For L.A. Fire Victims, Two Words Bring Hope and a Little Normalcy: ‘Play Ball’

A Pacific Palisades youth baseball league has found a temporary home and, with lots of help, is reviving a sense of togetherness that was lost in January.

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.