A Classic Spring Classic

I don’t usually go in for loudness for the sake of loudness, but I found last night’s Japan Korea thunder stick fest exhilarating. I can’t imagine keeping up that kind of energy for 162 games, but it was an awesome sight.

All in all, it was an unforgettable night. Great baseball played by two evenly matched teams that required more than 9 innings to get it all in. Ichiro went 4-for-6 and yet never scored. Japan had all of two extra base hits (both doubles), and just one home run hit the entire game. Great pitching to say the least.

Here are some other things I noticed, in no particular order:

No beach balls. The fans came to watch baseball.

Until Ichiro’s at-bat, there were very few foul balls. Upon taking our seats in the loge just to the third base side of the screen, I recall thinking, “We had better be alert, since foul balls are likely to come screaming back at us. Yet nothing came close. I don’t know how to verify this other than with my observation, or for that matter, what it means, but I found it unusual. Maybe it just means I’ve been watching spring training games where batters haven’t yet caught up to pitchers, while Japan and Korea were in midseason form?

With all the routinized cheering (Nip-pon, Nip-pon was prevalent in our heavily Japanese rooting section), not once did I see the execrable wave ripple through Dodger Stadium. This act is tiresome to say the least, and annoying to those who are trying to watch the game at most. The fans knew exactly when to cheer, when to stand up to watch an incredible defensive play, and when to sit back in their seats (by the time the next pitch was thrown).

The Dodgers put on a pretty good show, linking both teams to L.A. baseball history, bringing in Japanese and Korean announcers to introduce the players, even charting the Ks on the pizza board (it’s no longer California Pizza Kitchen) thrown by Korean pitchers (they were the home team). Shortcomings on the scoreboard included the lack of the players’ full names (so many Lees and Kims on the Korean team made it hard to identify each one) and failure to recap what batters had done in their previous at-bats. I keep score anyway, but I never did catch what Bum Ho Lee did in his first at-bat.

On the farm

I’m the last guy to defend Ned Colletti, given his horrendous record of free agent signings. But before we start dumping all over him for destroying the farm system, let’s have a closer look.

Here are Baseball Prospectus’s top dodger prospects from 2006

Excellent Prospects
1. Clayton Kershaw, LHP
2. Andy LaRoche, 3B
3. Scott Elbert, LHP
Very Good Prospects
4. James Loney, 1B
Good Prospects
5. Jonathan Meloan, RHP
6. Josh Bell, 3B
7. Preston Mattingly, 1B
Average Prospects
8. Blake DeWitt, 2B/3B
9. Bryan Morris, RHP
10. Chin-Lung Hu, SS

Well, Kershaw, Loney, and perhaps DeWitt are on the big league roster, with Elbert and Hu probably in AAA. LaRoche has yet to show that he was worth waiting for. Meloan was overhyped. Bell, Morris, and Mattingly are not making anyone forget Buddy, Jack, or Don.

Going back even further, here’s John Sickels’ analysis of the Dodgers' farm system from 2004

Top pitchers
Edwin Jackson, RHP
Greg Miller, LHP
Joel Hanrahan, RHP
Chad Billingsley, RHP
Top hitters
James Loney, 1B
Franklin Gutierrez, OF
Delwyn Young, 2B
Xavier Paul, OF
Koyie Hill, C
Reggie Abercrombie, OF
Sleepers
Jon Broxton, RHP
Andy LaRoche, 2B
Mike Megrew, LHP
Brian Pilkington, RHP
Disappointments
Willy Aybar, 3B
Joel Guzman, SS
Joe Thurston, 2B

Jackson has been an average major league pitcher, certainly not the all-star everybody expected when he was traded. Hanrahan was DFA’d. Gutierrez is a career .258 hitter. Koyie Hill has played 96 games. Abercrombie is 27, and less promising than Kemp, Ethier, or Delwyn Young, or even Xavier Paul. Megrew and Pilkington have yet to see major league action. Aybar cost the Dominican team a crucial game against the Netherlands. Joel Guzman can’t hit the curveball. Joe Thurston is 30 and has 59 major league games under his belt.

So I ask amid all the hand-wringing, where is the Delino DeShields for Pedro Martinez moment? The Nolan Ryan for Jim Fregosi? The Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen. John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander?

The answer: nowhere. The Dodgers have done a rather excellent job of holding onto their best prospects while trading off players who have not exactly become all stars. I’m willing to concede the possibility that we may some day be talking about the guitarist as “the other Carlos Santana,” but for the moment, the Cleveland catching prospect is still just a prospect.

The Dodgers farm system is weak right now because so many of its jewels are studding the major league roster, competing for playoff spots even as they garner major league experience. Kemp, Martin, Loney, Dewitt, Young, Broxton, and Billz, are all proven major leaguers at a very young age. Kershaw is clearly on his way to joining them, and Ethier, though he did not come from the Dodger system, was an outright steal for Milton Bradley.

There are still plentyof things that stand between this team and a world championship (mostly starting and relief pitching). But let’s quit griping about the farm system. There are no tomatoes coming up from the ground at harvest time. They’re already on the plate.

Whelmed

I had my first glimpse of Camelback Ranch over the weekend, and I have to report that I’m whelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed.

It’s not the finest spring training facility, nor is it the worst. It’s perfectly adequate. Good sightlines, fairly comfortable seating, and inviting grass berms where you can sack out for $8. There’s no scoreboard behind home plate, however, so you have to look behind you to see the count or the score. Not that they matter much in a spring training game.

The food is no worse than the offerings at Dodger stadium, and there are plenty of friendly vendors roaming the isles. They don’t sell much other than lemonade, beer, or peanuts. For anything else, you’ve got to go up to the concession stands, where the lines appear to be too long.

There’s not a whole lot of shade, however. That wasn’t an issue on this past weekend, but I’ve been in Phoenix on hotter weekends when that would have been a serious concern.

Parking is adequate, but the folks taking your $5 move a bit slower than they ought to.

The practice fields are numerous and well manicured, and if you get to the stadium in the morning, you can watch workouts.

I had the opportunity to see a White Sox game on a weekday in addition to Saturday’s contest against the Mariners. In contrast with the 11,00+ for the Saturday game, there were no more than 2,000 people at Friday’s contest, many of them dressed as empty seats. Methinks the slow economy is taking its toll on spring training trips, especially from as far away as Chicago. MLB says average attendance is up, but I don’t believe it based on the Chicago game.

That cheap, cheap, cheap sound you hear is the Dodgers ruining their future

If I'm Andre Ethier, I'd be pissed about the recent signings of scrap heap pitchers. He and the Dodgers are squabbling over a difference of $1.1 million in arbitration for 2009. He wants to be paid slightly less than Russell Martin, who he outhit in 2008.

The Dodgers continue to be super-cheap with their young players (remember the bickering about whether Abreu was on the major or minor league DL?) while lavishing money on retreads, losers, and so-called "diamonds in the rough" like Eric Milton, Jeff Weaver, Shawn Estes, and the like. What, Esteban Loaiza wasn't available? Elmer Dessens has worn out his welcome?

Sure, one of those guys may turn out to be Chan Ho Park. But none of them is going to be as valuable to the club as a happy Ethier, Loney, Kemp, Martin, or even Abreu. When it comes free agent time, does anybody think those guys are going to give the Dodgers a home town discount after the way the team has treated them when it had the hammer? I don't think so.

Sometimes it Rains

I think the umps should have called the game in the 4th inning. That would have meant starting all over tomorrow (today), and it would have killed Hamels for the game. They didn't want to do that, but they also didn't want the game to end after 5 innings. As soon as the Rays tied the score, the decision was clear, however.

Baseball made the right call here. The summer game should not be played in a driving rainstorm, and McCarver and Buck were right in that the sloppy basepaths took away from the Rays' strength in baserunning. Not to mention the risk of injury. Football players may be expected to run through a brick wall, but baseball players are actually athletes. You'd hate to see an Evan Longoria or Ryan Howard seriously injured because of poor playing conditions. Certainly in basketball, they stop the game and mop up the floor the minute there's a single drop of water on the court. And hockey stops the game twice to clean up the messy ice.

Football is the only one of the four major sports that is played regardless of weather. And if you've ever been forced to sit through a three-hour slogfest in the cold, driving rain, you'll agree that this is no fun for fans. Frankly, I can't understand why people like to go to football games in Green Bay or Buffalo, but I guess if you're going to be freezing anyway, you might as well enjoy some football. Me, I'd prefer to see a football game from the comfort of my own couch, where beers arefree and tivo allows me to skip over commercials, time outs, and the endless boredom of official review.

LA fans--we have it easy. There's hardly ever been a rain delay at Dodger Stadium, and even USC football is played in brilliant sunshine most of the time. But in the rest of the world, where there is weather, there are consequences. Even the Phillies said they wouldn't have wanted to win the World Series in a shortened game.

I'm usually the first to criticize baseball for having its head up its butt, but Selig made the right call here.

Like West Hollywood

I don't usually toot my own horn, but I went out on a limb a few days ago with this one, so I was glad to see it come true:

"Kuroda owns the Phils. Jamie Moyer will be lit up like West Hollywood by the third inning.
Posted by: SaMo | October 10, 2008 at 09:48 PM"

In the same vein, I'm going to make an even bolder prediction: The Dodgers will hand Brad Lidge his first blown save of the year. Could be tonight, could be tomorrow night, or could be in a deciding Game 7.

Joe-Torre-managed teams have a habit of blowing up other teams' closers. Look at Mark Wohlers in Atlanta, Trevor Hoffman in San Diego, and the collection of losers in the Mets bullpen in 2000. Of course, Torre had Mariano Rivera in those days as his own unimpeachable closer. Broxton has a ways to go before he's in that stratosphere.

Still, I've long thought that Phil Garner did irreparable damage to Lidge by not bringing him in the night after he gave up that homer to Pujols in the 2005 NLCS. Your closer blows a save and a game, and you don’t bring him back to be on the mound when your team celebrates victory? No, Garner brought in Dan Wheeler, and Lidge was never the same again. Talk about a confidence booster.

As for the beanball wars, somebody—Manny, Plaschke, whoever—had better give Bills a dose of confidence and quick. The Dodgers need Bills to pitch well if they’re going to win this thing, and hanging him out to dry for his supposed lack of guts isn’t going to help. All of this posturing about protecting your own guys is a bunch of crap. Jamie Moyer doesn’t throw hard enough to hurt anyone with a pitch. The Dodgers have momentum on their side now. They can only screw it up by starting another beanball war.

AK: You talked about Nomar scooping up a hot grounder by Shane Utley. Is that the guy who hits between Shane Victorino and Chase Utley? :-)

That's the breaks

Boy oh boy did things break right for the Dodgers yesterday.

Manny Ramirez kept coming up with men on base. Ryan Dempster forgot his google map of the strike zone. Derek Lowe’s sinke was sinking. And James Loney scrapes a millimeter off of strike three to stay alive for another pitch. Then he breaks out the rye bread and the mustard (for the salami, that is).

But beyond that, the heart of Chicago’s order came up in the eighth inning, otherwise known as Broxton time, giving Big Jon what was really a save opportunity without the pressure of pitching in the ninth inning, something that has often spooked him. The 9th inning guy often has a tougher job than the closer depending on which batters are due up in each inning, and last night was definitely an example of that happening.

Then, with a five-run lead, the Dodgers don’t have to waste Saito, can give the Man from Japan another day of rest, and best of all, get to throw Maddux in the home field where he began his career. If the Dodgers don’t advance—and it’s only one game, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves—that may end up being the Hall of Famer’s final appearance on a baseball field. And where better to end your career than closing out a victory for your team in the Friendly Confines.

I love the patient approach showed by all the Dodger hitters—except, oddly enough, Loney. Although Dumpster had walked the bases full, Loney came out swinging at two pitches in the dirt. Can’t argue with the results, however. Definitely a haircut of the highest quality. You can’t get a better haircut than that, not at Supercuts, not at Fantastic Sam’s, not at Iago of Beverly Hills.

I also loved seeing Manny in the camouflage argyle sweater. What’s the deal? Is he hoping to blend in with the preppies, or stand out from the GI Joes?

Pulling Away?

Welcome back Cory Wade. The kid just looks confident out there now, as though there's nothing he can't handle. Shuts down six in a row without ginv up so much as a walk. Fs Brad Penny's ERA by giving up a sac fly, but that's the price you pay for loading up the bases and not getting anyone out.

Is it just me, or does it look like Penny ate Andrew Jones while he was on the DL? He was never exactly svelte, but he seems ever more like Larry the Cable Guy than a professional athlete. As I recall, it was his shoulder that needed rehabbing. Maybe he was compensating by eating twice as much with the fork in his left hand.

Simers is already slotting him into the 3-spot for the playoffs. The only three spot I'd put him in right now is the third pitcher to enter the game after the first two suck. Some combination of Maddux and Kershaw probably gives you a better shot of winning a game. And frankly, if the Dodgers use Lowe and Billz in Games 1-2, Game three will be here in LA, where Kuroda has been good.

Apparently, hitting behind Manny is good too, as James Loney will attest. Manny is just sick. That first home run he identified as a slowly breaking pitch and he just would up and socked the hell out of it.

Would somebody tie Jeff Kent to the training table so that FAJ and Penny might mistake him for food. Please.

The Dodgers are playing so well right now that I didn't even mention how pathetic Weeney is. See, I definitely didn't mention it this time. Torre must be playing the law of averages. After all, a stopped clock is right twice a day. Because of those incriminating pictures WY has of Torre, all we can do is hope that the clock reads 10:03 on 10/03 for Sweeney to get right.

Jeff Kent, Hall of Famer?

It has long been speculated that Jeff Kent is a sure Hall of Famer, the latest example being last week when he, Maddux, and Manny all appeared in the same game, bringing the total number of Cooperstown-bound men to three.

The primary reason cited for Kent’s enshrinement is that his career numbers are so good for a second baseman. His 560 doubles, 376 homers, and career .290 average place among the top 5 second basemen of all time, alongside Joe Morgan, Rogers Hornsby, and Ryne Sandberg. There are precious few second basemen in the Hall of Fame, which is how Bill Mazeroski got there.

But the thing about all the aforementioned Cooperstown denizens is that they were good second basemen. Kent is not. He is an average fielder at best, with limited range. Were he a first baseman (a position he played a bit while with the Giants), his numbers would pale beside those of Gehrig, Greenberg, Foxx, and Killebrew. The player whose stats Kent’s most closely resemble is Orlando Cepeda, who hit 379 homers during the dead ball era. Kent hit his 376 in the steroid era, when dollhouse ballparks, crappy pitching, and a lower mound allowed homers to leave the park in record numbers.

So is Kent a Hall of Famer or not?

Broken from the ground up

I think another no-hitter is the key to solving the Dodgers' problems. They seem to do better when they don't get any hits at all.

As for a curse, why go looking to the supernatural when there are plenty of rational explanations for why this team stinks.

1) three gms in five years.
2) three managers in five years
3) three owners in ten years
4) unwillingness to go through a rebuilding year by any of these officers.

You can't just throw a team together and expect them to win World Series. Championships are bred, not bought. Look at the Yankees of 1996-2000. That team was built on home-grown talent that matured together through the years and complemented by a few well-placed veterans.

Since then, however, they've tried to restock every year, trading away young talent for overpriced veterans. They make the playoffs, but don't go far.

The Mets haven't won a World Series since 1986, but they're not cursed. And the Giants haven't won it all since moving to San Francisco 50 YEARS AGO! Nobody talks about them being cursed. Down here, we laugh knowingly at them at point to bad management as the cause of their problems. But we don't do the same with our own team.

This team has been poorly assembled from the beginning. Flanders attempted to do the right thing by building strength up the middle. But he pissed away all his money on players who for one reason or another haven’t delivered. He overpaid for Furcal, making him the second-highest paid shortstop in baseball. Now I like Furcal, and he’s definitely a leader. But you had Cesar Izturis coming back from surgery just a few months into the 2006 season, and could have spent that $13 million per year on a decent pitcher, a third baseman, or a top caliber center fielder.

Then he compounded the mistake by signing Pierre to a ridiculous deal, both in terms of money and length. Everyone knew Pierre had no arm and no power. But in the wake of JD Drew’s departure, Flanders rushed into a deal for a center fielder.

When he signed Schmidt, Giants fans all laughed (though they signed Zito, so who’s laughing now). How do you commit that much money to a guy with a history of arm trouble? He brought in Danys Baez to be the closer. The only reason nobody remembers that debacle is because Saito turned out to be so good. But he was fourth on the bullpen depth chart. I don’t think even Ned knew how good Saito would become.

Then Andruw Jones. Nuf said.

Frankly, the Dodgers would be a better team with half the payroll. Money in Ned’s hands is like an expense account in the hands of an SEIU union boss. The list of things to do in the off-season is so long already, I don’t even know where to start. But if I were McCourt, I’d think long and hard about whether I’d want Flanders making those decisions. His track record so far sucks.

Lost opportunities

Boy did Andre Ethier save Joe Torre’s bacon yesterday. I was at the game—beautiful day in the shade, by the way. Torre made several huge mistakes in managing that game and it almost cost them.

