On a cool September evening six days after the terrorist attacks, Brooklyn returned to the Dodgers. The city's first baseball game since the season paused in sorrow could have spawned yet another mawkish, made-for-TV display. Instead, with a brilliant stroke of insight, the Dodgers magically blessed the crowd with the languid memory of a softer, nearly forgotten past.

Nothing of the sort seemed in the offing on the way to the ballpark. Cheap-talk bravery filled the airwaves. "Those guys selling flags for twenty bucks in front of Save-On," howled a talk radio host, "are scum. They should be shot like bin Laden." Out of proportion, to say the least.

At the stadium, lithe, A-list network faces and their rumpled camera crews trolled for emotion. They filmed the heightened security measures. They secured appropriate quotes from properly subdued ballplayers. Miniature U.S. flags sprouted one, two and sometimes three at a time from the fans' hats and hair.

Yet, the atmosphere was somehow dignified, even stately. Something different, calming, gently hypnotic was in the air.

It was, I realized, the silence. The Dodgers had turned off the rock music. No announcer hustled tickets or gasoline station promotions. The Diamondvision scoreboard stood mute and dark.

Only baseballs and mitts, bats singing as they stroked batting practice liners, could be heard in the stadium of Koufax, Drysdale and Maury Wills. And surrounding it all was a gentle crowd murmur, a soothing sound almost never heard amid the manufactured noise of the modern, multimedia arena.

"The players wanted it this way," an engineer told me up in the press box. "They didn't think music would be appropriate."

In planning to deal with the nation's trauma and their shocked, stricken fans, the Dodgers had intuitively reached back to their heritage. "I'm going to play live more tonight," stadium organist Nancy Bea Hefley told me. She was wearing a red, white and blue embroidered blouse. "We won't have as much recorded music. It's supposed to be more like the O'Malley era."

This proves to be a brilliant stroke. At 5:45 p.m., just after the gates opened, she played the evening's first song, "Hazard" by Richard Marx. Later that night I learned it's about a tragic event in a small town in Nebraska, a place Life magazine once said "calls up the images of a land we all like to think we once knew--an America framed in affection." Its simple, bittersweet chords perfectly frame the evening.

At 7 p.m. the stadium announcer breaks his silence and briefly welcomes everyone to the ballpark. The Diamondvision comes to life. There, with microphone in hand and sincerity in his voice, Vin Scully leads the crowd through a brief, tasteful ceremony of song, remembrance and thanks. It's a beautiful, goosebump moment anchored by a man many in the audience have been listening to since they were children.

The sounds of the anthem eventually subside. The San Diego Padre bullpen catcher shuts the right field gate and begins to warm up the team's rookie pitcher. He's making his first-ever major league start, and the ball seems to sizzle and pop with promise.

For the first time in ages, Nancy Bea plays accompaniment as Dodger pitcher Kevin Brown completes his warm up tosses. Normally he insists on Metallica. Nothing so coarse is allowed to break this evening's spell.

When Brown's ready, the announcer again takes the mike. No prepackaged MTV-like production hypes the lineup. "Now batting," he says in the special cadence of the public address professional, "Number 24, left fielder, Ricky Henderson."

For a moment I feel like I'm in one of those of old baseball photographs where the field is ringed by people in suits and bowler hats. It's a fine antidote for the edgy complications lying unresolved outside the gates.

Vying for a playoff spot, the Dodgers eventually lose the game. But, on this night at least, I'd like to think the team won a place in every fan's heart.