FOR FANS, FEAR STRIKES OUT.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Look out from the Hollywood Park grandstand in the calm between horse races and you see acres of lakes, flowers and birds, and a mile-and-a-quarter coil of green grass. You see the Hollywood sign and the downtown skyline on a clear day. And you see 9-11.

It comes at you head-on from the right and the left in the procession of airliners floating over your shoulders seconds before their landings at LAX. In those moments, dozens or hundreds of times an afternoon, you can't help imagining what it was like to be on the ground in Manhattan that day and see jet planes flying this low, and you fight off thoughts about what it would be like if one of those huge projectiles nosed toward your comfortable box seat.

Long ago, I was told that an actuary had calculated the odds at 10,000-1 against an airliner striking Hollywood Park in the next 30 years. Having watched people cash pick-six tickets at much longer odds, I always thought 10,000-1 seemed frighteningly low. In the past year, I've wondered if the number even took into account the possibility of an accident that was no accident.

Such macabre thoughts are part of going to sports events in post-9-11 America, particularly at places such as Hollywood Park, where airplanes are visible, but certainly too at places such as Staples Center, where security forces are pervasive.

The beautiful thing is sports fans have not let fear keep them from the arenas and ballparks, and they've been rewarded for their determination by the decency of 99.9999 percent of mankind and the vigilance of promoters. Anyway, fortune favors the brave.

On Tuesday, as the Bush administration prepared for today's anniversary, Attorney General John Ashcroft urged Americans to be ``alert but defiant'' in the face of terrorist threats. Sports fans, God bless 'em, have been practicing their defiance for a year.

A year ago, we thought we would feel good again when we could go and watch the Dodgers without considering a large crowd a risk and without straining to wreath the game in symbolism. When we'd completely moved on and a game was just a game again. Now, we should feel satisfaction we keep looking terror in the eye and pushing on through the turnstiles. There's your symbolism, right there in the bleachers.

It's weird to look back from Sept. 11, 2002, to Sept. 11, 2001, and vice versa.

How nervous that first night back at Dodger Stadium was after baseball, in solidarity with most other sports, took a six-day break last September.

For the first time, fans with bags or bulky jackets were searched at the entrances, and reporters were ordered to open their computer bags and briefcases for inspection. A dog sniffed for bombs in the office of Dodgers manager Jim Tracy. The clubhouses were devoid of the usual pregame music.

``We're all a little on edge,'' the San Diego Padres' Tony Gwynn said. ``You see a security guard at the door, a security guard down on the field, a couple in the stands. You don't ask why. You know why.''

In that week after the skyjackings and crashes in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, the threat of a further attack seemed very real. The possibility that this would involve a well-attended sports event seemed quite logical. Thus was born a new measure of an event's stature to go with crowd count, television rating and prize money. The greater the fear of terrorism, the bigger the game or Games.

Forty thousand fans showed up for that first Dodgers game back. Average attendance at Dodger Stadium actually went up after 9-11. It was a fastball in bin Laden's ear.

There is no underestimating how America's return to a measure of normality was accelerated by the return of office workers to skyscrapers and travelers to airplanes. But the greatest role of all might have been played by the return of sports fans to the stands. Workers and travelers generally had less choice in the matter. Sports fans faced their fears because they wanted to.

We've come a long way in the year. Now the search at the arena is less scary than comforting. It's routine enough that we can gripe about it and laugh about it. There was the guard at a Los Angeles stadium who, after struggling to tear an out-of-date security tag from my bag, said hopefully, ``Do you have any scissors in there?'' Good job following the letter of the regulation, not so good at grasping the point.

Every time we've gone to a game, a match or a race, we've remembered 9-11 and beaten our fears. That's better than if we'd completely moved on.