Morning at Dodger Stadium

By Jon Weisman

I’m beginning this shortly before 9 a.m. on Sunday at Dodger Stadium, where the club’s seventh annual Winter Development Program is getting underway. On a crisp January morning, the field is nearly empty, which as you might imagine makes it a fairly … oh, let’s make up a word here … exhalative setting. It couldn’t be more relaxing.

That being said, I came down here on a Sunday morning because I’m not relaxed. With Dodger Insider making its official launch, I felt a level of urgency that doesn’t exactly match up with the zen scene on the field. (Maybe that’s why I included the slightly foreboding descending seats at the top of my otherwise lovely shot of the field.)

There is the weight of expectations, and I bring that up mainly because I imagine, as we head into Spring Training, the season-opening sojourn to Australia and then the heart of the regular season, the team itself will feel an exponentially larger burden. Last year, Los Angeles came as close to the World Series as it’s been since 1988, but that’s not a laurel to rest upon. That’s a gauntlet, one that everyone in the organization recognizes.

There are no straight lines between January and October, no steady-as-she-goes escalators. It’s a zig-zag journey, the longest of heavyweight fights where the best you can hope is you’re still standing after absorbing every imaginable face and body blow. You try to win every moment, knowing that you can’t possibly win every moment. And you try to smell the roses, win or lose. (It’s a game, after all, however much it means to us.)

That’s the journey we’re going to chronicle in our print and online publications, and now here at Dodger Insider.

More to come, to say the least …