First, removing Kershaw and hitting Weeney. Kershaw wasn’t blowing them away, but he was getting them out. Even the hits were piddling infield grounders. But I understand if you want to take the kid out after 96 pitches. I’ll give him a pass on this one, especially with runners on 2nd and third and one out. But I can’t excuse hitting Weeney in that spot. The guy’s average is lower than every pitcher on the team except Kershaw. I’d have batted Stults ahead of Weeney. Certainly there were better options as your first guy off t he bench. Let’s see, Nomar comes to mind, Pierre, Ardoin, even Ozuna is a better choice than Weeney. That guy gets more chances than Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden combined.

Second, in the 8th, if you’re going to let Jason Johnson hit for himself, let him pitch for himself in the 9th. Johnson had retired 7 of the 8 batters he faced, and then s truck out Cameron to start off the 9th. But as soon as Kendall hits a single up the middle, all of a sudden he’s vulnerable? With Craig Counsell coming to the plate? What’s the worst thing that could happen? I know, a little league homer in which guys boot the ball, then try to atone for their mistakes and then throw it all over the yard. Well, guess what, Joe. That happened anyway. And because you took out Johnson and brought in Park to serve up that gopher ball to Braun, now two pitchers’ confidence levels are shot.

And Kershaw loses what should have been an easy W because Torre has no idea how to use his bullpen. I lived in NY and watched Torre manage the Yanks from 1996-2003. He didn’t know how to use his bullpen then either, but Mariano Rivera could make any manager look like a genius. Even LaRussa.

On a separate note, how about a hit and run with Casey Blake and Russell Martin. Russell was on base four times yesterday, but didn’t score because Blake flew out twice, struck out, and hit into a DP. Getting some fielders moving around can only help his luck.

BETTER, YOUNGER, CHEAPER

After looking at career stats for the center fielders available this off-season, it’s clear that the Dodgers should be pursuing Aaron Rowand, rather than Torii Hunter.

Start with age: Rowand is two years younger than Hunter, and hasn’t played half his career on the terrible turf at the Homer Dome. Rowand is often injured from playing all-out Darin Erstad-type baseball, but I anticipate that Hunter is theplayer whose knees will be giving out by the end of his next contract.

Rowand is also a better hitter. His career average is 15 points higher than Hunter’s, and his OBP is 20 points higher. Hunter has never ever hit .300 The two players’ slugging and OPS are nearly identical. Rowand steals fewer bases than Hunter, but that has as much to do with the bandbox ballpark he plays in, where base-stealing is useless.

Rowand will also assuredly come cheaper than Hunter or Andruw Jones. Jones will want to be paid based on his entire career, even though he had a terrible walk year; Hunter will want to be paid based on his walk year, even though he has never put up those kind of numbers consistently.

But do we need a centerfielder? Only if we can move Juan Pierre. I can’t imagine who would take him and his nancy arm and giant contract.

The best move of all would be to sign Mike Lowell, whose numbers are almost identical to Rowand’s. He plays a position where the Dodgers are deficient: third base. It would require moving Nomar once again, this time to second base, and probably using Andy LaRoche as trade bait. But I’m all for it.

HE BROKE THE BROXTON

Way to go Slingblade. The season’s over, even Saito has been breached, and you continue to trot out Broxton in a no-win situation? Are you trying to ruin the kid? It’s his first full season in the majors, and everybody from Washington to West Adams knows he’s lost something on his fastball. He’s thrown a record number of innings. But no amount of failure persuades Forrest to abandon any of his pitchers. He did this with Tomko, who merely sucked; he does it with Hernandez, who’s old; and now he’s doing it with Broxton, who is clearly overworked.

Message to Forrest: you’ve got fifty or sixty minor leaguers just chomping at the bit to get big league experience. How about we see some Jon Meloan? Give Stults some work. Houlton? Hull? It would be nice to know if these guys have major league arms, and when better to find out than in meaningless September games?

Broxton needs to be shut down now before he loses all his confidence. The kid was lights out for five months of the season. It’s only now that he’s been overworked that he’s proved mortal. His ERA has gone up by almost a full run since September 1. Does that not tell you anything? Please please please shut him down for the rest of the season. We don’t want to screw up next year as well.

PLAYOFFS!!??

I bought a ticket package for the first time this year, thinking I'd be in line for playoff seats. Of course, the Dodgers then went about losing 11 of the 14 games I purchased. Forget playoffs. I'd settle for .500 at this point.

Did anybody else notice how Vin had already thrown in the towel on this team even before the second game ended? In the promo for Dodger playoff tickets, he could barely hold his astonishment that the Dodgers were seriously asking people to throw in for playoff tickets at this stage.

To be honest, I don't really understand why 4 million people go to Dodger Stadium each year. When I go to games, I'm usually surrounded by people who cheer loudly for every medium-deep fly ball as if it were a homer, and don’t really understand baseball.

Worst of all, they boo opposing players who once wore Dodger uniforms, no matter how the player left the team. Like Piazza. The Dodgers traded him because they didn't want to pay him. Or LoDuca. He cried when that idiot Depodesta traded him away. Shawn Green too. All he ever did was hand out his batting gloves to some lucky kid whenever he hit a homer, and now he gets booed?!

Baseball knowledge is nowhere to be found at Chavez Ravine. There seems to be more interest in the video board GM car race, the hidden ball game, the trivia, and the moronic wave than in what's happening in the game. People arrive late and leave early. They seem not to mind $12 beers, lousy hot dogs, long lines for soggy fries, and baking hot afternoon affairs.

I’m tempted to suggest that fans speak with their wallets, but I believe real baseball fans are grossly outnumbered by people who go to the game because it seems like a nice thing to do on a summer’s eve. Which it is. But when you’re selling 4 million tickets a year for a team that’s barely above .500, what’s management’s incentive to improve the product?

Consistently Wrong

What is the big fucking deal with consecutive game streaks? For 100 years, there were only a few guys so narrow minded as to pursue them, and outside of Lou Gehrig and Everett Scott’s family, nobody much gave a crap. Then comes Cal Ripken and decides that this is an important accomplishment and gives rise to this kind of idiocy all over again.

Is playing in 2600 straight games difficult? Of course. But so is plate spinning. So is shooting yourself in the foot and running a marathon. It is a feat for the sake of itself. You do not help the team win by playing every day. On the contrary, you hurt the team by grinding yourself down over the course of each long season, to the point where you don’t contribute the way you should, and would, if you had ample rest.

It’s also a matter of luck. Hideki Matsui played in hundreds of consecutive games in Japan and then with the Yankees before a freak injury landed him on the DL, upsetting his cherished streak. Ditto for Miguel Tejada. It wasn’t for lack of conditioning that these players got hurt. Sometimes, you just get hurt. Does anyone doubt that Lou Gehrig would have played in a million straight games if he hadn’t gotten hurt?

So what is the big deal about playing all 162? Juan Pierre seems to take it as a point of pride, since one of the criteria for such a streak is that you be good enough to crack the starting lineup every day. But here’s the thing: HE’S NOT THAT GOOD! The Dodgers have at least two outfielders who should be starting ahead of Pierre in Ethier and Kemp, and perhaps third, if we ever get to se what Delwyn Young is made of. One might even argue that with the Dodgers’ punchless lineup, Luis Gonzalez gives the offense a better chance to score runs.

So why is Pierre in there every day instead of platooning with Luis (and Kemp shuttling between left and center)? Because of his stupid consecutive games streak. He’s played in 600-some straight games, and if he plays for 15 more years, he’ll catch Cal Ripken some time in 2022. And then, he’ll be recognized as the greatest rag-arm centerfielder with an on-base-percentage of .301! Hooray! Not!

If Pierre is going to insist on being on the field every day (And, more importantly, if Sling Blade is going to indulge this stupid little league fantasy), can he at least pay lip service to the streak. Gehrig routinely played just one or two innings when hurt to keep his streak alive; Grady Sizemore pinch-ran yesterday to maintain his moronic quest to play in all 162 games for three straight years.

Come to think of it, pinch-runner is an excellent role for Pierre. It’s one he’d better get used to, because he’s not good enough to be an every day player any longer. Come 2008, he could be sitting for 162 straight games.

$7/hour, not $70 million

When Frank McCourt took over the Dodgers, he said the three greatest concerns were the quality of the seats, the parking congestion, and long lines at the concession stands. After “fixing”—and by fixing I mean jacking up the price of parking and tickets—the first two items on the list, he’s turned his attention to the third. But his solution, like the two previous efforts, only promise to raise prices for the average fan yet again.

McCourt will spend $70 million this winter expanding the field level concourses to include stadium clubs for the swells who sit in the luxurious box seats behind the dugouts. That’s where the money is and always will be.

But the biggest problem with the concessions is not the lack of grilled Dodger Dogs or the shortage of fancy restaurants where you can go to watch the game on tv. It’s the lack of skilled employees working behind the counters. Dodger Stadium averages more than 40,000 fans per game, but the concession stands that are already in existence are not always staffed to capacity. At some stands, a single employee is taking the orders, making the food, handling money, and making change. And changing rubber gloves with each purchase.

The situation is even worse when the joint is sold out, especially when the team know the game is going to be sold out far in advance. Like Opening Day. If you know there are going to be 56,000 fans in attendance, it only stands to reason that you need to bump up the number of people on hand to quench their thirst. But somehow, this eludes them, like on Opening Day this year.

A simple increase in the number of $7/hour concessions employees (or $8, or whatever it costs) would go a lot farther toward fan satisfaction than a $70 million renovation. And it would pay for itself. When you’ve got people lined up two innings deep to pay $8 per beer, you’re losing money by not having more staff around to collect that cash. I’ve given up on a beer more than once because I didn’t want to miss more of the game standing in line.

So how about it, Mr. McCourt? Are you willing to hire more people to collect more money for you? It’s a win-win for everyone. So what’s the holdup?

At the press conference, McCourt outlined “our three core values: championship-caliber baseball, giving back to the community and providing our fans with the best experience in all of sports."

Hmmm. Championship caliber? Wouldn’t that mean a team that wins a championship every now and then?

Giving back to the community? Would that include creating parking nightmares that cause traffic to back up throughout the Los Angeles area? Raising ticket prices, and heisting parking fees by 50 percent?

Providing our fans with the best experience in all of sports? I don’t think so. Dodger Stadium is one of the most beautiful ballparks in baseball by virtue of its wonderful natural setting. But traffic jams, high parking fees, expensive concessions and long lines make it less than ideal. If Mr. McCourt wants to provide a great fan experience, I suggest he take a trip south to Anaheim and see how the Angels do it. They play in a shopping mall of a stadium, but the overall fan experience is so much better that it almost makes you forget the rats.

Season Saver

As I predicted, David Wells rose to the occasion of a big game with his career and the Dodgers’ season on the line. His wheels hit in the fifth could literally be the thing that turns this team around. I don’t know that Wells will be much more than a .500 pitcher for the Dodgers the rest of the way through, but the novelty of him will work for a little while.

Besides, .500 is a whole lot better than what Tomko was giving us.

Tomko compiled a 2-11 record between starting and relieving. His record as a starter was better than as a reliever: his only wins came as a starter, while he lost three additional games by giving up the winning run in relief. In Tomko’s 15 starts with the Dodgers, he was 2-8, but the team was 5-10. Since the All-Star Break, the Dodgers won only two of Tomko’s starts. His ERA hasn’t been below 4 since May 1.

Had Tomko pitched last night’s game, I have no doubt the Dodgers never would have recovered from the 2-1 deficit. I can’t see Tomko picking off a runner from second, and I can’t see him doing anything as brash as laying down a bunt and beating it out. Another loss last night would have dropped the team behind Colorado, given them a 2-4 road trip, and we’d all be pointing fingers at Matt Kemp’s baserunning stupidity. David Wells isn’t a long-term answer, but he is better than the alternatives we had before. I look for him to get up for another big game against his former mates in LaJolla on Friday.

Now if only we can get rid of Hernandez, we might have a shot at this thing.

Alls Well If It Ends With Wells

There's only one positive way you could spin this: anybody is better than Brett Tomko (we've all been saying that for weeks now). Even David Wells, at 44 gives you a better chance to win. Not much better, but a tiny bit better.

Nobody will remember this if it fails, but if Wells gets juiced by appearing in New York on national television, Colletti looks like the master showman. In his dreams, the win energizes the team which goes on a roll and makes it to the post-season, where Wells is money in the bank.

Too bad this dream is from 1998. I'd say Wells is more likely to win the Coney Island hot-dog eating contest than any World Series games this year.

But at least Sunday will be entertaining. I had already started to look for things to do that night rather than endure the agony of another Tomko start.

Grady does it again

Here is the Dodgers’ top hitter against lefthanders:
AVG OBP SLG OPS
James Loney .382 .435 .509 .945


Here are the Dodgers’ three worst hitters against lefties:

AVG OBP SLG OPS
Luis González .299 .365 .448 .813
Juan Pierre .261 .299 .290 .589
Ramón Martínez .227 .294 .273 .567

So who’s playing today against a ROOKIE lefthander? All three of these punch and Judy hitters! Gonzalez, with an .813 OPS, has the highest power rating among them.

And who’s NOT playing so these guys can practice not sucking against lefties? Loney, who is the team’s BEST hitter against lefties, with a .382 average. Also Ethier, who hits .325 against southpaws. It’s quibbling to argue with Gonzalez, who hits .299 against lefties. But Pierre and Martinez are head scratchers. Derek Lowe has a better average against lefties than either of these guys.

It seems as if Grady sat down with the lineup and thought to himself “how can I get my two worst hitters into the lineup tonight? I know, I’ll rest my best hitter and the guy who hits lefties really well. That should produce the kind of offensive explosion we had last night.

Money Ball?

The Dodgers make a lot of money. Every home game, after they announce the attendance, they proclaim that they are the most successful franchise in the history of baseball (perhaps all sports, but I forget). They routinely draw 3 million fans a year, who pay top dollar for everything from parking ($15!) to hot dogs to $12 beers.

Too bad they spend it so poorly.

Their payroll is $108.4, including $12 million to Odalis Perez and Bill Mueller. That’s a lot of money, but not as much as the Angels ($109.3 million), Mets ($115.2 million), or White Sox ($108.7 million). And it’s not even in the same league with the Yankees ($+ or – 200 million, depending on the day) and Red Sox ($143 million).

I’m not saying that money equals championships. If that were true, the Yankees would win it all every year. But it does equal competitiveness. The Yankees are in it every year, as are the Red Sox, Mets, and Angels. So are the Braves, though they spend somewhat less because they have smart management.

What I am saying is that the Dodgers act like a discount franchise, refusing to spend big money on big time players. What they do spend big bucks on are mediocre players like Darren Dreifort, Odalis Perez, J.D. Drew, and Juan Pierre. This is a case of cheapness exacerbated by mismanagement.

I’d like to see the Dodgers pick up Torii Hunter this offseason, as he is a perennial all star who delivers big hits and has playoff experience. He’s really the only jewel in the 2007 free agent class. But if they don’t get Hunter, I’d hate to see them repeat the Pierre for Soriano mistake of last year by signing an inferior player like Adam Dunn or Brad Wilkerson to a slightly cheaper contract.

It’s the rare player in baseball who merits the kind of millions being paid to the elite. For the most part, the Matt Kemps of the world can deliver the same numbers as the Juan Pierres and Luis Gonzalezes for a whole lot less money. It’s appropriate to spend huge sums on players who provide that added differential that truly makes them superstars.

Day Off

Good win. Must win. Clutch win. Come from behind win. Gutty win by Penny.

Now, can somebody smack Grady Little for letting Russell Martin catch all nine innings after catching 14 innings just 12 hours earlier? I don’t care if Martin volunteered to catch. I don’t care if Mike Lieberthal is hitting .098. You can’t let your young stud catcher play every inning of every game. Grady has no problem playing light-hitting Ramon Martinez whenever Kent or Nomar or Furcal needs a break. He needs to rest Martin just as often.

Catchers wear down over time, over seasons, and over a lifetime, and if Martin continues to catch as often as he does, he’s going to tear both knees.

The manager has relatively few decisions to make, but making the lineup is one of them. I was astounded to see Russell out there again yesterday (and he’s my favorite Dodger). This is a recipe for him struggling at the plate all through September.

Where was Saito?

I know you don’t want to wear out your closer, but honestly, where was Takashi Saito in last night’s encouraging then deflating loss?

Saito pitched 2/3 of an inning in Friday night’s win, throwing all of seven pitches. Same for Thursday, 2/3 of an inning, seven pitches. That’s fewer pitches than he would throw just warming up to take the mound. Yet he was nowhere to be seen in the Dodgers bullpen last night. He could have thrown two innings if necessary.

Any manager knows that in a tie game at home, you don’t get to use your closer in a save situation. Any win will come in the last at-bat. So you use your bullpen backwards, throwing your strongest pitchers first and then the next-strongest after that, and so on, hoping you don’t have to get to Roberto Hernandez.

Then again, the way the Dodgers were hitting, having Saito throw an inning would merely have prolonged the agony.

