Stadiums

When Pink Floyd first took its concept album "The Wall" to the concert stage more than three decades ago, even lead singer and chief songwriter Roger Waters couldn't imagine a day when rock music might get any bigger. But 32 years later, his magnum opus about the battle between individual freedoms and authoritarian oppression has magnified beyond Waters' own expectations of yore. Now the man who once excoriated the voluminous expansion of the rock concert experience has helped institutionalize it. "I famously hated playing to large numbers of people and playing in stadiums," Waters, 68, said from a tour stop in Austin, Texas, earlier this month.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has supported the construction of a 72,000-seat football stadium in downtown Los Angeles, now has raised a series of criticisms about the project's potential impact on the environment. Many of its concerns are well founded; rather than fight them in court, the project's developer, Anschutz Entertainment Group, ought to take them into account and use them to improve the proposal. In a letter to the Los Angeles City Planning Department, the NRDC warned that although AEG's voluminous environmental impact report promises a number of measures to limit the negative effects of the stadium on the environment, it lacks details about how those measures will work and how they will be enforced.

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.

An environmental group that has supported a proposed downtown Los Angeles football stadium and helped the developer secure special treatment in the courts issued a sharply worded critique Tuesday of environmental documents prepared for the project. In a 16-page letter to city officials, the Natural Resources Defense Council called on Anschutz Entertainment Group to rewrite and recirculate a recently released environmental impact report on the proposed stadium, saying it failed to fully analyze health risks created by cars that would travel to and from the 72,000-seat facility.

At the Dallas Cowboys stadium that will open for the next NFL season, what catches your eye -- no, what makes your jaw drop -- might be the 60-yard-long video screen that hangs from the translucent, movable roof. At the New York Mets ballpark that will open April 13, it might be the soaring open-air rotunda that honors Jackie Robinson.

Tucked in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley lies nine square miles of hilly land flanked by four freeways filled with motorists, most of them heading elsewhere. And that's the way many of the 32,000 residents in Walnut like it. As the outside world drives by, those who live here on the far edge of Los Angeles County see it as a hidden oasis with horse-friendly crosswalks, single-family homes and an open, rolling landscape. Clean and quiet, safe and serene -- Walnut, locals say, is the quintessential bedroom community.

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa — A strike by stadium stewards over pay had spread to half the World Cup venues by Tuesday, forcing police to bring in more than 1,000 officers to guarantee security for a night game between Brazil and North Korea at Ellis Park. Several hundred protesting workers, clad all in black, were singing, chanting and whistling as fans and journalists began arriving at the downtown Johannesburg stadium Tuesday afternoon. Grim-faced police officers toting shotguns looked on from just a few feet away.

When Mayor David Perez of the city of Industry looks out over the rolling, 600-acre site on his city's eastern edge, he sees the future home of an NFL stadium and an economic engine that would bring jobs and tax revenue for the entire region. When Joaquin Lim, the mayor of nearby Walnut, imagines a stadium there, he sees a potential disaster: traffic, noise and "passionate, emotional" football fans.

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday ordered the county's lobbyists to oppose any legislation in Sacramento that would ease environmental and planning regulations in order to clear the way for a proposed 75,000-seat professional football stadium to be built in the city of Industry. Gloria Molina asked her fellow supervisors to take that stand after recent reports indicated that backers of the stadium were aggressively lobbying state legislators. The Times reported last week that aides to top lawmakers appeared receptive to issuing California Environmental Quality Act waivers for the stadium, in light of the tough economy.

Five new baseball parks have opened since 2000, including Miller Park in Milwaukee and PNC Park in Pittsburgh this season: MILLER PARK * Location: Downtown Milwaukee on Miller Park Way (formerly U.S. 41). * Dimensions: Left field 342; center field 400; right field 345. * Capacity: 43,000. * Cost: $399 million. * First game: April 6 vs. Cincinnati. * The lowdown: Miller Park is a convertible-roof stadium that replaces County Stadium, which opened in 1953.

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.

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.

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.

Unable to mediate a settlement with opponents of a football stadium proposed for the city of Industry, the California Senate approved a measure Wednesday that exempts the project from state environmental laws. The action was taken after Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) was unsuccessful in negotiating an agreement that would have a citizens group drop its lawsuit seeking to block the 75,000-seat stadium. The suit alleged that the project violated state environmental laws.

State leaders have said there are no winners in California's budget deal to erase a $26.3-billion deficit. But at least one group might come out ahead: the City of Industry, billionaire real estate investor Ed Roski Jr. and backers of a proposed NFL stadium on 600 acres he controls east of downtown Los Angeles.

The price first-time homeowner Justin Bieber paid for his new digs in Calabasas has wended its way into the public record: $6.5 million. Set on 1.3 acres in a gated community, the 10,000-square-foot main house is described as "transitional French" in style. Features include a high-ceiling foyer, library, a movie theater with stadium seating, a wet bar and a wine cellar. Just what every 18-year-old pop singer needs. Including a guesthouse, there are seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, teetering on the brink of financial ruin, approved a controversial deal Monday to surrender day-to-day control of the historic venue to USC. The 8-to-1 vote would virtually end public stewardship of the 88-year-old stadium, a jewel of its South Los Angeles neighborhood built to honor World War I veterans and financed with public money. USC has long sought control of the Coliseum, decrying the property's outdated condition as unfit for the school's Trojan football team, which plays there.