LOS ANGELES – The 110 Freeway flowed freely outside Dodger Stadium. The deadlocked traffic that usually accompanies Dodgers games was nonexistent. The parking lot was a sea of sun-bleached asphalt.
The pregame scene inside the stadium was also out of balance, particularly for a postseason series. This baseball cathedral, where Koufax and Scully had made their names, where manager Dave Roberts’s nucleus of players had come so close to winning it all, where 50,000-plus fans pack in each night–resembled a quiet Hollywood sound stage.
Dodger Stadium had already hosted 30 games this year under the strange terms forced upon it by the pandemic, but none stranger than L.