Did we learn nothing from Eric Stults’ satisfying performance on Friday? Give the kids a chance. They can’t do any worse than the aging losers in the bullpen, and they might even provide a needed lift. Houlton or Hull instead of Hernandez is a no-brainer. And a whole lot cheaper for the skinflinty McCourts who can’t even pay Abreu the major league minimum while on the DL.

Today’s game will tell us a lot about this team. Do they rally from last night’s loss and continue their winning ways, or do they return to the form of the past two weeks? Brad Penny shows some cojones by going out on three days’ rest. Can the rest of the team follow his lead?

Credit where credit is due

Credit for the current Dodger youth movement does not belong to Ned Colletti, though at least he has seen the wisdom of not trading it all away.

It does not belong to Paul DePodesta, though at least he has seen the wisdom of not trading it all away.

It belongs to Dan Evans, much maligned GM under Fox, who acquired the following players:

OF Jason Repko (1999)
OF Matt Kemp (2003)
1B James Loney (2002)
2B Tony Abreu (2002 free agent)
SS Chin Lung Hu (2003 free agent)
3B Andy LaRoche (2003)
C Russell Martin (2002)

P Chad Billingsley (2003)
P Jonathan Broxton (2002)


Hmmmmm. Notice anything unusual about this collection? Oh yeah, it could be the Dodgers starting lineup in 2008. The two guys who have succeeded Evans have done a mediocre job of stocking the major league roster with overpriced veterans in the past four years.

But at least they didn’t trade it all away.

Will they ever win again?

For a brief moment there, I actually had a glimmer of hope that the Dodgers might win a game. It’s been so long, I can’t remember what that feels like. You’d think you could get more than 2 wins against the Reds, Cardinals, and Astros.

Forrest finally played the kids, but had the good sense to stick Jeff Kent in the middle of the Loney, Kemp, Ethier trio. Result: Kemp gets on, Ethier gets on, but Kent hits into DP in between them so that no run can score.

As for next year, Derek Lowe is signed through the end of 2008. And don’t look now, but we may have Kent for one more year. His 2008 option is guaranteed if he reaches 550 plate appearances this year. So far, he has 424 with 43 games left in the season. He needs to average just three appearances per game for the rest of the season to remain a Dodger. Though at this rate, maybe he won’t want to stick around.

The stats all say Kent’s a sure hall of famer, since he plays second base. If he played short or third, however, he probably wouldn’t get in. Add to that the fact that he’s not a particularly good second baseman. At least Mazeroski saved some runs with his glove.

Still, when all is said and done, Kent has been a much better addition to this club than I ever imagined when they first signed him. His bat has been pretty good, and he gives a punchless team power from second base. He will be hard to replace. He looks better at 40 than Nomar does at 35.

It’s Over

Can you bear to watch this team any longer? Billz wasn’t great last night, but who could excel under conditions where the minute you give up a run, the game is over? He pitched like a guy afraid to give up a singleton.

That’s the way this team is playing these days.

Part of the reason they can’t come back is because there’s no pop in the lineup. There’s not a serious 30-homer threat anywhere, not Kent, not Gonzo, not Nomar. Ethier might have that kind of power, but we’ll never know it, because he doesn’t get to play every day. The Dodgers have fewer home runs than every team in the league save the Washington Nationals. Even the Pittsburgh Pirates go deep more often.

The supposed rationale for the Dodgers not having home run hitters is that Dodger Stadium is not a homer-friendly park. Hogwash. Remember the year when the Dodgers had FOUR 30-homer guys? Remember a guy named Mike Piazza? Remember Adrian Beltre?

Even this year’s punchless team has more home runs at home (46) than on the road (39). Meanwhile, Dodger opponents have outhomered them at the Ravine (48) and on the road (47). If other teams can hit home runs at Dodger Stadium, there’s no reason the Dodgers can’t. Certainly Troy Glaus had no problem hitting jacks when he was here as a visitor. Certainly Torii Hunter would have no problem hitting home runs here.

The team’s inability to come from behind will soon translate into pitchers being reluctant to play here. Derek Lowe has to be at the end of his rope. If he goes nine, the team doesn’t score. If he goes less than nine, the bullpen blows it. I see why he’s considering other options when his contract is up at the end of next season.

Tinker?

"Maybe [I'll] tinker with what I do preparation-wise in the bullpen. . . just to find a little bit better rhythm when I get out there in the first inning," said yesterday’s (and every fifth-day’s) loser, Mark Hendrickson.

Tinker?!

Tinker is what you do when you have a genome that cures cancer but can’t be shelf-stabilized. When .240 hitters are launching bombs off you, it’s no longer time to tinker. IT’S TIME TO PITCH WITH THE OTHER HAND. Hendrickson has been abominable ever since the Dodgers got him. The only positive thing that can be said about him is he makes Brett Tomko look good. The time to tinker was when he was deciding between careers in the NBA and baseball.

The Times article seemed to suggest that the first inning was his problem, as his ERA in that inning alone is 7.20. But his overall ERA since the All-Star is 9.69, meaning that the first inning is one of his better frames. The Dodgers must have somebody better than this at AAA. Elmer Dessens was better than this.

Genius, part tw

I was sunned to hear Joe Girardi falling all over himself about LaGenius’s move to hit the pitcher eighth instead of ninth. If it’s so important to have runners on base in front of Pujols, then put your two best hitters in the 1-2 hole. Then, when the Cardinals did load the bases in the third inning, he acted like LaGenius was somehow responsible for Furcal making the error that allowed the whole debacle to unfold. Puh-leeze.

I expect such lunacy from Cardinal fans and commentators who never played the game, but I have more respect for Girardi, who actually played the game and understands that you get more at-bats for your best hitters, not your .180 hitters. They also quoted LaRussa as saying the pitcher only hits two or three times; the remainder are occupied by pinch hitters who might be better hitters than the #9 hitter. Really? If they’re such good hitters, why aren’t they in the starting lineup? Does every team in the NL have a Jack Cust, a guy who kills the ball but can’t play the field a lick?

Compared to Forrest, however, LaGenius at least looks like he’s thinking. His moves don’t always make sense, but they’re an attempt to shake up a lineup that continues to do nothing. Another 0-for-four from Furcal, more Ramon Martinez and his .176 average, more lack of production from Pierre. Why must he be in the lineup every day? All this against Braden Looper! 10-9 Braden Looper with an ERA

Meanwhile, Andre Ethier continues to be a doubles machine. There’s even a story about it in the paper today. Unfortunately, it would seems Forrest doesn’t read the paper, because he continues to bat Ethier below his prized veterans. I like Loney in the 3 spot, but Ethier could go there as well, or the five-hole. Put Kemp in the middle and all of a sudden you have a nice righty lefty mix in the 2-3-4-5 spots.

It might be too late, however. If you don’t win the Derek Lowe games against the Cardinals, who is it that you can beat?

Winning combinations

Yesterday’s game points out the stupidity of the rules about pitching wins. Brad Penny pitches seven innings of scoreless baseball, while Joe Beimel pitches one inning, and who gets the victory? Beimel, since he was in the game when the team took the lead for good. What’s worse, let’s say Beimel had given up the go-ahead run, or say Penny had left a 1-0 lead and Beimel let the Cardinals tie the game before Loney’s two-run homer. He’d still get the win, even though he didn’t do his job at all.

This is all foolishness. When a starting pitcher fails to go five innings but his team still wins, the official scorer gets to decide who gets the victory, based on his assessment of which pitcher performed most effectively in relief. Why shouldn’t it be the same in games where the starter does go five but leaves in a tie game or on the losing end? If you pitch eight innings of scoreless ball but leave trailing 1-0, you should get the win if your team comes back and wins 2-1.

The rules for pitching wins are left over from the era when relief pitchers were the lousiest pitchers on the team, and a starter didn’t deserve a win if he didn’t go eight or nine innings. But these days, managers feel great if they can coax five innings out of a kid (even a kid with a rifle arm!) and hope the bullpen doesn’t blow it.

We trust the official scorer to make these decisions when the starter stinks. Why shouldn’t we do it when the starter is good?

Forrest finally gets it!

Juan Pierre dropped to seventh, FINALLY. Too bad it took four months of sucking for anybody in the organization to realize he was killing rallies. And what does Pierre do in response? One for five with no walks.

Now if only we could do the same for Furcal. He lost the game for the Dodgers several times before he won it. The season isn't a total loss yet, but unless they reel off another 15-game winning streak soon, the Dodgers are done. That will free them to play the kids every dy in preparation for next year.

Sweeney is a decent addition, seeing as how they need a pinch hitter who does something other than swing and miss at anything offspeed (sorry, Olmedo, I, and half of Mexico, loves you, but you've been lost at the plate lately). We needn't worry about a roster spot, however. The Dodgers could use another bench player, even if it means sending down the 13th or 14th pitcher on the staff. That guy, be it Houlton or Stults or Hull or Roberto Hernandez, isn't getting anybody out anyway.

The Dodgers limp into St. Louis, home of dreaded manager Tony LaRussa. He’s the worst thing to happen to baseball aside from steroids, and I'm not so sure we can't blame that on him too. Notice where all the juiced up players played? Oakland and later St. Louis. Think Tony didn't know what was going on? Baloney.

The guy thinks he invented baseball, what with batting McGwire in the top half of road games, then subbing for him inthe bottom halff becuse he couldn't play the field. How dumb is that? You waste a power hitter in the top of the first, insted of having him on the bench to pinch hit in a key situation. But Tony smiles as if he's put one over on the lords of baseball.

But his most shameful contribution to the game is all this lefty righty crap at the end of a contest. What used to take 2 hours now drags on for 3 and a half because of three-pitcher innings and seven trips to the mound per side. It must work, because everybody has copied him. But does it?

Who is the middle-inning specialist, other than Paul Assenmacher, who's continued to get out big league batters over more than a two-year stretch? If these guys were any good, they'd be starters or closers. They used to have middle relievers back in the 50s and 60s too; they were the guys who weren't good enough to start. All this specilization has made baseball more like football. Pretty soon, none of the fielders will be required to hit. We'll just have juiced up Cansecos at every DH position and Furcal and Pierre playing the field.

Thank goodness for Tivo. A LaRussa trip to the mound is over in a heartbeat, and a three-pitcher inning flies by with just the touch of a fast forward button.

A New Beginning for the Dodgers?

Are the Dodgers prepared to go to their graves with the failed experiments of Juan Pierre and Rafael Furcal atop the lineup? It sure seems that way. At the beginning of the season, there was a question about which man was the better leadoff hitter. After all, both players seemed to be the prototypical top-of-the-order guys: rabbits without a lot of pop who could steal bases and create runs.

There’s only one problem. These guys don’t get on base. Pierre’s refusal to take walks (he has all of 22 this season) is well-known around the league by now, so he hardly sees a strike. Furcal walks twice as often, but injuries have kept him from being a stolen base threat. Neither man is hitting, however. Furcal’s .284 average is right at his career mark, while Pierre’s .277 is significantly below his career mark of .300. The Dodgers’ offense depends on these guys getting on base, being moved over, and driven in by the bigger bats. The Dodgers have won 2 of their last 10 games; Pierre had two hits in each of those games, while Furcal had two hits in one game and a single and two walks (And scored three times) in the other.

But the plan doesn’t work when they go 0-for-8, like they did yesterday, or when they go 0-for-6 in Penny’s last loss, or when they go 1-for-7 in the losses to tthe Rockies or 0-for-8 in the July 25 loss to the Astros.

Those o-fers are taking away valuable at-bats from guys who ARE getting on base. Like Andre Ethier, who seems to get a hit, and often an extra base hit, whenever he’s in the lineup. Like Matt Kemp, who despite struggling of late still has a higher Batting average (.323) than Pierre’s on base percentage (a dismal .314). Even Brad Penny gets on base (.326) at a higher clip than Pierre. In fact, Pierre has the worst OBP of any Dodger starter. Furcal, at .348, leads only Pierre, Penny, and Nomar (.329).

If the Dodgers are to score runs, the guys who don’t get on need to bat lower in the lineup. Jeff Kent leads the team in OBP with .384, but he’s the team’s only legitimate power threat, so batting him leadoff seems a waste. Loney (.379) seems too slow for the role. That leaves Ethier and Kemp, who platoon but should be playing every day given their averages (.304 and .328, respectively) and their OBPs (.370 and .372). How about we try them in right and center and in the 1-2 hole? Could the results be any worse than the two shutouts over the weekend?

That would necessitate sitting Pierre and or Gonzalez much more often (Amazingly, Pierre leads the team in games played, despite his lack of production. Imagine if Ethier had another 100 at-bats this season; that could be 30 more hits!). But the Dodgers are at the point in the season where they have to admit they made a mistake in signing two old men with poor throwing arms to man left and center. The playoffs almost assuredly depend on it.

Not Grady's Fault

August 3, 2007
You can’t blame last night’s loss on Grady. He’s not the one who left the bases loaded three times. He’s not the one who made the errors. He’s not the one who walked the leadoff hitter who eventually scored. And he’s not the one who gave up three runs in the first on 43 pitches. The players did that.

Grady just puts the players he has on the field. The problem is what he has to work with. And that you can blame on Ned. This week, the Dodgers traded away Betemit. good move. But when Kent went down with a hammy, that left them without a backup infielder and Ramon Martinez in the starting lineup. So what does Ned do? He brings up Delwyn Young, an outfielder. Huh?

The mistake was glaring in the eighth, when Ramon came up with the bases loaded. Most managers would have pinch hit for Martinez and his .188 average, but because the Dodgers had nobody else to play second, Grady’s hands were tied. How can you not have a backup infielder around? I know Abreu’s hurt, but then bring up LaRoche, or whoever is playing second at Vegas.

Colletti’s other shortcoming is not getting a bat to replace Olmedo Saenz. The Killer Tomato has clearly lost it. He never could hit anything other than a fastball, and these days, he can’t even do that. He’s gotten too fat to play third, and probably first, so he gets no more than three swings a night, if that. I don’t think he’s had a hit since the big homer in Toronto. In fact, the Dodgers have lost 9 of the last 10 games in which he appeared. the lone exception being a 5-4 win over Philadelphia July 18. A typical Olmedo night is a late-inning pinch hit appearance in which he fails to deliver a crucial run.

The best thing you can say about Ned is that he didn’t trade away the farm system to get an overpriced guy like Jermaine Dye. We’ve seen the value of Martin, Loney, Kemp, and Ethier. Could we please get them all in the starting lineup at the same time, now? I’m tired of seeing Juan Pierre hit lazy fly balls to the outfield and Luis Gonzalez swinging wildly at pitches in the dirt. Gonzalez left seven runners on base last night, despite owning a monster average against Barry Zito. He carried the team briefly in June, but he’s had just three extra-base hits since June 24 in his hometown of Tampa.

Pierre has just three extra base hits since July 5. He doesn’t hit home runs and he doesn’t walk. He plays great defense, but that’s not enough to make up for his shortcomings at the plate. The outfield platoon needs to be Pierre and Gonzalez, not Ethier and Kemp. LET THE KIDS PLAY.

Dodgers Half Full

If I told you at the beginning of the season that the Dodgers would be in the playoffs despite getting nothing out of Jason Schmidt, mild production from Nomar, Kent, Furcal, and Pierre, and average seasons from Gonzalez and Ethier, and a rotating cast of characters at third base, you'd take it, right? Well, if the season ended today, the Dodgers would be in the playoffs.

So I choose to look at the glass half full. There's plenty of empty, largely at the top of the order where neither Furcal nor Pierre is getting the job done. Pierre has just 15 walks, or one per week! That doesn't cut it for a guy hitting .275. Furcal is a notorious second half player, so maybe he gets a pass, but he's not getting on either. The Dodgers score runs despite the poor production from the top of the lineup, not because of it.

The kids, however, are alright. Kemp, Loney, and Russell Martin are setting the lineup on fire, and should be grouped together to produce more runs. The Dodgers don't have a deep threat--why is that?--so they need to piece hits together to score. It just makes sense to group your three best hitters together in the 3-4-5 spots. Ethier could join that group with more regular play, but since the Dodgers are stuck with Pierre for another FOUR YEARS! that's not going to happen any time soon. I'd prefer to see Kemp in center and Ethier in right, with Pierre subbing and pinch-running, but nobody pays $50 million for a pinch runner. So Pierre it is, but with Ethier spelling him and Gonzalez (who has been exactly as advertised, no more no less) regularly.

How's this for a lineup:
1. Furcal SS
2. Nomar 3B (yes, in the two spot, where he'll see more first-pitch strikes to keep Furcal from stealing).
3. Martin C
4. Kemp RF
5. Loney 1B
6. Kent 2B
7. Gonzalez LF
8. Pierre CF
9. P

I don't love having Pierre in front of the pitcher, since he doesn't get on base. But when he does get on, he helps the team manufacture runs with his speed. Say he leads off an inning with a single, steals second, then gets bunted over to third by the pitcher. Then you've got Furcal and Nomar to drive him in.

