Opening Night

Opening night, and Dodger Stadium was decorated not in bunting, but desperation. Opening night of the nine-game season that will decide the National League West championship, and that smell in the air was decidedly not spring. Fans booed the players, screamed at the scoreboard--C'mon Padres, you quitters!--and fought with each other. The Dodgers felt it, became it, flailing and slipping and scowling on a Friday night that marked the beginning of their last chance to show us their heart.

All through the preseason, K.C. Jones, coach of the champion Boston Celtics, acted the part of a worried man. He worried about the no-repeat trend in the NBA for almost two decades, worried about injuries to several players and worried about how all the other teams improved. True, three players were missing, but the Celtics celebrated the opening of the new season Friday night at Boston.

There are some things that improve with age: The Hollywood Bowl is one. Tuesday night was heaven. For the opening night of the 68th Bowl season, the skies were friendly--only one helicopter. As twilight took its sweet time about becoming night, the silhouette of lined up trees on the hill behind the bowl was a painting worthy of Sotheby's. It was all first class. The official Steinway. Schramsberg champagne. Beluga caviar. Lobster bisque. Silver goblets. Blue Willow china.

Though their numbers are dwindling, a few people are still with us who were part of the original 1927 production of "Show Boat." One of them is Norma Terris, who, as a 22-year-old ingenue, originated the role of Magnolia. "We all knew we were involved in something special," Terris said recently by phone from her home in Lyme, Conn. "We wanted the audience to go out feeling they had seen something magnificent and new."

Here's some theme music for the folks who run the handsome, gleaming Anaheim Arena, which staged its first event Saturday night: They ain't superstitious, Barry Manilow just crossed their trail. Now why would "I Ain't Superstitious," that roughhouse Willie Dixon/Howlin' Wolf blues standard from the southside of Chicago, come knocking in anybody's head on the night when smooth Mr. Schmaltz opened an arena on the southside of Anaheim? History, that's why.

With all the giddy anticipation of a first date, thousands of Mighty Ducks fans decked themselves out in duck attire and met their team Friday night. They weren't sure what to expect, but they hoped for a good time. "It was to be expected," Sandy McCubbin, 33, said of the 7-2 loss to Detroit as he left the arena with his father shortly before the game ended. "You have to be patient. It will take a little time. But it was really exciting tonight, with all the fans there."

Howard Esterson, a local insurance agent, says the Padres' only weakness in 1989 is third base. Otherwise, they're a lock for the championship. "That's all we're looking for," said Esterson, who lives in San Carlos. "Otherwise, we've got it." So, who's on third? That was THE question being debated Monday evening, as the Padres ushered in the new season at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. Over hot dogs and barbecued chicken--"Please, no sushi!"

It all started over a Cobb salad at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. Bonnie and I were having our usual (without the avocado), with the usual talk (my impending divorce and her last date), when the subject of the Performing Arts Center came up. On that particular day, the notion of an arts center in Orange County intrigued us even more than my departing husband's last words or Bonnie's previous evening.

The "Ice Age" finally has arrived in Music City. Seventeen months after the NHL awarded Nashville the first of four expansion franchises, the Predators play their first regular-season game tonight against the Florida Panthers at sold-out Nashville Arena. "The opening night is going to be absolutely a lot of fun," owner Craig Leipold said. "It's going to be the night." It is definitely the night he has been waiting for since June 1997.

A couple of gourmands check out a new restaurant. "The food in here is awful," grumps the first. "Yes," sniffs the second. "And such small portions." The wry old tale came to mind Friday night, when the Central Ballet of China--"direct," it says here, "from Beijing"--opened a four-performance stand at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. The ads heralded "The Red Detachment of Women." Not excerpts from the epochal Communist dance-drama, but "a full ballet in two acts."