Boys and girls dressed in new uniforms put down their baseball gloves long enough to tackle plates of pancakes and sausages. Parents with coffee cups in hand greeted one another with hugs in the brisk morning air. There were familiar hallmarks of the opening day of baseball season: keynote speakers, the national anthem, red, white and blue balloons and a ceremonial first pitch.
At last came the siren call: Play ball!
The start of every season brings with it the promise of hope and renewal, but those eternal themes carried particular resonance on Saturday, opening day for the Pacific Palisades Baseball Association, less than two months after the devastating Los Angeles fires.
Though Rancho Park, a bustling public park, is far from the community’s familiar coastal quiet and manicured baseball diamonds, the participants in the Palisades youth baseball program — like so many of the families who take part in it — were just happy to have found a temporary home.
They may have scattered to new homes, some in the San Fernando Valley and others to the South Bay, but 305 of the 450 boys and girls who signed up to play before the fires struck are playing this season.
The pomp and circumstance and the daylong slate of games that followed provided a modicum of normalcy for families who in the previous 53 days have had to find new homes, schools, doctors, cars, clothes, places to worship and more — all while navigating the maze of insurance and government assistance and deciding what to do next.
“I cried seeing people,” said Juliana Davis, who lost her home.
“I cried coming in,” said her friend Erin Chidsey, whose house also burned.
There were other comforting markers on Saturday: the ping of a baseball hitting an aluminum bat, ambient chatter from the dugouts and little boys — having the mannerisms of their big league heroes down pat — digging into the batter’s box looking like ballplayers.
The sport took on new meaning for Wil Hoffman, 12, whose family lost its home in the fires.
“It used to be about playing baseball with my friends,” he said. “Now it’s playing for my community. I’m proud to be playing in a league that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
So many have had a hand in it. The bat manufacturer Easton and the glove maker Rawlings donated equipment to those who had lost theirs in the fires, with Justin Turner, a former Dodgers star now with the Chicago Cubs, handing them out with a few other former big leaguers with Los Angeles ties.
The City of Los Angeles, which runs Rancho Park, opened up more field times for practices and games. And the Cheviot Hills Pony Baseball Association, a frequent rival in regional tournaments, worked with the Palisades league’s board to integrate the new teams into its league, agreeing to keep the Palisades players together on teams so they can be with coaches and teammates with whom they are familiar. The Palisades teams will wear blue caps with a white “P” instead of the cap of their major-league team name.
The Palisades leaders also acknowledge the need to be good guests.
Baseball in Cheviot Hills is generally less intense and draws players from a more socioeconomically diverse area. Parents from the Palisades have been encouraged by league leaders to dial back their accouterments, which in recent years have become a competitive sport of their own: portable speakers that blast batters’ walk-up songs and snack responsibilities that have resulted in margarita machines and taco trucks.
There has been no shortage of reflection. Children who once walked to practices and rode their bikes to school now know what it’s like to sit in crosstown traffic to get anywhere. Parents have learned to pack their children’s lunches in hotel rooms and to email the front desk to print out school forms.
“Every day I remember something that I don’t have,” said Jessica Sklar, who missed her son’s game on Saturday afternoon so she could supervise her family’s move into a rental home in Cheviot Hills — the fifth place they have lived since their house burned down. “I’m now a minimalist. I always had five bottles of Windex. What for? I don’t want extra of anything.”
As Ms. Sklar watched her son’s recent practice, she lamented not grabbing his sportsmanship award or the seashells they had collected, and recalled watching the fires encroach on their home’s security cameras after the family had evacuated. “We were waiting for the sound of fire engines, and it never came,” she said.
She and her husband are determined to build their dream home, but it will be a different dream than they imagined because their two children will be years closer to being out of the house before it feels like home.
“You can’t get that time back,” she said.
Baseball can sometimes bridge time. The sport may have lost its hold as America’s pastime, but the game’s intricacies and history still have a way of connecting parents and their children — and then again with their kids. It was that way for David Hoffman, Wil’s father and coach, who grew up outside New York City, in Westchester County, and came to love the game — and the Yankees — through his father.
“My kids know that nothing makes me happier than going in the backyard and having a catch,” said Mr. Hoffman, who has three sons. “Any time I have a catch with one of my boys, subconsciously, I’m having a catch with my dad or my best friends. It feels like a rite of passage.”
On Saturday morning, Mr. Hoffman looked out at the crowd of parents and children who were being addressed by the speakers. Those included Bob Benton, who for 36 years has presided over the Pacific Palisades Baseball Association and needed a moment to compose himself. Other dignitaries followed, before Reagan Whalen, 14, who was a rare girl to play in the league when she was younger, stirred the crowd with a soulful rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“All the kids had smiles, all the parents had tears,” Mr. Hoffman said.
Reagan’s father, Bryan Whalen, has continued coaching with his youngest child. A former linebacker at Yale, he brings an enthusiasm embodied by the Red Sox-themed overalls he sported. (His team in the league is the Red Sox.)
Saturday was a sign to him that the children affected by the fire will endure.
“They’re lucky kids — they grow up with a lot,” Mr. Whalen said. “You hope that along the way they learn resilience, but you just never know. Then you see eight innings of kids having fun. Monday they’ll be back to dealing with longer commutes, but today it didn’t matter.”
A few minutes earlier, Henry Fohrer, a polite, thoughtful Red Sox outfielder, came to bat with two outs, the bases loaded and the score tied, 2-2, in the bottom of the eighth inning. He carried to the plate the words of encouragement his coach had given him after striking out in his previous two at-bats: Be brave.
And so Henry was. He swung mightily and smacked a line drive to left field for the game-winning hit.
As the Red Sox gathered on the grass behind the dugout, Mr. Whalen told the boys how proud he was that they had kept their cool in the big moments. He also said they would have plenty to work on at practice the next morning. Then he tossed the game ball to Henry and asked him to lead their cheer.
The boys rose to their feet, put their hands together and waited for Henry to bark out his command: “Red Sox on me. Red Sox on three.”
And with that, the voice of one became a chorus: “One, two, three — Red Sox!”