Baseball Shoots Itself in the Foot. . . Again

From Yahoo sports:
The World Series will begin the first Tuesday after the completion of the League Championship Series starting in 2007, possibly pushing the championship into the first week of November and setting up a schedule that sets games on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and, if necessary, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Great idea moving the World Series to Friday and Saturday nights, but extending the schedule by four days so that games six and seven can run into November is just plain dumb. I can't wait to see a Chicago-St. Louis World Series this November. Should be plenty cool, with a chance of snow.

Memo to Baseball: Start the world series on a Friday night, play games Friday/Saturday, Monday Tuesday Wednesday, and Friday/Saturday. Yes, you'd be going up against Monday Night Football, but you won't have to compete with Pro Football on Sundays.

Better yet, move the weekend games to daytime so that there's a chance anybody under the age of 12 might get to enjoy them.

Derek Jeter, Hall of Famer already

When the Yankees host Kansas City Friday, Derek Jeter will in all likelihood nail down his 2,000th hit. I don’t feel like figuring out how many guys have gotten to 2,00 faster, and doubtelss some geek on the Yes Netwok already has done the reserch, but suffice to say it’s amazingly fast. Here’s a look at the active leaders in total hits. Look how many fewer games Jeter has played than the rest.


G AB Hits Avg.
1. C Biggio* 2609 9988 2847 .285
2. B Bonds* 2769 9246 2768 .299
3. J Franco* 2401 8447 2528 .299
4. S Finley* 2443 9008 2462 .273
5. G Sheffield* 2216 7991 2378 .298
6. O Vizquel* 2336 8548 2350 .275
7. K Griffey* 2146 7956 2326 .292
8. B Surhoff* 2313 8258 2326 .282
9. J Bagwell* 2150 7797 2314 .297
10. L Gonzalez* 2207 7930 2261 .285
11. B Williams* 1986 7586 2255 .297
12. I Rodriguez* 1927 7366 2241 .304
13. K Lofton* 1868 7281 2178 .299
14. F Thomas* 1996 7083 2161 .305
15. R Sierra* 2179 8032 2150 .268
16. J Kent* 1970 7308 2109 .289
17. D Jeter* 1570 6348 1999 .315


A couple things stand out.
1) Jeter is averaging 206 hits over a 162-game season. At this rate, he'll hit 3,000 in five more years. It's not unfathomable to think he might get to 4,000, though I can't see him putting up with 10 more years of this crappy team.

2) His career average is much higher than I would have guessed. He's hitting better than Bonds, Sheffield, Manny , A-Rod, and Piazza. You have to go down to Vlad Guerrero, at 36 on the active list to find a hitter with a higher average.

3) Who knew Julio Franco was such a good hitter. And at 62 years old, that’s even better than Ty Cobb said he would be hitting at that age.

With these numbers, four rings, and MVP awards from the World Series and All-Star Game in the same year, I have to nominate Jeter for the Hall of Fame already, no matter what he did the rest of his career.

Pitch to Albert; Pitch to A-Rod.

Who says baseball is doing nothing about the fact that Barry Bonds is thumbing his nose at its most hallowed record. The conspiracy theorist sees an organization hard at work.

Unwilling to punish, censure, or even reprimand Bonds for what everyone except die-hard Giants fans knows, baseball is working feverishly to ensure that Bonds’ place in the record books will soon be overshadowed.

Witness the deference that Albert Pujols is being given in his assault on the single-season home run record. As of May 11, Pujols had 18 homers in 34 games, a rate that translates into a full-season total of 86 homers. Now nobody expects Pujols to hit 85 roundtrippers, but baseball sure would be happy if he eclipsed Bonds’ 2001 mark of 73.

That year, Bonds was intentionally walked 35 times, a far cry from seasons since, in which he was given first base 68, 61, and a whopping 120 times. This year, he’s already been walked 15 times and hit five home runs. Some of that has to do with the fact that the Giants have nobody to protect Bonds in the lineup, so it makes good baseball sense to put him on, rather than give him the chance to hit one out.

Now look at Pujols’ line. He’s been walked intentionally only 6 times this year, and only 76 times in his entire career. That’s little more than a single-season stat for Bonds. Again, having Scott Rolen or Jim Edmonds or Larry Walker batting behind you makes pitchers less interested in putting you on first for free. But you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if baseball is somehow getting the message out: Pitch to Albert. Let him break Bonds’ record.

I have absolutely no evidence that this is the case, but wouldn’t baseball just love it if this problem went away?

Then there’s the all-time record. Bonds isn’t likely to make it to 755. But even if he does, it’s becoming apparent that A-Rod will break whatever record Bonds sets within just a few years. Rodriguez already has 436 home runs, or an average of around 40 per year. At this rate, he’ll reach 800 in 2015, or his 40th birthday.

Yet he too has been given the opportunity to swing in the vast majority of his at-bats. Rodriguez has been walked intentionally a grand total of 52 times in his career, or less often than Mike Matheny, a career .239 hitter. For sure, Matheny’s high number of free passes comes from hitting in front of the pitcher’s spot, and Rodriguez’s low number is influenced by hitters like Ken Griffey and Garry Sheffield hitting behind him. But still. Mike Matheny!

Orlando Merced has more intentional walks than A-Rod. J.T. Snow has more. Brad Ausmus too. Rey Ordoñez. Rey Ordoñez! Why on earth would you walk Rey Ordoñez? To get to the pitcher? Most pitchers hit better than Rey Ordoñez (.246). You’re doing him a favor by walking him.

Now, as long as we’ve got conspiracy theories floating around, look at the active leaders in intentional walks. Barry is number by a mile: his 622 is more than the next three guys combined. But who are those guys? Ken Griffey (210), Vlad Guerrero (171) and Frank Thomas (162). Aside from prodigious home run power, what do the top four have in common? They’re all black. So is #6 on the list, Carlos Delgado, and #8 Manny Ramirez.

That’s 6 of the top 8 who are black. In a sport where only about a third of the players are black. Does it prove anything? Of course not. Especially not when you realize that five of those six are also among the top 10 in home runs (Guerrero is 17th already; his high number of intentional walks can be traced to his years as Montreal’s lone power source).

Drew Who?

Who in the organization has J.D. Drew been blackmailing to retain his spot in the middle of the order? Since his arrival in Los Angeles, Drew has consistently batted third or fourth, even though he’s never shown any aptitude at driving in runs.

In seven full seasons (well, the closest thing to full seasons, since the injury-prone Drew never has played more than 145 games in one year), Drew has never driven in more than 93 runs, and cracked 60 only twice. He’s never hit more than 31 homers, and only twice hit more than 20. His career average is .287. A typical year for Drew is 60 RBIs and 19 homers. Nice numbers, but not for the toughest out in the lineup.

Yes, his on-base percentage is high, .393 as of today, and .426 this year. But getting on is not what you want out of a 3-hitter. You want him to drive runs home. How often must we sit still as Drew takes pitch after pitch in hopes of drawing a walk, even though runners are dying to score from second and third. Worse still, how many times does he take a called third strike in hopes of getting such a walk?

I know, he’s batting third because he makes the big bucks. You don’t give a guy $55 million bucks and not give him the star treatment. But Drew would be so much better in a slot where he didn’t have to drive in runs. Like leadoff, or second.

That begs the question, who should hit third? Olmedo Saenz has long been the team’s most consistent run producer, but it seems odd to have a platoon player hitting third. Jeff Kent is the likely replacement, but then who would hit fourth? The Dodgers don’t really have a slugger on this team.

If it were up to me, I’d bat Furcal first, Drew second, Bill Mueller third, Kent fourth, Saenz/Nomar fifth, Cruz sixth, Lofton seventh (in hopes he gives way to Repko soon), Navarro eighth, and the pitcher ninth.

Good World Series So Far

I swear this is the same thing I would have written even if I hadn't seen the results of game one and two.

I want the White Sox to win. But I want Andy Pettitte to perform well and I want to see Roger Clemens let his teammates down again with a poor performance, cementing his reputation as overrated, despite the Cy Youngs (he so often comes up short in playoff games!) I was hoping the Astros could have won the game for Pettitte, but at least he didn't wear the albatross last night.

Now, given what I've seen, I think the Astros will win one behind Oswalt, but then lose the next two when Backe and Clemens or whoever replaces him return to the hill.

Last night's game was one of the best in recent memory. An instant classic, thrilling in every way. Timely hitting, big power, shameless comebacks, and a controversial call and all. I'll tell you what. Whether or not Jermain Dye got hit doesn’t even matter. There’s no excuse for grooving that fastball to Konerko with the bases loaded. That ball got out of there faster than it came in.

Then Vizcaino coming through in the clutch again, shades of the 2000 World Series, how exciting is that, and the play at the plate and he should have been sooo out.

Lidge is done. He has Mark Wohlers written all over him. I said this at the time, I swear, though I didn’t write it, how could Phil Garner not bring him to close out the NLCS. If the score was 10-1, you bring in your closer, just so he can be the guy on the mound when you clinch, so he can celebrate on the field. But he brings in Dan Wheeler? Who the $%^*$* is Dan Wheeler? Oh yeah, he’s the guy who loads the bases so Chad Qualls can groove a fastball that costs you game two.

Now Garner brings Lidge back in an equally stupid situation: He can’t win, he can only lose. Boom! Podsednik (Podsednik?! ! If he hits it out, that means I can hit it out.) One of the biggest home runs in World Series History. Who lives that down? Eckersley? OK. Rivera? Sure. But Trevor Hoffman? Nope. Armando Benitez? Nuh-uh. Billy Wagner—we’ll see, if he ever gets back to the postseason. Kim is more like it, though Lidge has been better than Kim ever was.

Meanwhile, I love the White Sox. They play great baseball. They bunt, they advance runners, they make productive outs, and then when you’re exhausted from trying to make sure they don’t pester you to death, they bonk you over the head with doubles, triples, and bombs. That’s the kind of baseball the 1996-2000 Yankees played, and they won all the time. You can’t lose playing that kind of baseball, if you have the kind of talent they have. Good hungry young players who field the ball well, a few veterans (good on whoever turned Carl Everett into a good citizen). And fantastic pitching.

The secret of the White Sox is one that needs to be told throughout the league: good starting pitching, used deep into game, makes your bullpen better because they don’t have to work that often. The Sox starting five averaged better than seven innings per start. That’s an amazing stat in a LaRussified era in which starters are lucky to go seven these days. But starters who go deep into ballgames keep the bullpen fresh. The stats of Buehrle, Garland, Contreras, Garcia, and Duque aren’t that impressive individually. But collectively (they all had 18 or more decisions , and, except for Duque, had ERAs under 4) they add up to a winning formula.

If I were a GM, I’d start looking more at innings pitched to see if there are some sleeper pitchers in the offseason. He may not be the guy who blows em away every fifth day, but he could be the guy that prevents your bullpen from having to come in and makes sure a 4-2 lead doesn’t become a 6-4 deficit in a big hurry.

In the old days, the guys in the bullpen were there because they weren’t as good as the starters. With the possible exception of the closer, it’s still true today.

Strike Three, you’re part of a mechanism that could lead to being out

Forget whether the ball touched the ground before Josh Paul caught it (it didn’t).

Forget whether Paul should have tagged A.J. Pierzynski even though he caught he cleanly (he should have).

Forget whether Doug Eddings blew the call and then was too proud to admit he made a mistake (yup on both counts).

What’s all this crap about his “strike call mechanism?” Since when are umpires allowed to make up hand signals for different things? When 99 percent of umpires punch their fist, it means the player is out. So why is Eddings allowed to have his own “mechanism?” What was he doing sticking out his thumb, telling Pierzynski he was as cool as Fonzie?

Shouldn’t this be the first thing they teach in umpire’s school? Arms spread wide means safe. Twirl your finger in the air for a home run. And punch your fist means out. Allowing Eddings to have his own “mechanism” leads to the kind of chaos that ruined last night’s otherwise beautiful ballgame.

What’s next, umpires making the peace sign to indicate safe? Will Eddings start doing the cha cha each time a pitcher throws a strike? Can he adopt a mechanism in which spreading his arms wide actually means strike three? Can he pick his nose to indicate that a runner at first was picked off?

Of course not. Strike means strike and out means out and safe means safe. All the players on the field, Pierzynski included, saw Eddings make an out call. That’s why they walked off the field, Pierzynski included. Eddings isn’t allowed to go back and say that was just a part of his mechanism.

Baseball is using QuestTec, a computer system, to encourage umpires to agree on a uniform strike zone. Apparently they have an even more dire need for a uniform system of calling safe and out.

Justice?

Who is it that the left expects Bush to nominate for the Supreme Court? Lawrence Tribe? William Brennan? Bush won the right to appoint whoever he wants when he was re-elected in 2004. We're just seeing that chicken coming home to roost now.

Even if the Democrats got their act together and stood united, filibustering down every nomination until Bush appointed a moderate—I know, wake up from that dreamland—there’s not a chance in hell that Bush would give in. He’d just keep nominating more conservatives agreeable to his fascist thinking.

And that’s IF the Democrats had the balls to stand up to him, which they don’t. The fact that wing nuts are upset about this nomination says to me that it’s as good as we’re going to get from this administration, and the sooner she’s confirmed, the better. It’s not who I’d choose for the Supreme Court, but you don’t get to choose your enemies.

As for the endless stream of e-mails we’re all about to get from People for the American Way, Democracy for America, and the pro-choice groups, I say save your breath. You might as well get to work on 2006 or some other productive case. Complaining about individual nominees isn’t going to do any good in this political era.

The fight for the Supreme Court was lost in 2004, and to a greater degree, in 1991, when the Senate set the idiotic precedent of allowing a nominee (Uncle Thomas) not to comment on his views on abortion or pretty much anything else. Ever since, nominees have refused to talk about anything they believe, and the Senate’s role has become little more than a rubber stamp.

Tracy

Do I have to say it? The Dodgers fired the wrong guy. Paul DePodesta rolled into town, took a good nucleus of a team and fucked it up and they went to the playoffs anyway. Then he rid that team of all its charm, fun, and likeability and brought in a bunch of losers and malcontents, most of whom then got injured.

Jim Tracy did what he could with this ragtag lineup, but in the end, the Dodgers lack of pitching, hitting, speed, and defense sent them to a sub .500 record for the first time in Tracy’s tenure.

Now Tracy is gone and we only have DePodesta to show for it. Tracy is going to half-empty Pittsburgh, most likely, where he’ll get a BETTER OFFER than he would have gotten from the 3-million-drawing Dodgers.

Who would take the Dodgers job at this point? The team has no interest in spending money on players, so the manager’s salary is going to be low. And it’s clear who’s calling the shots: the guy who brought in Hee Seop Choi.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t rush out to buy tickets for next year’s opener. I have a feeling I’ll be able to boo for free.

Undeserved

Baseball doesn’t deserve the fantastic season that just ended. The owners have done just about everything they could think of to screw up the national pastime, and yet this amazing game has been not only resilient, but undaunted in its ability to provide thrilling moments at every turn.

With one game left to play, four teams were still battling for two playoff spots—yes the wild card, I realize. But had there bee no wild card, Atlanta and Houston would still have been slugging it out for the Western Division championship in the last week, and the Yankees, Red Sox, and Indians would have been battling for one spot instead of two in a crowded American League East.

In the end, we got six of the same eight teams that were in the playoffs last year, and San Diego doesn’t really count anyway. But Chicago is still an exciting story, and despite their swoon in mid-September, they finished wit 99 victories. Ozzie Guillen gets my vote for manager of the year. Bobby Cox is a shoo-in in the NL, even if the Braves don’t win a single playoff game.

Yankee lovers and haters will get to root for their respective sides in the playoffs, and the Red Sox still have an opportunity to prove that 2004 was not an aberration. Baltimore and Washington thrilled for half a season (and people actually saw them play this year), while Milwaukee finished at .500 for the first time in memory. The Mets proved they were an above average team, but no more. The Cubs played in a beautiful ballpark, as did the Giants.

My choices for postseason awards:

AL MVP Alex Rodriguez (can we stop calling him A-Rod). His numbers are parallel to David Ortiz’s. Ortiz has more RBIs, Rodriguez had a higher average. To settle the tie, you have to look at position. Ortiz saved a total of zero runs by snaring a grounder, stabbing a line drive, or making an incredible throw to cut down a runner at first, second, or the plate. Rodriguez did all of those things 150 times a season, and for that reason, he gets the nod.

NL MVP Albert Pujols Yes, Andruw Jones carried the Braves, but you can’t deny Pujols’ numbers. Take him off the Cardinals lineup and maybe they don’t have trouble making the playoffs, but they certainly aren’t the dominant team that they proved to be this year. Despite injuries and poor performances from Rolen, Walker, and Edmonds, Pujols was still a stud in the middle of the St. Louis lineup.

AL and NL Hank Aaron awards: same as above.

AL Cy Young: Mariano Rivera. Mo is the mvp every year. Take him off the Yankees and they go 85-77. His ERA blows away anybody, and he was responsible for bringing the Yankees back into the race. Bartolo Colon had a nice year, but he had far fewer strikeouts than Johan Santana, who is the most deserving starter of the bunch, but won’t get the award because nobody noticed.

