"Amid the clutter of a Compton playground, there appeared the deep greens and rich browns of a new baseball field.

Sitting next to a pale and thinning Frank McCourt, there appeared a beaming Matt Kemp.

At the end of the darkest of Dodgers chapters, there appeared hope.

Call it the $160-million metaphor, the Dodgers parading Kemp through a refurbished corner of Compton on Monday while putting the finishing touches on his new eight-year contract that will be the richest and perhaps most important in Dodgers history."