Sun broke through the Bay Area's chilly October overcast, illuminating the final Dodgers loss of the season. "That," said Rick Monday, the team's infamously inarticulate announcer, "rings down the curtain call." His fractured metaphor almost perfectly captures the team's uninspiring last weeks.

Even before the terror attacks, chronic pitching and hitting woes were undermining the Dodgers' championship chances. The season's weeklong delay after September 11 did nothing to stop the slide. When play resumed, the ghastly visions from New York and Washington seemed to sap the players' spirit.

Stalwart Paul Lo Duca, who astounded everyone by posting a batting average, home run and runs-batted-in totals comparable with those of the long-lamented Mike Piazza, less frequently delivered clutch hits. So did one of the Dodgers' other big bats, Gary Sheffield. Once-reliable starting pitchers suddenly gave up scads of runs in one or two bad innings per game. Relievers all too often blew the relatively few games the Dodgers were poised to win.

After three quick mid-September home losses to the dismal San Diego Padres, the Dodgers were through. So, too, was my stint as a rookie sportswriter.

My favorite part of the job was arriving early, getting a quick quote or statistic, and settling in to write while sitting smack on the field, or in a deserted section of box seats. Many have written about how even a glimpse of a ballpark's green symmetry can inspire and uplift. I would bask for hours in the near-empty stadium, bathed in the colors and sounds of baseball, happily tapping away on my laptop.

The other writers didn't seem to enjoy their work as much. They would cluster in little gossipy groups in the clubhouse, fight for interviews, watch other games on TV and retire to write their stories, crammed one after the other at the Formica counters in the press box.

Most, I found, were neither particularly friendly nor pleasant. Many acted as if covering sports for a living was a peculiar kind of hell. They seemed to waft like shabby ghosts throughout the stadium.

Although modern ballplayers are often considered petulant or spoiled, none ever snapped at me when I asked a question. An injured Dodger pitcher, however, once went berserk when I was interviewing Lo Duca.

I had openly cheered for the Dodgers' diminutive catcher, a man who patiently bucked the odds for nearly a decade and proved, despite an "expert" consensus to the contrary, that he could flourish in the major leagues. As I was thanking Lo Duca for some comments, the pitcher, sitting nearby, exploded with an expletive-laced tirade aimed at his teammate.

"That's just his way," a Dodger public relations rep ruefully said of the pitcher. "He doesn't like the media." Small wonder, I thought, that the jaded press corps had no love for him.

Nothing ever seemed to dampen the sparkling enthusiasm of Vin Scully and Ross Porter, the heart and soul of the Dodger broadcasts. Not once during the season did either of these two venerated announcers ever beg off talking with me. As the season progressed, Porter would even smile a hello when I came into the press box as he did his pre-game show from a glassed-in studio.

Late in the season, he had emergency brain surgery. The word is he's recovering nicely. Like thousands of other fans who sent him best wishes, I hope we hear his trademark drawl, replete with the Florida wind whipping into his microphone, when spring training games begin next March.

Dodger staff were uniformly friendly and courteous. Hot dog vendors, ushers and press box staff alike all seemed to have a real passion for their work.

Sometimes their instincts clashed with the suit-and-tie ethos of the team's new corporate owners. I once chanced on a pre-game meeting where field box ushers were being admonished for allowing fans to move down from the cheaper seats in later innings. Wealthy ticket holders--even those who routinely leave well before the games end--it seems, loathed any contact with the hoi polloi.

According to research by New American Foundation intern Brad Hays, the Dodgers are among a minority of teams that prohibit such "class creep." It's an institution elsewhere in baseball hotbeds like Boston and New York. "I still let them in when I can," confided one veteran usher. "They are the real fans."

And so baseball's corporate and traditional sentiments, grumpy and enthused media, unexpected stars and disappointing, hostile players all combined to shape the Dodgers' season. The 2001 curtain has indeed fallen. For those of us who love the game, it can't rise again too soon.