NL Cy Young: I can’t stand to give Roger Clemens another award, so I’ll give it to Chris Carpenter. His numbers are better than Dontrelle Willis’s or Roy Oswalt’s, and he carried the Cardinals in the first half to such a big lead that everybody stopped chasing them. Roger’s ERA is astounding, and he deserved victories in each of the 8 times the Astros were shutout with him on the mound. But he has benefited from extra generous run support in the past. This is just things evening out.

Car Pool Chaos

In the newspaper business, it is often joked that two occurrences makes a coincidence. For a trend story, you need three examples. That’s apparently the number of people the L.A. Times found for its article on hybrid car owners griping about the size of the stickers they must post on their cars in order to drive solo in car pool lanes. The Times then felt compelled to slam hybrid owners a second time on the editorial page as whiners.

Regardless of how hybrid owners feel about defacing their cars with yellow stickers, the whole idea is flawed in more ways than the Dodger pitching staff. For starters, why are we letting hybrids drive in the carpool lanes solo? The purpose of car pool lanes is not to save gas, but to discourage people from driving by themselves. In other words, to CAR POOL.

In fact, kids shouldn’t count as passengers for the purpose of car pool lanes. Putting a kid or two in the car doesn’t reduce the number of cars on the road. It probably just increases the numbers of gas-guzzling SUVs and minivans.

(When’s the last time you saw a family with even one kid driving a sedan, the way millions of parents did for most of the 20th century?) But I digress.

If the intent of car pool lanes were to save gas, then Hummers, Escalades, and Expeditions should be banned from the lanes no matter how many soccer teams or posses they’re carrying. Allowing single-passenger hybrids into car pool lanes won’t alleviate traffic one bit. It will just clog up the car pool lanes with solo drivers

The sticker idea is equally misguided. As dumb as the idea is, if you want to allow hybrids into the car pool lane, why not make a special license plate for them so police can track them? Those would be a whole lot more identifiable than any little stickers without defacing cars. You could even charge a small fee for them, something most owners would be happy to pay for.

How long does anybody expect it will be before counterfeit Car Pool Lane OK stickers start appearing on the Internet? As the number of hybrids multiplies, it will be increasingly difficult for police to distinguish between real hybrids and ones disguised as hybrids, especially at 70mph. And when hybrid SUVs are allowed into the car pool lanes, any ass with a Tahoe will be able to slap on a bogus sticker that allows him to both guzzle gas and clog the carpool lane.

Mild Card

Earlier this week, the L.A. Times had an article extolling the blessings of the wild card, citing the exciting pennant races in this year’s hunt for October. But is the wild card really responsible for the excitement? Hardly. Here’s the way things look in the current three-division format as of 3pm PDT on Sept. 22.

The Yanks lead the Red Sox by half a game in the AL east, Chicago’s up by 2.5 over Cleveland in the Central. One of these four teams is going to win the wild card, and one is going to stay home. In the west. the Angels lead the A’s by 2.5 games.

In the National League, St. Louis has had the central wrapped up since May, Atlanta is about to clinch the east, and San Diego is battling itself for king of the sub .500 teams in the west. The wild card is a three-way battle between Houston, Philadelphia, and Florida (Washington at this point has no more than an outside shot at it, from 6.5 games back.

Now here’s how things would look if there were two divisions and no wild card.
In the AL East, Cleveland would lead the Yankees by half a game and the Red Sox by a full game. In the West, Chicago would be up by five games over the surging Angels.

In the NL East, St. Louis would still be running away with the division. But the NL West would be a dogfight between the Braves and the Astros, two games back.

To be sure, fewer teams would be playing meaningful games in the last week of the season. Philadelphia, Florida, and Oakland (three teams that are still very much alive in the wild card format) would be mathematically eliminated by now, and the Angels would be close to done. But there would still be plenty of playoff-level excitement. I love the idea of a three-team race for the AL East. Best of all, San Diego, at 76-76, would not be in contention for anything. That’s how it should be.

There’s no arguing with the wild card. It’s here to stay. But let’s hope it doesn’t lead to interminable NBA-style playoffs. Four teams is plenty.

The Undecideds Have It

The votes aren’t all in, but the early polls are muddled. Fully half of the 10 people who’ve responded so far have vigorously supported the rule of law. The remaining half are divided among support for the junta and undecided. In a bizarre way, this probably reflects the American electorate in 2000 and 2004: half the country supported W and the other half was divided between those who held their nose and voted Democratic and those who voted for Nader or didn’t vote at all because they were so disgusted with their options.

Draw your own conclusions about what this means for 2006, 2008, and other opportunities for change that don’t involve elections.

It’s time for me to weigh in. I guess you can count me in the undecided category. I don’t favor a junta, for sure, and I don’t favor a French-Revolution-style beheading of the elite classes. As horrendous as this administration is, I don’t see things being ameliorated by a decade of Robespierre and Danton, followed by the ascension of another Napoleon (can you say Rudy Giuliani, a dictatorial midget with popular wartime appeal?).

And besides, armed revolution won’t work because the left doesn’t have nearly enough guns.

That said, I don’t see the ballot box as the solution either. Hand-wringing, arguing, money-raising, op-ed writing, and ribbon-wearing aren’t getting the job done for two reasons.

First, the Democrats have no spine. Despite everything that this administration has done, nobody on the other side of the aisle has done anything to stop them. They pretend to ask tough questions, but go ahead and confirm losers and criminals like John Ashcroft, Condescending Rice, and Alberto Gonzales. We have no equivalent of an opposition leader in this country because there's barely an opposition. Look for John Roberts to win approval easily, and the Supreme Court to shift even further right for a generation. But naming justices to the Supreme Court is a right Bush "won" by taking the 2004 election.

Second, and more important, I believe the game is rigged. There's too much evidence of vote manipulation for me to believe that either of the past two presidential elections were won fair and square. The 2000 Election was obviously stolen by Florida Republicans on the payroll. And the evidence from Ohio in 2004 is just as disturbing. And as electronic voting increases nationwide, the opportunities for vote stealing are multiplying. Since the main companies that make the electronic voting machines are all heavy Republican contributors, you can guess which way those votes will be rigged.

That’s why I don’t put much faith in voting. When we went to Washington in 2001 to protest the inauguration of a thief president, I was interviewed on TV about why we were there. At the time, I was optimistic: I said it was a great sign of a free country that people could go to the capital and express their opinion.

Four years of this administration has changed that opinion. There’s little right to protest in this country now that anybody who disagrees with the party line is fired, quietly reassigned, denied access to future briefings, put on hold, or made subject to a vicious smear campaign. And even those who aren’t silenced by the administration have been ignored by a media that is owned by defense contractors, Republican sympathizers, or giant corporations that benefit from the fascist policies of this government.

That was something we learned in four hours in Washington. Despite the presence of at least 20,000 protesters at the inauguration, the media coverage was almost nil. Ordinary citizens converging on Washington to protest the stealing of an election was something that had not happened in over 100 years (unless I’m ignorant of a large anti-Kennedy contingent in 1961), yet most national newspapers either wrote nothing about it or buried a story on page 17. The news networks covering the event live simply ignored the protesters as Bush’s motorcade sped by them.

Katrina has exposed the mask of Bush. But we won’t be voting for or against George Bush in the next two elections. Congressional candidates will distance themselves from him in 2006, and he won’t be running in 2008. Bush isn’t the problem; it’s the entire fascist state that has appointed him the Grand Wizard. When he’s gone, they’ll simply anoint a new leader.

The only way I see to end the fascism is to find a Democratic candidate with a backbone who will call these guys on the carpet, and then make sure that he or she (please, not Hillary; she'll lose by Mondale-like proportions) wins by a tamper-proof landslide.

I don't see that happening in the next three years. So I'm looking for other solutions that won't condemn us to decades of debt, generations of oppression, and rolling back of New Deal programs. A military coup isn't the answer, that’s true, but what is?

I wish I knew.

American Junta?

I’m asking this question not because I want to start an argument, but because I honestly don’t know how I feel about it. I’m hoping to start a sane conversation about a serious subject.

Let’s say a group of high-ranking military officers loyal to Gen. Eric Shinseki (or some other brass hat who opposed the war in Iraq) decided they had seen just about enough of their troops dying in Iraq for no reason and staged a presidential coup. Like a South American junta, they stormed the White House, guns blazing, took the president and vice president hostage, and declared that they would hold onto power only long enough to end the war and bring the troops home.

There are any number of ways for the story to go from here, and I suppose how you feel about the aforementioned scenario might depend on how the story ends. But since we’d have no way of knowing the eventual outcome if it actually happened, I want to know:

Which side are you on?

Do you support the overthrow or do you fight to maintain the rule of law?

Better?

Now that the baseball season is largely over (and let’s face it, for the Dodgers it has been over for a long time, though they remain mathematically in contention), it’s soon enough to evaluate some of the moves the bonehead general manager Paul DePodesta made with this team over last year’s offseason.

Let’s start with Adrian Beltre. Here’s a guy who played on a bum ankle all season last year and finally put up the kind of numbers the Dodgers had been expecting of him since he arrived in 1998. He led the majors in home runs while hitting .334.

The Dodgers, however, didn’t want to give him a long-term deal based on one year’s numbers, and let him go to Seattle. Admittedly, he hasn’t exactly been Mike Schmidt. His .257 average and 18 home runs make him look more like Mike Pagliarulo. But his 79 RBIs is more than any Dodger except Jeff Kent. And that’s on a Seattle team, where even Ichiro is batting a mere .302, that isn’t exactly putting a lot of runners on base for Beltre to drive in.

Beltre has also played in 138 of Seattle’s 144 games this year, something no 2005 Dodger can say. Meanwhile, the five guys named Mo who DePodesta slotted to fill Beltre’s role are hitting a combined .258, a percentage point above Beltre in fact.

And if you add up the RBI totals for Robles, Antonio Perez, Mike Edwards, Jose Valentin, and Norihiro Nakamura, you get 79, the exact same total as Beltre. Except that those 79 RBIs came in 914 at bats, compared to 536 for Beltre. Beltre therefore has 1.7 RBIs for every run driven in by a Dodger third baseman.

J.D. Drew was the guy who was supposed to replace Beltre’s big bat in the lineup. He played 72 games and hit a whopping .286 with 15 homers and 36 whole RBIs before getting injured yet again, as he has done every single year of his career. Even if you double his half season stats, he would have all of 72 RBIs, but also 100 strikeouts.

Meanwhile, the guy he replaced, Shawn Green, (whose salary the Dodgers are still paying), is hitting .299 with 22 homers and 73 RBIS, while playing 141 games for the Diamondbacks. It’s nice to double a player’s statistics and say that’s what he would have hit if he hadn’t gotten injured.

But Drew is on the DL more than George Bush is on vacation. When a player is as on the DL as often as Drew, you can’t assume anything. Everybody in baseball, except, it seems, Paul DePodesta, knew that Drew was a guy who was injury prone, didn’t try very hard, and was a clubhouse killer. And that’s exactly what he has delivered for the Dodgers in 2005.

Let’s look at the lineup DePodesta intended to put on the field at the beginning of 2005:

Hee Seop Choi at first. If you’ve been reading my blog or anything Jim Tracy has to say about this guy, you know my feelings about him.

Jeff Kent at second. Good move. Kent is the core of this horrible club, putting up his usual Hall of Fame numbers. He’ll end the season with 30 homers, .300 average, and 100 RBIS. I wasn’t a huge fan of this acquisition when it was made, but he has performed admirably.

Cesar Izturis at short: He started strong, then faded, perhaps because of injury. His excellent defense makes him worth keeping, though he probably shouldn’t be batting leadoff.

Jose Valentin at third: If you’re going to let Beltre, the team leader and offensive sparkplug, leave, you’ve got to replace him with more than a .174 hitter. Especially when guys like Troy Glaus, Corey Koskie, even Joe Randa were available.

Jayson Werth, Milton Bradley, and J.D. Drew in the outfield. Three guys who all wanted to play center field, probably so they wouldn’t have to hit like a corner outfielder. All three spent time on the DL this year. Bradley was the best of this bunch on the field, but his off-the-field problems mean he assuredly won’t be back next year.

David Ross, catcher. David Ross? Are you kidding? How do you trade away Paul LoDuca, get nothing for him, and think David Ross is going to solve your problems. Luckily for the Dodger, Jason Philips fell into their lap, and he did a great job at catcher, except when it came to throwing out baserunners. He’s third on the team in RBIS.

Derek Lowe, Brad Penny, Jeff Weaver, Odalis Perez, and Scott Erickson, starting rotation. Scott Erickson? Puh-leeze. A guy who was washed up three years ago. DePodesta seems to think catching lightning in a bottle is as easy as playing against the 49ers.

Moreover, where’s the ace? Who’s the guy you’re afraid of in a big playoff series? Who’s the #1 starter? Jeff Weaver? Big game loser Jeff Weaver? Now maybe no aces were available in the off-season. But in that case, you have to go out and get five #2 starters, not hire some other team’s retreads.

Injuries hurt, for sure, but this Dodger team was poorly assembled from the start. The 12-2 start masked serious flaws.

Looking forward to 2006, who would you build around? Kent, a 37-year-old guy in the last year of his contract? Izturis, who’s going to recovering from Tommy John surgery? Dioner Navarro, a decent catcher who hasn’t played a full season? Elmer Dessens, the only pitcher with an ERA under 3.00? Drew?

If they traded every single one of the guys on the roster today and replaced them with the Milwaukee Brewers, would anybody even notice? The Brewers are playing .500, something the Dodgers haven’t done since May. They’d be an improvement over the current club. In fact, if the Brewers were playing in the NL West, they’d be a playoff team.

It’s hard to believe that less than a season after a division championship, it’s ttime for the Dodgers to clean house. But there isn’t a single irreplaceable part of this team.

The best place to start would be with DePodesta.

Safer?

The Post Office is far too maligned for the job they do. The great majority of the time, they take packages across the country in a matter of days for a fraction of what it would cost to send it some other way. They’re reliable, convenient, and bring the mail right to your door, leaving it in your mailbox without a signature whether you’re home or not.

But since TWA Flight 800 crashed into Long Island Sound, they’ve fallen victim to terrorist paranoia and refused to allow consumers to stick anything in a mailbox weighing over 16 ounces. The latest package returned to my home was a Priority Mail Envelope bearing the following label:

IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION
We regret that your mail is being returned to you because of heightened security measures. All domestic mail, weighing 16 ounces or over, that bears stamps and all international and military APO/FPO mail weighing 16 ounces or over, MUST be presented to a retail clerk at a post office.

This despite the fact that I used the Postal Service’s formerly convenient Flat Rate Regardless of Weight Envelope to mail my package.

Memo to the Postal Service: the point of the Flat Rate Envelope is to save consumers a trip to the Post Office. If we have to present it to a retail clerk, the flat rate isn’t a time saver.

Moreover, what is the point of handing something to a retail clerk? What is this heightened security? What is this highly skilled civil servant going to do to my package to make it safer for the esteemed letter carriers of the Postal Service to carry it across the country? Shake it? Sniff it? Put it through a bomb-detecting device? Ha!

Let’s assume for a moment that I was sending a bomb in my flat rate envelope. If my intent was to wreak havoc, wouldn’t I be a whole lot more effective at doing that by going into a post office and unleashing the kind of mayhem on the staff that their frazzled co-workers are already legendary for doing?

If I really did have a bomb, why would I leave it in an envelope sitting in the bottom of a mailbox on a city street? Some personal vendetta against mailboxes? And if I really did hate mailboxes so much, why would I even need the packaging? I’d just drop a bomb into the box without any return address at all.

But this is what our government is worried about. Rather than prepare for utterly predictable crises like New Orleans being flooded, attacks on our nuclear plants, or explosives at the cargo ports, the government is concerned that mail bombs be delivered directly to a retail agent at the Post Office.

So come on in, terrorists. Blow holes in our levees. Infiltrate our ports. Cut our electricity. Clog up our highways. Just don’t you dare try to mail a package over 16 ounces or take a backpack on the subway. Cuz we’re wise to you.

Chemistry Lesson

Whenever a team with talent fails to produce the expected amount of victories, the pundits usually blame that scapegoat chemistry. Something about the mix of players supposedly caused the whole to be less than the sum of its parts.

When the New York Mets of the early 1990s finished last instead of first despite the addition of high-priced free agents like Bobby Bonilla, chemistry was cited as the problem. The dreadful falloff of the Baltimore Orioles after 1997 was traced to chemistry. And of course the failure of the highest-priced team in baseball, the New York Yankees, to win the World Series any of the past four years, can be traced to the chemical change that occurred when veterans like Paul O’Neill, Tino Martinez, Joe Girardi, Scott Brosius, and Chuck Knoblauch were removed from the mix.

The pundits, and especially the handwringers, usually agree that the best chemistry comes from a group of players who came up together through the farm system. Only by riding buses and sharing dilapidated motel rooms do players create the kind of bonds between men that allow them to drive each other home from third with less than two outs.

The reason, supposedly, that the Yankees are in such a void these days is that they have stopped building through the farm system and have brought in a bunch of mercenary free agents. Forget the fact that the championship teams of the 1970s were all bought and paid for, and consisted of a bunch of guys who hated each other. Only by returning to their roots, the reasoning goes, will the Bronx Bombers return to glory.

