fighting tactics that it employs on city streets into Dodger Stadium as part of a security crackdown a week after a visiting fan was attacked in the ballpark's parking lot. Overriding a Dodger policy against armed police inside the stadium, Police Chief Charlie Beck said Friday that uniformed officers will be posted throughout the ballpark and will be more aggressive about...

Tom Lasorda calls it "heaven on earth. " The huge stack of printed email on my desk in response to safety concerns and a Giants fan left in a medically induced coma paint an entirely different picture of Dodger Stadium. As one emailer put it in summing up what so many others wrote: "When there has to be a public announcement before a game instructing people that the others around them who bought a ticket have the right to watch the game without being harassed, it's time to find something else to do. I did. " In response to a Page 2 question a few days ago: "Is it really safe to attend Dodgers games?"

Dressed impeccably in tie and sport coat, the Panama hat on his head, a cigar in his mouth and the Stalker radar gun raised in his right hand and pointed at the mound from a position directly behind the home-plate screen, Mike Brito was as much a part of the Dodger Stadium landscape as palm trees and congested concession lines. He provided radar readings for 20 years before yielding to the redesigned luxury seats and an automatic radar system.

A jubilant sea of captivated immigrants embraced Pope John Paul II with thunderous acclaim Wednesday as the red-robed pontiff crowned his pastoral visit to Los Angeles with the festive pageantry of a Dodger Stadium Mass.

I am not a baseball fan. I have visited Dodger Stadium maybe three times in my 30 years in Los Angeles. But you don't have to bleed Dodger blue to be horrified by the beating inflicted on a San Francisco Giants fan who dared wear his team apparel to the baseball park. And you don't have to know a strike from a ball to recognize that it's time for a public conversation about just what is going on in Chavez Ravine. Here's the text message my daughter sent from the stands in Game 2 of last week's opening series: "Omg ma i'm horrified by the fans here.

In the season for baseball and brides, some couples are opting for a double play: At Dodger Stadium, the ring bearer presented the bands in a baseball mitt. At Camden Yards in Baltimore, the best man threw a ceremonial first pitch. At Comiskey Park in Chicago, bridal parties posed for pictures at home plate. At Edison Field in Anaheim, at least one couple married in the park's Hall of Fame, surrounded by team memorabilia.

Two men charged in state court in connection with the brutal beating of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow will each face federal charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm, authorities said Tuesday. Marvin Norwood and Louie Sanchez were arrested last year and charged with felony assault and mayhem in the attack on Stow in one of the parking lots at Dodger Stadium on March 31, 2011. The U.S. attorney's office added the weapons charges in a 14-page indictment. If convicted of the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, each man faces up to 10 years in federal prison.

A minor traffic accident after the Dodgers' win over St. Louis on Sunday night sparked a fight that resulted in the beating of one man and the arrests of four others, Los Angeles police said. The beating victim was treated for non-life-threatening injuries at a hospital and released, police said. A pregnant woman who was a passenger in his car was taken to the hospital for observation as a precaution and also was released. Occupants of the other vehicle, four men in their 20s, were booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and were being held in lieu of $30,000 bail, Los Angeles police officer Bruce Borihanh said Monday.

The battle for the soul of Dodger Stadium is about to be joined. It is a battle for your eyes, for your ears, for your wallets. It is a battle over what it means to attend a baseball game in the new millennium. It is a battle sanitized by jargon: This is about the "fan experience. " The Dodgers' new owners all but canonizedPeter O'Malley during their introductory news conference, so this would be a good time to recall that O'Malley did not employ mission statements or talking points or the term "fan experience.

Be patient, Rafael Furcal said. The kid who replaced him as the Dodgers starting shortstop will be fine. Furcal played at Dodger Stadium on Friday, marking the first time he had done so since the Dodgers traded him last year to the St. Louis Cardinals. Furcal, who spent the previous 5 1/2 years with the Dodgers, went into the game hitting .367, second in the National League. Dee Gordon , who made Furcal expendable in the view of Dodgers management, had a batting average of .207 and an on-base percentage of .247.

Magic Johnson has the power to veto any development Frank McCourt might propose for the Dodger Stadium parking lots, according to a provision in an agreement between McCourt and the new owners of the Dodgers. McCourt sold the Dodgers to Guggenheim Baseball Management but retained half-ownership of the parking lots. Guggenheim secured the right to approve any development and designated Johnson as the party who would grant approval. The provision, in a document that is not public, confirms what Guggenheim executives have said, that they control development of the property.

While the legislature in Minnesota continued to work on a solution to keep the Vikings, AEG on Tuesday unveiled its latest vision for an NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. Two weeks remain in the public-comment period of AEG's environmental impact report on the concept, and the company hopes to have its approvals in place by late summer, with the goal of luring a football team back to L.A. next spring. AEG's is one of two competing stadium proposals, with the other in City of Industry.

With the Dodgers in the running for the World Series, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution calling for federal legislation to rename the area around Dodger Stadium "Dodgertown." The resolution calls for the postmaster general to redraw a ZIP Code boundary encompassing 276 acres of Dodgers property between Academy Road to the north, Lookout Drive to the south, Stadium Way to the west and skirting the parking lot to Academy Road to the east.

The decision to film two key scenes from "Star Trek" in the Dodger Stadium parking lot may not seem the logical choice, but that's just what visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett and director J.J. Abrams did. The drill platform scene with Kirk and Sulu battling Romulans high above planet Vulcan and the Delta Vega ice planet sequences were filmed there, on side-by-side sets over two weeks.

This is how all new beginnings should be. All energy and smiles and positive vibes. Stan Kasten is on the move and taking it all in. He's greeting season-ticket holders as they enter the stadium. He's meeting with ushers, security personnel and ticket takers. He's walking the loge, the reserved and the field levels. He's talking to fans and ushers and complete strangers, and welcoming them all to Dodger Stadium. An attractive woman walks up and hugs the new team president.

The Dodgers' new owners will pay $14 million per year to rent the parking lots from an entity half-owned by Frank McCourt, according to land-use documents intended to "facilitate the orderly development" of the property surrounding Dodger Stadium. The potential uses for the property include shops and restaurants, homes and offices, and another sports venue, according to documents obtained Friday by The Times. The documents also discuss the possibility of parking structures on the land.