One night in Mannywood

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The words rang out through Mannywood as if nothing had changed. The weather and smiles were warm. The beer was cold. The music was chill. Daddies played with daughters while starry-eyed lovers stared at each other instead of the field.

A beach ball fell from the middle tier to the bottom, and one section booed while the other enjoyed their new toy.

Thank goodness for baseball. Our slowest sport is blissfully timeless. I think I witnessed the same scene as a kid in the ‘80s. My parents saw it in the ‘60s. It wasn’t called Mannywood back then. It was just a great place to watch a ballgame.

Depending on who you ask, there are actually two Mannywoods in Dodger Stadium. One, while in some ways defunct, is nestled in the corner of left field between the foul pole and the bullpen. Juan Pierre stood before this section at the top of each inning on Thursday night. He had just been called upon to replace Manny Ramirez, suspended for using a banned substance. When Pierre tossed a practice ball over to the bleachers, the fans in this ‘official’ Mannywood booed his choice.

A couple innings later, I headed to the area where Pierre threw the ball. This version of Mannywood may be renegade, but so is their namesake. While the player thumbs his nose at convention -- and apparently the rule book -- the section’s fans thumb their noses at their highfalutin neighbors with seat backs. ‘Posers,’ shrugged one who was sitting next to last year’s winner of a Manny Look-Alike contest named Jose Velasquez.

‘Just Jose being Manny,’ they say in these parts.

After the seventh-inning stretch, Velasquez and his friends unfurled a giant banner reading, ‘We support Mannywood! Go Dodgers!’ Security doesn’t allow signs in the outfield. Their banner might have been taken, but so was their point.

Despite the news of Manny’s suspension breaking earlier that day, there didn’t seem to be much division among these fans -- unless you count the one in a Kobe Bryant jersey sitting three rows away from the one representing LeBron James. The vast majority were sad, but not angry ... and were counting down the days until Juan wasn’t the only Manny in left field.

-- Adam Rose