Hogwash.

The Yankees’ fortunes have no doubt plummeted since they started trading away prospects for veterans. But the aforementioned cogs of the 1998-2000 championship clubs were all acquired from other teams. Not a one came through Columbus. Meanwhile, who is it that anybody thinks is the Jay Buhner of the 21st century? Brad Halsey? Jake Westbrook? Eric Milton? Ed Yarnall? Scott Seabol? Ricky Ledee? Juan Rivera? Brandon Claussen? Stop me before I name an all-star. Or even a top tier player. (Yes, I know, Alfonso Soriano. But you can’t find me a GM who wouldn’t trade Soriano straight up for Alex Rodriguez.)

Meanwhile, the teams that have succeeded in the past several years have hardly been built on a nucleus of home grown players. Witness last year’s champs, the Boston Red Sox. Johnny Damon was signed as a free agent. So was Manny Ramirez. Kevin Millar, Mark Bellhorn, David Ortiz , Keith Foulke, and Curt Schilling too. Boston traded for Bill Mueller, Orlando Cabrera, Jason Varitek, Pedro Martinez, Tim Wakefield, and Jason Varitek (though he played his entire big league career for the Sox). Of the regulars on the 2004 Championship team, only Trot Nixon came through the farm system.

The St. Louis Cardinals are another example. The only home grown players on the last year’s pennant-winning squad were Albert Pujols and Matt Morris. Everybody else—Edgar Renteria, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, Jason Isringhausen, Mike Matheny, Larry Walker, Reggie Sanders, Tony Womack, Jason Marquis, Chris Carpenter, even Jeff Suppan—came via trade or free agency, and all within the past five years. In fact, the Cardinals revamped three-quarters of their starting rotation in 2004 alone, with no ill effect on the chemistry.

Going back a year farther, the Florida Marlins did not take particular advantage of their farm system. Most people cite strength up the middle as a key to success. But the Marlins’ catcher (Ivan Rodriguez,) shortstop (Alex Gonzalez) and centerfielder (Juan Pierre, whose sprints in from the outfield symbolized the pure joy of playing baseball) were all imports.

Yet that Marlins team was boiling over with chemistry. If they had had any more chemistry, the Bush Administration might have cooked up reasons for an invasion of South Florida. The Marlins were seriously undermatched against the Yankees, yet they won easily in six games for reasons that have little to do with how long the players knew each other, but had everything to do with chemistry. After the championship year, Rodriguez went to Detroit, Derrek Lee was traded to Chicago (for Hee Seop Choi--oops, my bad), Brad Penny was dealt to the Dodgers, and Carl Pavano signed with the Yankees.

Do the Marlins still have that chemistry today? Certainly they have a talented pitching staff. Do the Cardinals have chemistry after changing their catcher, shortstop and second baseman in the 2005 off-season? Do the Red Sox, who let two-fifths of their rotation escape to free agency? With four weeks to go in the season, the answer is yes for two, and possibly all three of those teams.

Chemistry is tricky. It’s easy to identify its absence. The 2005 Yankees are the most obvious example, and the Dodgers are doing a pretty good imitation of it. And some years, chemistry isn’t enough to overcome superior talent. The Minnesota Twins have had lots of chemistry over the years, but it hasn’t gotten them past the first round of the playoffs.

But can you create chemistry? Probably not. It’s nearly impossible to imagine how a group of 25 grown men with egos as big as their biceps will get along together. But you can recognize good chemistry and make sure you don’t screw it up. There are countless examples of GMs who are guilty in this regard.

Paul DePodesta did it to the Dodgers in the middle of 2004, trading away team leader Paul Lo Duca, and did it again in 2005, unloading Shawn Green and ignoring Jose Lima and Adrian Beltre. Brian Cashman did it in 2001, letting Martinez, Knoblauch, and Brosius get away in the same year that O’Neill retired. Billy Beane did it to the A’s in 2005, trading away two thirds of the Big Three and getting so very little in return (although that teams seems to put together a second-half run no matter who they throw on the field).

In recent years, Cashman has tried to atone for those his chemistry mistakes by re-signing players like Martinez and relievers Jeff Nelson and Mike Stanton long after the gas was out of the bottle. But in baseball, like in chemistry, there are some reactions that you can’t undo.

Where are the Decent People?

I had a terrific holiday weekend, in large part because of the things I was able to do for others. Saturday was the day the families moved into their houses at Habitat. The homeowner, Martin, had a barbecue for all the people who helped build his home. Friends, neighbors, cousins, etc. were all there. The house still has power tools all over the place; mismatched chairs and folding tables turned the garage into a makeshift dining room. But the spirit of hospitality was genuine. It was more enjoyable than so many fancy parties I've been to where things were just so, but the atmosphere was cold as a fish.

Later that afternoon, I went to a second barbecue. The field where I play softball has some barbecue kettles. I’ve long thought that after we play softball, we should have a Saturday evening cookout at the field, where we could invite wives, girlfriends (not at the same time, of course), kids, dogs, etc. to spend that last few hours of sunlight together and grill up some food. We finally agreed to do it on Saturday and it was a lot of fun. The people involved were not in need of a home like the Habitat folks, but it was just a nice opportunity to spend time together.

In both instances, people took time to thank me for the contributions I had made to the respective communities over the year. In the softball scenario, I had done little more than suggest a good idea and bring some charcoal. In the Habitat scenario, I had merely showed up and done what was asked of me. But it was uplifting to know I had made a difference in other people’s lives.

On Sunday, there was yet another barbecue, our local block party. It too was an enjoyable evening, but what I liked even more was the day after (Monday). We got up and helped clean up the block and met our neighbors. Then we all went to the beach, more or less together. It’s nice being in a neighborhood that’s both friendly and tight knit. And at times like these, it’s reassuring to know that although our president and his administration may be the lowest of scum, and although the people who voted for him are ignorant, selfish bastards, there are still some good people in the world.

They may not be the majority of the people, but if I can spend the majority of my time with them, it allows me to think there are more of them than there actually are.

Bush Out of Washington

After a week of incompetence that sets a new low for the Bush administration, I’ve come to the conclusion that we must throw these guys out on the street, and we must do it now.

I don’t mean in 2008. I don’t mean in 2006. I don’t mean in November of this year. I mean now. Today, tomorrow, Labor Day. We need to march on Washington and demand wholesale resignations. These guys said they wanted to run the country like a corporation and they’ve done exactly that. That corporation is Enron.

They raided the piggy bank for their pet looting project in Iraq, and fiddled while people’s houses were destroyed by the predictable calamity that resulted from their shenanigans. Now that a rainy day has come, there's no money left to save the people who got caught by unfortunate events.

In New Orleans, people are dead because the Bush administration stole money from the infrastructure that might have saved their lives: the National Guard, the armed forces, the FEMA budget, and the projects to shore up the levees. There’s blood on this administration's hands and it’s time for a reckoning.

We can’t wait for 2008, when Bush and his Carlyle cronies (who are all getting rich off higher oil and gas prices, thank you very much) are term-limited from running again.

We can’t wait until 2006, when the Administration will have had more than a year to spin their story, when gas prices are back to normal and people will have forgotten about poor black folks in New Orleans. Midterm elections aren’t much of a referendum on the president’s leadership anyway. They’re more about individual races. And since everybody loves his or her Congressman, it’s unlikely to produce the kind of wholesale turnover that’s necessary.

We can’t wait another minute to get these guys out of office. The longer we wait, the longer they have to raid the treasury and turn Social Security, Head Start, Medicare, and veteran’s benefits into $100 bills they can use to light their cigars.

We need to throw the bums out on their ears, every last one of them who smiled for the cameras and said they were doing all they could when they were doing nothing. Who lied and said there was no way to predict that the levees could break. Who told people to go to the Superdome, then left them for dead.

Unfortunately, none of this will happen. And it’s not because Americans are fat lazy heartless bastards who are more worried about terrorists hijacking planes than they are about aristocrats hijacking the government. It’s not because we respect the rule of law so much. It’s not because anybody thinks these guys are doing a good job.

It’s because the Democrats have been so cowed by these bullies that they have nobody to stand up to them any more. Even if a miracle were to occur and mobs started surrounding the White House, demanding resignations en masse, then what?

I know, legally, there is a chain of command that starts with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is talking about letting New Orleans go the way of Atlantis, and ends with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who should be dumped into Lake Pontchartrain. But I’m talking in a grander sense here.

Who is it that could take over this government? Is there a single Democrat that speaks for a national audience? Can the Democrats even be considered an opposition party when all they do is go along with whatever the Administration tells them to do? Does anybody think John Kerry could step into the breach and provide leadership? Hillary? Harry Reid? Puh-leeze.

What is happening in New Orleans this week, and what is certain to happen to the rest of the country the next time something serious goes wrong is one of the greatest scandals in the history of this country. This is an opportunity for the Democrats to get a spine and start persuading people that they have an alternative.

I’m not talking about playing politics with a tragedy. I’m talking about stepping into the breach and showing some real leadership here.

Realistically, there’s no way we’re going to get rid of Bush and his cronies any time soon. But if the Democrats don’t start standing up to these bullies now, they’re never going to beat them (or the clones that replace them) in any future election.

It's Too Hard

The current issue of National Geographic is the first since 1959 to feature a cover with no picture. New editor in chief Chris Johns, a former photographer no less, decided that no single image could tell the entire story of Africa.

So he punted. The cover features the word Africa in two-inch high letters, and the somewhat less-than-1000-word headline: Whatever you thought, think again.”

“Africa is not just a place; it’s a million places,” Mr. Johns told the Washington Post. “We felt no one photograph could capture the mystery, the diversity, and the surprise of Africa as it moves forward.”

Memo to Mr. Johns: You run a magazine legendary for having the greatest photography in the world. Your job is to sift through the thousands of photographs you receive each month and choosing the one that best tells the story for the cover.

Africa is a huge place. Readers don’t expect a single photo to tell its story any more than they expect a single image to tell the story of, say, Asia. Or even Cleveland.

A single photograph may not tell the entire story, but it will certainly tell more of the story than your six-word headline. Of course it’s hard work. But that’s why you’re the boss. You get paid to make tough decisions. If you’re not up to the job, there are thousands of editors who would relish the opportunity to take your place.

But instead, Johns threw up his hands and said “It’s too hard. I can’t do this.”

I can just imagine what will happen when other people start following Mr. Johns’ example.

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and a full count on Edgar Renteria, Matt Morris throws a borderline pitch that may or may not hit the corner of the plate and may or may not tilt the World Series in the Cardinals’ favor. Home plate umpire Angel Hernandez decides it’s too hard to rule the pitch a ball or a strike, and calls for a do-over. “I felt that neither the word ‘ball’ nor the word ‘strike’ could capture the essence of that pitch,” says Hernandez.

A patient is rushed into the emergency room. The doctor can’t decide what to do first: remove the giant circular saw blade from her face or restore her airway, which has been horribly mangled by the blade. He decides the choice is too difficult, and instead gets on his knees and prays. “I felt that neither option would definitively restore the patient’s health as she moves forward through life,” he says.

Faced with the difficult decision of whether Iraq has a nuclear weapons program, John Kerry says the choice is too hard and says he will let George Bush decide. Oh, wait. That one already happened.

If at First You Don't Succeed

Today’s LA Times suggests that statistics devotees and other rotisserie players are disappointed that Hee Seop Choi hasn’t been in the lineup much of late.

If you’ve been reading this page at all, you’ll know I’m far from upset. I’m all the way with Jim Tracy, who was said to be unhappy with the Seoul Man’s mediocre defense, ugly swing, and inability to drive in runners.

Yes, Choi had two hits yesterday in four trips, bringing his season total above his season strikeout total. But the guy just doesn’t produce when it counts. In fact, he hardly produces at all. His .331 OBP and .470 slugging percentage are nice, but if they don’t add up to more than 36 RBIs and 33 runs scored, then those are meaningless stats. Choi has 14 homers, third on this light-hitting team. But that also means that he has only driven in 22 runners other than himself, and has been driven in just 19 times.

Compare him with Jason Phillips, who has five fewer walks, 14 more hits, 12 more RBIs, and 24 fewer strikeouts. Phillips has hit in the 7 or 8 hole all year; Choi has hit second, where a hitter is expected to be in the middle of rallies. But mostly, Choi has killed rallies, striking out as often as rookie Jason Repko. Phillips has scored 4 fewer runs than Choi, but since he’s got the pitcher hitting behind him, that’s not unexpected.

What I’d like to see is Jeff Kent moving to first, Antonio Perez or Oscar Robles taking his place at second, and both Choi and Phillips on the bench. Neither Perez nor Robles has Choi’s power, but they both get on base a lot and score runs. Perez has one fewer double than Choi in 64 fewer at bats. Both guys have higher averages and higher on-base percentages.

Neither player is a deep threat, but the Dodgers’ futility this year has not been scoring enough runs. It has been putting together hits at the right time. A lineup full of guys who get on, get over, and get home is going to be a lot more productive than waiting around to see if Choi hits it out or strikes out yet again.

Giant Sucking Sound

Here’s what the three-division plus wild card format is about to produce: a division champion with a sub-.500 record. The NL-West-leading Padres are 50-49, a game above .500, and the way they’ve been playing (losing their last seven), look to make it a 50-50 proposition on Tuesday, when they next play.

They could even lose their next three games without relinquishing first place in the horrendous NL Rest. For much of August, teams in the West play against Eastern division opponents, all of whom have a .500 record or better. That doesn’t bode well for the Pacific and Mountain Time Zone teams. Then, in September, they play each other. At the very least, one western division team will get a victory.

The possibility of a sub .500 team winning this division is quite real. If it does happen, there’s nothing baseball can do about it this year. But Washington, Philadelphia, the Mets, Houston, and the Cubs all have a gripe.

Instead of having three divisions, why not go back to two, and add a second wild card. Or even better, one division with the top four teams making the playoffs. Adding the first wild card has already made winning a division championship meaningless (do you think the Red Sox, Marlins, or Angels care that they didn’t win their divisions in the 2004, 2003, or 2002 respectively?). Let’s get rid of them entirely. Then only the best teams advance to the playoffs.

Yeah, yeah Division rivalries. Baloney. Yankees-Red Sox is fantastic, but 19 times a year has taken some of the luster off of the showdown. Sure the Dodgers and Giants get up for faceoffs between the two teams. But it’s not much of a rivalry when both teams stink.

Division rivalries are only as good as the teams involved. Yankees-Mariners was an excellent rivalry when both teams were in the playoffs every year. Dodgers-Cardinals too. Even Twins Tigers was an exciting rivalry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Rivalries create themselves when teams play well against each other. Letting new rivalries be born would increase interest in the game.

Woohoo!

No, not because the Dodgers won two in a row (they only scored one run in yesterday’s game, so let’s not get too excited).

No, woohoo, because somebody wants Jeff Weaver! The Orioles have indicated interest in the inconsistent towhead. I don’t know how well Spicoli will fare in Baltimore, but this is a golden opportunity for Los Angeles to get rid of a big contract. Perhaps the Orioles will take Darren Dreifort as well.

Who cares what Baltimore is offering. Getting rid of Weaver is addition by subtraction. The Dodgers aren’t making the playoffs this year. Everybody knows that. And D.J. Houlton can match Weaver’s crappy statistics at a fraction of the cost. Whatever the Dodgers get for Weaver is going to be more than the compensation they’d receive for letting him go as a free agent this winter.

So I say pack his bags, drive him to the airport, do what you can to dump this guy. He’s had eight seasons in the big leagues so far, and he’s never shown himself to be anything other than a below .500 pitcher with a 4 ERA. At some point, a guy has to live up to his promise or admit that he never had that potential in the first place.

The book is in on this 28-year-old and it’s nothing to get excited about. The Dodgers have a golden opportunity; they should rush to cash it in.

Vacation!?

It’s the dog days of summer, which means that relief umpires are covering major league games while the regular umps are on vacation.

Vacation!? How do these guys get vacation? They work six months a year and they’ve been able to negotiate a vacation? They work three hours a day and they get vacation?

I can just hear their arguments at the bargaining table.
Waahh! We have to work six days a week.
Boo hoo! We have to travel twice a week to a different city.
Poor us! We have to stand for the whole game.

The guy who runs the deli on my corner works seven days a week. Salesmen travel much more often than twice a week. And every waitress in America is accustomed to standing for a lot longer than 3 hours a day.

Major league umpires do a terrific job. They are correct more than 95 percent of the time, but people only notice the few occasions when they screw up. But vacations? Puh-leeze.

Yanks to Play Red Sox 162 times in 2006

Major League Baseball announced today that the Yankees and Red Sox would square off 162 times in the 2006 season, up from the 19 games the teams will play against each other this year.

The league hopes to capitalize on the success of the 2005 matchups, in which the two teams faced each other on opening day and in the first series after the All-Star Break.

“The TV ratings for Yankees-Red Sox games are so much higher than Yankees-Devil Rays or Red Sox-Blue Jays,” said commissioner Bud Selig. “We figured ‘why not do this every day?’”

Since the two teams have met in the American League Championship series for the past two years, the 162 contests in 2006 will eliminate the need for all the other teams in the American League to play the regular season. Players on those teams will, however, be allowed to purchase up to six (6) tickets for any Yankees-Red Sox game in 2006.

“We think it’ll be fantastic,” said Selig. “There will be a playoff atmosphere all year long.” Selig said the league owners had considered a similar schedule for the Dodgers and Giants. But it was rejected because both teams were so lame.

In other news, Selig announced that the St. Louis Cardinals will advance straight to the National League Championship Series in 2005, since all the other teams in the NL are so lousy. “The Cardinals are head and shoulders above all the other NL teams. We thought it appropriate that they receive a first-round bye,” Selig said.

A Simple Solution for Eminent Domain

The Supreme Court’s puzzlingly odious decision on eminent domain allows governments to condemn private property in the name of the public good, and then turn that property over to private developers who can use the land to generate more tax revenue.

While it’s not likely, on its face, the decision means that the government can seize your home and put a Starbucks on it.The concept of eminent domain was tricky enough when it was limited to public use projects. But extending it to private development is even more dubious.

So here’s a simple solution that might make eminent domain more palatable in all instances: double the market value for any property condemned in the name of eminent domain.

Currently, owners of property taken by eminent domain are paid market value. This is paltry remuneration for a home or business owner who is usually given 90 days to evacuate. For starters, who’s to say what market value is these days. Here in Southern California, houses in prime neighborhoods are known to inspire bidding wars that push their selling price as much as $100,000 over asking.

For another, many property owners do not want to move at all. The costs of breaking up neighborhoods, finding new places to live or do business, and moving at a time that may not be convenient cannot be measured in dollars.

Also, there is tax creep. In California and many other states in the country, property tax is based on the sales price of a home. A house that was purchased in 1980 for $200,000 may now be worth more than $1 million, but the taxes are probably still only around $4,000 a year. But even if the owner is paid $1 million to get out of the way for a football stadium, he will have to spend that $1 million to get a house of equal value. And the taxes on that house will be more than $10,000 a year.

Doubling the market value of condemned property solves these problems. If a project is so important to the government that it has to force people from their homes and businesses, it should be profitable enough to afford twice the payouts. If there isn’t that kind of money in the development budget, it’s not worth doing. This would be an excellent deterrent to using eminent domain willy-nilly.

Property owners are satisfied as well, since the additional dollars makes up for the inconvenience of having to move on short notice and pay more in taxes. If the feds offered me “market value” for my house or business, I’d be angry about it. But if they offered double market value, I’d have no regrets.

All the Stars

As long as we’re letting the players choose the reserves for the All-Star games, why not remove even one more of the manager’s jobs: choosing the starting pitcher. The fans get to choose all other eight (or nine) starters, why not the starting pitcher?

I know, I know—because you can’t ever tell which pitchers will be available up until game time. So what. A pitcher who goes to the game has to expect to pitch at least an inning. So even if the guy pitched Sunday, let him go out and pitch the first inning. Nobody expects a complete game out of him. And in the “everybody gets to play” era, having a pitcher go more than one inning means one of the other ten guys on the staff probably doesn’t get to touch the grass after the opening ceremonies.

The All-Star game is an entertainment, not a contest. The fans should get to choose who they want to see on the mound.

While we’re at it, can we get rid of the “Every player gets a representative” rule for all-star rosters. Does anybody think that the folks in Tampa Bay have more interest in the game because Danys Baez is on the team? Are people in Oakland going to rush home to catch the one-third of an inning in which Justin Duchsherer pitches? Would viewership in Colorado suffer if Brian Fuentes were left off the roster?

No. Of course not. This rule stinks of third grade competitions in which everybody gets an award.

Wake up, baseball! The All-Star Game is not the Special Olympics. If a player isn’t good enough to be chosen by the fans or his fellow players, nobody outside of his family wants to see him play on the national stage.

Tempest in a Clubhouse

Johnny Damon and the usual gang of self-described idiots in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse are concerned that Curt Schilling doesn’t deserve to be the team’s closer, a role management has chosen for him in the wake of Keith Foulke’s knee injury. Damon worries that Schilling, who takes forever to warm up, will be an ineffective closer.

Schilling, meanwhile, can’t return to the starting rotation at the moment because he can only pitch an inning at a time. He has dreams of being John Smoltz, a guy who became a standout closer upon returning from injury that prevented him from being a starter. He claims that he just wants to help the team however he can.

They’re both wrong. Schilling’s Messianic complex (give him props: he was the difference between the 2003 wild card team that lost to Aaron Boone and 2004 world championship team) prevents him from continuing to pitch in Pawtucket until he’s healthy enough to start again. And Damon’s public criticism of management eats away at the notion of the Red Sox as a 25-man team.

Schilling can be a pill, but he delivers in big situations. If he has the stuff to be a closer, why not let him try. If he’s terrible, the front office will learn that soon enough.
Then again, if Schilling had any humility, he would accept a role other than closer, especially since Mike Timlin has been a closer before and has had a stellar first half.

In fact, Schilling might even invent a new role: The stopper. Not a reliable starter, not a closer, but a guy who comes in in the middle innings and makes sure no more runs are scored until the closer comes on to finish the job. This was a role Mariano Rivvera filled for the Yankees in 1996, and a key reason they won the world series.

A stopper is the first guy out of the bullpen, not the last. He does what relievers were originally called upon to do when they were invented half a century ago: put out the fire. Schilling could pitch the sixth and seventh innings of any close game, ensuring that the bullpen didn’t blow it before the closer even had a chance to come in.

SMOLTZ V. SCHILLING
The comparisons between Smoltz and Schilling are extremely interesting. Both pitchers started their careers in 1988; Smoltz has pitched 2/3 of an inning more than Schilling. Schilling’s record (185-125) is slightly better than Smoltz’ (172-126) but Smoltz’s ERA is 3.25 compared to Schilling’s 3.35. Schilling has more strikeouts (2,765 to 2,496) but Smoltz of course has more saves (154 to 13). Schilling has two World Series rings compared to Smoltz’s one.

But Smoltz leads in Cy Young Awards. He has one, Schilling has none. Despite putting up seasons of 23, 22, and 21 wins, Schilling has never been the best pitcher in the league. Randy Johnson bested Schilling in 2001 and 2002 (Schilling wasn’t even the best pitcher on his team!) and Johan Santana outpitched him last year.

So who gets into the Hall of Fame? My guess is both, even if they both retired right now. (Schilling turns 39 in November; Smoltz in May of 2006). Schilling is the Juan Marichal of his era, always second to Gibson or Koufax, but never the best. Still, his numbers are impressive and his two rings will push him over the top. Smoltz has the ring, the award, the ERA, and a unique combination: 150 wins and 150 saves. The only other pitcher with that mix is Dennis Eckersley, just recently elected to the Hall.

All-Star Shellacking

The All-Star Game is looking to be another borefest this year, with the National League coming up far short in its attempts to win its first game since 1996.

To be sure, the senior circuit has better pitching, with Roger Clemens sporting an ERA under 2, and Dontrelle Willis at 2.04. But rest assured that if Clemens starts, Mike Piazza will again be telling the AL hitters what to expect, as revenge for the 2000 beaning. Nobody aside from Piazza himself will ever convince me that he didn’t do that last year, and that he won’t do it again.

The starting lineups, on the other hand, are another story completely. Only three NL starters are hitting above .300; only two AL starters are hitting BELOW .300, and they have 42 homers between them. There are six players on the AL bench that arguably are having better years than the NL starters: Ivan Rodriguez is hitting 30 points higher than Mike Piazza, Alfonso Soriano has five more homers than Jeff Kent, Michael Young is besting David Eckstein in pretty much every offensive category, Melvin Mora has more than double Scott Rolen’s RBI total , nearly triple his homers, and is hitting 50 points higher than Rolen. Garrett Anderson, Gary Sheffield, and Ichiro Suzuki are all having better years than Carlos Beltran and his .262 average. Even Jim Edmonds (.283) would have a hard time displacing one of those three.

The AL pitching isn’t so terrible either. Mark Buehrle, Roy Halladay, and Kenny “KO” Rogers all have ERAs under three, and Mariano Rivera has been his usual unhittable self.

With a matchup this seemingly lackluster, some genius at major league baseball decided that this year’s marketing campaign would compare baseball to the fast-paced action of pinball. Why? Because that’s sure to bring in the younger audience that baseball so desperately seeks? Because those Spiderman logos on the bases were so successful?

Get real. Pinball! Pinball was already obsolete when Bud Selig was a young’un. Most people under 30 have never seen a pinball machine. Pinball is about as up to date as the Princess phone, the Rubik’s cube, and tailfins. It’s not retro hip, it’s just old.

If baseball were paying attention to what’s going on, they’d compare Brian Roberts’ base-stealing ability with Grand Theft Auto. It would show video of Gary Sheffield getting into fights with fans. It would show J.D. Drew getting injured on a pitch he swung at.

Baseball is not about fireworks. The best games are the ones in which strategy, guts, and risk-taking win the game, not a bunch of bombs. Perhaps that’s too much to expect from a general public that prefers the mindless collisions of football or the tiresome repetitive scoring of basketball.

But pinball! Come on! Whoever made that decision must have been on steroids.

Independence Day

There’s a reason for celebrating: The Dodgers have gained their independence (at least temporarily) from J.D. Drew. The light-hitting man taking up space in the Dodgers’ three-hole is fulfilling everyone’s expectations by landing himself on the disabled list again. The guy has never played more than 145 games in a season, and isn’t going to break that streak this year.

Here again are two sets of statistics. One belongs to Shawn Green, the other to J.D. Drew. Can you tell which is which?
G: 82 AB: 300 H: 84 K: 53 HR: 14 RBI: 49 OBP: .349 AVG: 280
G: 72 AB: 252 H: 72 K: 50 HR: 15 RBI: 36 OBP: .412 AVG: .287

I’ll give you a hint: the one with 36 pathetic RBIs is J.D. Drew! Thirty six!! The season’s half over and he has 36 RBIs. Translate that to a full season and he’ll have a whopping total of 72. No, check that. Since he’s going to miss the next 4-6 weeks nursing a broken wrist he sustained ON A PITCH HE SWUNG AT Drew will be lucky to break the 50 RBI mark this year.

Thirty six RBIs is less than three a week. Drew’s 15 home runs account for nearly half of his RBI totals, meaning he has driven in only 21 teammates.

It’s no surprise he has so few RBIs. He comes up in key RBI situations and fails to drive in runners. He seems constantly to be looking for a walk (his 51 bases on balls leads the team, followed by Hee Seop Choi’s 48, which is again more than the number of hits he has) rather than drive the ball with runners on base.

Last night, he came up with runners on first and second twice. The first time, he grounded out. The second time, he flied out. A walk might actually have helped, but he saves those for occasions when there are two outs.

Perhaps one of the reasons Jeff Kent has so many RBIs (59) is that he follows Drew in the order, meaning that there are still a lot of runners on base even after Drew hits. On most teams, the cleanup hitter’s RBIs suffer from the 3-hitter having already cleared the bases. Not so with the Dodgers. The same guys that were on base when Drew comes up are still there when Kent follows him in the order. (Even Kent failed to get the job done last night, striking out and grounding into a double play following Drew’s poor performance, but he has been a deserving all-star all year).

The Dodgers will not struggle as much as anybody thinks with Drew out of the order because he hasn’t been producing as much as somebody getting $55 million should. Darren Dreifort has been almost as deserving of his $55 million.

Jayson Werth, with less than a year of major league experience, now becomes the old grizzled veteran in an outfield that will now have to start some combination of Jason Repko, Jason Grabowski, Mike Edwards, and Cody Ross. Edwards is the only one of that group hitting above the Mendoza line, but he didn’t exactly endear himself to manager Jim Tracy, getting thrown out at third in a 6-1 game.

Say this for the Dodgers, however: they are definitely a team of young hungry players.

My Kingdom for a Bat

It’s being said that the Dodgers, if they have any hopes of staying in the race, need to get another bat.

That’s easy to say from a computer terminal or behind a microphone, but let’s look a little closer. Exactly where will this “bat” play?

The Dodgers have a solid middle infield in Kent and Izturis, and Antonio Perez has shown that he can handle the duties at third base. He’s also hitting well. Hee Seop Choi has hardly been my favorite player, but Paul DePodesta seems to be in love with the guy.

In the outfield, the problem isn’t a lack of outfielders, it’s a lack of healthy outfielders. When J.D. Drew, Milton Bradley, and Jayson Werth are healthy, they’re perfectly serviceable. The problem over the last month has been that they haven’t never been in the lineup together. Even Ricky Ledee, the fourth outfielder has been injured.

If the Dodgers were to get another “bat” they would end up with too many outfielders when everybody got healthy again. That’s supposedly a problem every manager wants, but you have to give up something to get something. It would be foolhardy to trade away somebody valuable to get a player who will become a spare part when the lineup returns to full strength.

There are two exceptions to this scenario: 1) the player the Dodgers give up plays the same position as the one being acquired. For example, Todd Helton for Hee Seop Choi (oh please, oh please!) and anybody else the Rockies want. 2) The player the Dodgers get is so good that one of the outfielders (probably Werth) becomes a part-time player and Ledee becomes a pinch-hitter extraordinaire.

Those scenarios all require a lot more negotiations than simply acquiring “a bat.” The Dodgers have to find a team who wants what they’re selling. If what they were selling were any good, he’d be playing now. Then again, Billy Beane has shown a willingness to give away frontline starting pitchers for mediocre relievers. Maybe a Barry Zito for Franquelis Osoria and Steve Schmoll deal could be in the works.

Joe Must Go. Here's How

When he’s not annoying us by beating a point into the ground, no matter how wrong he may be, Joe Morgan is boring the Sunday Night Baseball audience with some moronic banter. He’s truly execrable.

Jon Miller is little better. He brings out the worst in Morgan, who was somewhat bearable a week ago with Gary Thorne when Miller was on vacation.

The fault lies not with these two mediocre broadcasters, however, but with the ESPN higher-ups who have put them in this position. It’s just not possible for two people to be so knowledgeable about every team in the league, and it shows. Miller follows the Giants from his home in San Francisco. I have no idea who Morgan watches on a daily basis.

But when they do a game of the week, they see maybe two games and then attempt to sound like they’ve been around the teams all year.

Why not jettison this tiresome twosome and replace them with local broadcasters. That way fans in one city not only get to see teams from another city, they get to hear the voice of that team as well. Give the country a chance to hear Vin Scully call a Dodgers game. Let fans outside of Chicago hear Bob Brenly call a Cubs game. Share the beauty that is Jim Kaat calling a game with the entire nation.

I know, the plan has its faults. For one, any time the Sunday Night game was played in Anaheim or Atlanta, a national audience would get furious at the relentless homerism of the announcers in those cities. But it might actually do those guys some good to hear feedback about how one-sided their broadcasts are.

For another, local announcers might assume too much knowledge about the home team and leave some fans in the dark. But it’s quite better than the reverse situation—f ans watching at home who know more than the announcers—which is the current predicament.

ESPN used to cut away for a half an inning to do exactly this kind of stunt. It’s time they extended the stunt to all nine innings. They can still use their production crew. Because of ESPN’s exclusivity on Sunday night, local crews and local announcers most likely aren’t working that night anyway. So put them to work for the national audience.

Keeping Up with the Padres

Trevor Hoffman is 38.

What does that mean to Dodger fans? Aside from the fact that he won’t be closing them out in the ninth inning (yesterday’s game notwithstanding), it means that the Padres’ need to win a championship is even more urgent than the Dodgers’. Who knows how much longer Hoffman will be around to finish up for their starters.

For the Padres, the future is now. And that means if there’s a pitcher on the mid-season trade market, they have even more reason than Los Angeles to snap him up. The Padres rotation isn’t as troubled as the Dodgers’, but they have three starters with ERAs over 4. A guy like Barry Zito could put them over the top. Even if they don’t sign him beyond the 2005 season, he could deliver a championship.

The Dodgers have two choices. They can make off with the best mercenary trade bait before the competition does, and sign him to a long-term deal. Or they can hope that the Padres don’t have enough money to sign a multi-year contract and wait until the off-season.

I’m in favor of the former. You just might win something this year, and you’ll lock up a great arm for the future.

Next Year is This Year

Dodger fans, welcome to Milwaukee. With the loss of Eric Gagne for the season (And the first half of next year), it would seem as if the Dodgers’ playoff hopes have been vaporized.

Yes, Yhency Brazoban can step into the closer’s shoes, but who can fill the role Brazoban was expected to perform, that of eighth-inning setup guy? The auditions so far have been unimpressive.

The Dodger’s formula for success was based on giving the opposition seven innings to score against Los Angeles’ eight or nine. (Though recently, it has seemed like the team wouldn’t score no matter how many times they batted.) The Dodgers aren’t equipped to win games in which they have to outslug the opposition.

But giving up on this year would be a mistake. For starters, the team is in a crappy division. The Padres are hardly invincible (As the split of the past four games demonstrates). All it would take is one hot streak to win the NL West.

After that, however, L.A. is not going anywhere. Their pitching isn’t good enough to win a short series, and the offense can’t make up for that fact.

What the Dodgers can do, though, is start building for 2006. If this team is going to win a championship, there are a lot of holes that need filling. Waiting for the off-season might be too late. If an ace pitcher becomes available in July, why not snap him up now?

They may not win it all this year, but for the Dodgers, next year has already started.

Buying or Selling?

As the Dodgers stumble back to the west coast, there are starting to be rumblings about whether they should give up on 2005 and start auctioning off parts and play for 2006. I’m of two minds.

The first says why bother dismantling a team that plays in such a crappy division that a slightly better than .500 record might win it? Why not go get a frontline pitcher who could make the difference between them and the Padres and start building around that guy (hint: Barry Zito!).

The other says “An opportunity to get rid of Jeff Weaver? Woo hoo!” That might even help them win this year.

I doubt the Dodgers will sell off parts because a) they don’t have many players anybody wants, and b) doing so would be an admission that Paul DePodesta has screwed up this team big time. The Dodgers had a nucleus of talented young players who played well together as a team, and he broke them up to bring in Brad Penny and Hee Seop Choi. He let Dave Roberts get away for nothing, and let go of Jose Lima, last year’s victory leader, without so much as a phone call.

Shawn Green, whose hefty contract seemed to be burning a hole in DePodesta’s pocket, was shipped off to Arizona, even though the Dodgers continue to pay him $7 million a year to beat them. Green was hardly an all-star, and not living up to the contract the Dodgers foolishly signed with him. But he played hard every day, be it right field or first base, and he had the lovely habit of tossing his batting gloves to kids in the stands every time he hit a homer.

In his place, DePodesta has signed J.D. Drew, who has the personality of a rosin bag. A god-fearing rosin bag, mind you. He was supposed to be the big bat in the middle of the order that would make everybody forget the Dodgers had let Adrian Beltre go. And while Beltre has struggled in Seattle, so too has Drew here in Los Angeles.

Here are two sets of statistics. One belongs to Shawn Green, the other to J.D. Drew. Can you tell which is which?
G: 69 AB: 257 H: 71 K: 47 HR: 9 RBI: 37 OBP: .334 AVG: 276
G: 64 AB: 230 H: 64 K: 46 HR: 12 RBI: 31 OBP: .394 AVG: .278

In fact, over their careers, their stats are remarkably similar. Green has played twice as many games, and has approximately twice as many homers, RBIS, and hits. Green’s lifetime batting average is .282, or four points lower than Drew’s.

In short, if DePodesta so badly wanted a guy who hits like Shawn Green, why didn’t he just keep Shawn Green?

Meanwhile, Paul Lo Duca is hitting .285 with the Marlins, with an on-base percentage of .341. Jason Phillips is hitting .262 with an OBP of .314. He was a nice pickup, since the price of getting him was essentially nothing (Kaz Ishii). But if the Dodgers hadn’t traded Lo Duca in the first place, there would be no need for Jason Phillips.

I didn’t like the Lo Duca trade at the time, and I still wish we could take a Mulligan on it. Can you imagine Hee Seop Choi screwing up bunt coverage for some other team? I sure can. Maybe that's a trade the Dodgers can make at the deadlin: Choi and Penny for LoDuca and Encarnacion. Somehow, I think the Marlins will pass.

Are You Kidding!

Two in a row to the Royals! Who does this Dodger team think they are, the Yankees? The Dodgers aren’t good enough to be as bad as the Yankees.

But please, the Royals? They score three runs in two nights against Kansas City? My softball team could score more than three runs in 18 innings against the Royals.

Anybody could see that Jose Lima had circled this date on his calendar a month ago. But I would have hoped his old team might have mounted a comeback after he had left the game. No such luck. I know it was his first victory of the year, and he’s been awful, but the Dodgers made a serious mistake letting him go. They didn’t even pick up the phone and thank him for winning their only playoff game in a decade.

Nobody, not even Lima, expected the Dodgers to pay him based only on his 2004 stats (he did lead the team in victories, however). Had the team offered him a deal based on his last three years, he probably would have taken it. The guy has reinvented himself more times than David Bowie. Instead, they went out and signed Scott “Going Going Gone” Erickson.

Now it seems the Dodgers are looking for another starting pitcher. Here are the names they are supposedly interested in: Aaaron Harang (4-5; 3.86), Joe Kennedy (3-6; 7.22), Ted Lilly (4-7; 6.47), Mike Maroth (5-7; 4.23), and Mark Redman (4-4; 2.80). Not an over-.500 guy in the bunch. Redman is the best of a sad bunch, but I can’t see why the Pirates would be willing to give up their best pitcher. He’s having the best year of his 52-55 career; and is with his sixth team in six years. And he’s 31 years old.
(You could say much the same about Carl Pavano, who the Yankees overpaid, and who is performing even worse).

The Dodgers don’t need a fifth starter. They have six of them already. What they need is an ace. A guy who can go up against Mark Mulder, Kerry Wood, John Smoltz, or Jake Peavy and give the team a chance to win. None of the guys they have now can do that. Not Penny, not Lowe, not Perez, and definitely not Weaver. Even if this lousy Dodger club makes the playoffs, they will surely get bounced again in the first round. And without Lima, they won’t even win a game.

The guy they need is Barry Zito. He’s a proven ace, a former Cy Young Award winner, and is about to make too much money to play in Oakland any longer. Paul: call your old boss and get Zito. It doesn’t matter what you have to give up. There’s no single player on this team who brings what he brings to the table. Give up Jason Repko and Hee Seop Choi. Deal Dioner Navarro (though Oakland just shelled out for Jason Kendall). Hell, I’d even give up Cesar Izturis if that’s what it would take, and Izturis is my favorite player on the Dodgers.

DePodesta has already shown he doesn’t care about chemistry or fan favorites. So go make a winner. But stop screwing around with more fifth starters. We already have an Elmer Dessens. We don’t need another one.

Odd coincidence

Here are some strange statistics from last weekend’s series against the Twins:
The Dodgers last eight home runs have all been solo shots. The last dodger to hit a home run with men on base was Hee Seop Choi, whose first-inning homer came with one on.

But those eight homers have also accounted for the Dodgers last eight runs. The last Dodger to drive in a run was Antonio Perez, who singled home Jeff Kent in that same inning.

The Dodgers start a three-game series against Kansas City, which should help them gain some needed momentum as they head into Chicago to take on the best team in baseball at the moment. Anything less than a sweep of the Royals would have to be considered a failure.

Before we get all excited about Hee Seop Choi, let’s not forget that he is still hitting .263, still strikes out as often as he gets a hit, and still is not a great fielder. And his on-base percentage has suffered as he has found his home run stroke. On May 15, Choi had 13 walks to go with his 29 hits, for an on-base percentage over .400. He hasn’t had a base on balls since then, his batting average has fallen 50 points, and his on-base percentage is down to .335.

Mostly, what he has going for him is a great name to chant.

Injury, Prone

Did anybody besides me think Darin Erstad’s open field tackle of Johnny Estrada was stupid?

We can argue all day whether the hit was excessive. Estrada was blocking the front half of the plate, leaving Erstad plenty of room to slide across the back half of the plate without being tagged. But we’re all told that contact is part of the game, and it’s appropriate to bowl over the catcher if he’s blocking the plate.

In going for Estrada, Erstad missed the plate entirely. He went back and touched it with his hand as the ball trickled out of the Estrada’s glove as he lay there in pain.

Erstad is a guy who is oft-injured, and now we have an inkling why. He plays the game without regard for his body, and that means his body sometimes breaks down. Depending on the severity of the injury to Estrada, I full expect that the annoyed Braves team will be taking aim at him in tonight’s game.

He should tighten his chin strap before going up to the plate.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers feasted on another mediocre team, the Detroit Tigers. Tiger starter Jeremy Bonderman gives up home runs on the road that would be harmless flyouts at spacious Comerica Park, so it’s no surprise that the Dodgers tagged him twice.

Two of the three Tiger runs were unearned, following infield errors by Antonio Perez and Jeff Kent. Perez atoned for the error later in the game with a sparkling defensive play, throwing out a runner on a ball hit deep down the third base line. And Kent has been quite surprisingly good at second base all year.

Fox showed an interesting stat last night—Perez is the best hitter in the league with two strikes. He has also shown a remarkable propensity for getting on base. It’s too early to decide whether he’s the real deal, but if he blossoms the way the Dodgers hope, I can see him as the team’s leadoff hitter and base stealer. Dropping Cesar Izturis to second exploits his ability as a situational hitter and minimizes the fact that he doesn’t walk enough or steal enough bases.

A Win is a Win

Forget the fact that they were playing the lowly Brewers, a 4.72 team that is performing above expectations this year.

Forget the fact that they again fell behind 3-0. Forget the fact that the pitching staff gave up two hits to Chad Moeller, who prior to last night’s game was 6-for-60.

Forget the fact that the Brewers starter was not the same old Sheets. Big Ben has lost his last five starts, including twice to the Houston Astros, though to be fair, his teammates haven’t given him much run support.

And forget the fact that Eric Gagne again failed to inspire confidence, turning what should have been a routine save into a 27-pitch adventure. He gave up a run, a single, two walks, and two wild pitches, one of which allowed a run to score. He has still converted 112 of the last 114 save chances, but they’re coming a little harder. His E.R.A. this year is 4.32.

No, forget all those facts, and while you’re at it, forget the 12-2 start. The Dodgers are 15-24 since then, and they are not a very good team right now. Any win must be considered a positive sign. Until the team gets its rotation in order—the rookie D.J. Houlton gets the nod on Saturday after Wilson Alvarez complained of shoulder tendinitis—anything that keeps the team above .500 is welcome.

Houlton becomes the ninth man to start a game for the Dodgers, joining Jeff Weaver, Brad Penny, Derek Lowe, Odalis Perez, Elmer Dessens, Scott Erickson, Derek Thompson, and Alvarez. That octet has combined for a 17-22 record and a 4.67 ERA. It would be hard for Houlton, who has an ERA of 7.41 as a reliever, to do worse.

Extra Innings

In yesterday’s L.A. Times, Bill Shaikin criticized Wilson Alvarez for only going five innings in his latest poor outing. A few paragraphs later, he lauded Greg Maddux for a strong performance in which he pitched all of six innings. That’s a difference of just one inning, yet one pitcher was excellent and the other was supposedly atrocious?

The difference is that Alvarez gives up homer after homer, as does the guy who came in to replace him, Scott Erickson. In Monday’s game, Alvarez allowed two runs in the first, then threw two scoreless innings, and gave up two more in the fourth. The Dodgers halved the lead with two runs of their own in the bottom half of the fourth.

At that point, you’d think Jim Tracy would have seen enough of Alvarez. But he wants so much for somebody to succeed that he left the hefty lefty in for another inning, and Alvarez promptly gave up another homer. Erickson relieved him and did not give up another run, but the Dodger comeback stalled.

Since neither Alvarez nor Erickson seem capable of delivering a quality start, and since there isn’t another option on the horizon—even when Odalis Perez returns, the fifth starter spot remains empty—I say why not use the two in tandem. Tell them both that they will be pitching that day, and have them each go three innings—longer if they pitch well.

The fact that Alvarez is a lefty and Erickson is a righty will prevent opponents from stacking their lineups with one-sided hitters. If the Dodgers are winning after six (do I dare to hope with these guys pitching?) bring in Sanchez for the seventh, Brazoban for the eighth, and Gagne for the ninth, just like the textbook says. If they’re losing (As has lately been the case), divide up the last three among Carrara, Wunsch, Houlton, Carlyle, Dessens, Schmoll, Dreifort, and anybody else taking up roster spots.

Better yet, let J.D. Drew pitch. He’s so good at striking out these days that he might know something about getting opposing players to do the same.

Field of Dreams

I ventured into enemy territory over the weekend. . . and I was delighted. Not by the San Francisco Giants, who fumbled away a winnable game to the division-leading Padres. But by the stadium in which they play. Formerly called PacBell Park, it’s now known as SBC Park, as a result of a corporate merger of phone companies. But bby any name, the park is spectacular. It may be the best in baseball.

The location, overlooking San Francisco Bay, is nothing short of magnificent. With Barry Bonds out of the lineup, few kayakers hang out in the water outside the stadium hoping for a home run ball to land in the drink. Bt the marvelous view is available for the paying customers all game long. The vista is actually better as the seat price goes down: from the upper deck, you take in a panoramic view of the entire bya that’s unavailable to the swells in the box seats.

The park is neatly cleft in two. The north side is geared toward those arriving by public transportation, with bars and restaurants lining the street facing the park. The south side is for drivers, lined with parking lots and people tailgating. The $25 parking fee is designed to discourage driving, but it hasn’t done much good. The lots did not seem to be suffering for customers on Saturday, a sellout.

Fans can also arrive by boat—a ferry drops them off on the plaza beyond the outfield. There’s even free parking for bicycles. From there, even those without a game ticket can watch the game from a viewing area at field level just behind the right field warning track. There’s a time limit when it gets crowded, but not if it’s not.

Inside the park, the sight lines are all good, and the seats are comfortable. There are even cupholders in the cheap seats, though they are angled such that you spill the top eighth of your beer if you put a full cup in them. A foghorn goes off and blowholes spout streams of water whenever the home team hits a roundtripper.

Then there’s the food. San Francisco is a food capital, and the food available here reflects it. Los Angeles and New York could learn something. Those cities also consider themselves food destinations, but the concessions at the four stadiums in those two cities are all dreadful.

At SBC, the garlic fries get all the ink, but they’re just an appetizer for your choice of cheese steaks, bratwursts, turkey burgers, garden burgers, Italian sausages, Louisiana red hots, or clam chowder in a sourdough breadbowl. Finish it all of not with a plain old ice cream in a helmet cup, but a Ghirardelli hot fudge sundae.

One curiosity: Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown never played a game for the Giants, but it is apparently his glove that is reproduced in larger-than-life fashion atop the left field bleachers. Or maybe the old-school glove belongs to Homer Simpson Alexander.

A Rule Change to End No-Win Situation

If you need more evidence of why the rules for which pitcher gets the victory, look no further than last night’s Dodger game. Starter Brad Penny pitched a gem, holding San Francisco scoreless for seven innings before allowing a run in the eighth and giving way to the usually reliable Yhency Brazoban. The bullpen was due to blow a lead at some point, and last night was the first time in a long time.

Brazoban promptly gave back another run credited to Penny and one of his own to turn a 3-0 lead into a tie, and making it impossible for Penny to get a decision. Then, in the top of the ninth, the Dodgers scored three times to re-take the lead, and they held on for a 6-4 victory.

Eric Gagne got a save for getting three outs before giving up three runs (he gave up one, and faced the tying run at the plate). Brazoban, the ineffective reliever, got the win, even though he didn’t do his job of protecting a lead. And Penny got nothing except the heartfelt thanks of his teammates, who were sorely in need of a win after dropping the first two games of the series.

So let’s get this straight: Penny, who was the best Dodger pitcher of the night, got nothing while the other two guys padded their stats! Something’s wrong in Denmark.
With the number of games being decided in the late innings, baseball needs to readjust its rules so that the victory goes to the pitcher who does the best job, not the one who comes in at the most fortuitous point in the game.

Currently, a pitcher gets a win if his team takes a lead that it never relinquishes while he is in the game. That makes sense in lopsided games where the outcome is never in question. But in back and forth games or games that are tied for a long time, there are no shortage of injustices.

Let’s say Derek Lowe and Shawn Estes both pitch shutouts in tonight’s game, leaving the score tied at 0-0 in the 10th. Then both pitchers give way to relievers; Mike Koplove pitches a scoreless top half, but Giovanni Carrara gives up the winning run in the bottom half. Carrara rightly gets the loss, but does Koplove merit a victory? Hell no. He did for only one inning what Estes did nine times. But under the current rules, the win goes to Koplove.

There’s precedent for changing the rules. Currently, the starting pitcher cannot earn the victory if he does not last five innings (even if he gets hurt). In that circumstance, the official scorer decides who gets the victory, basing his choice on the pitcher who performed most effectively in relief.

I say change the rule to let the official scorer decide every win and loss. Most of the time, the choice will be easy—a starter will build a lead and his bullpen will protect it, and the scorer won’t have to make a tough decision. In last night’s game, Penny pitched most effectively, and deserved the victory. It would be foolish to argue that either of the two relievers merited a w.

There will of course be occasions where the choice is more difficult—for example, Erickson, Alvarez, and Houlton each pitch three innings and give up three runs apiece, yet the Dodgers win 10-9. But I much prefer the decision be in the hands of somebody who is paid to watch the entire game than it be decided by some arbitrary rules that don’t apply in all situations.

If You Don't Have Something Nice to Say. . .

Yesterday’s Dodger game was too disgusting to write about. How do you give up 10 runs to the Giants, a little league team? And how do you not score more than two runs against Bret Tomko?

Since I have nothing nice to say about the Dodgers, let’s talk about Derek Jeter instead. The catch he made in last night’s game against Detroit was simply amazing, not only reeling in a ball with his back 180 degrees away from the plate, but tackling rookie second-baseman Robinson Cano, who was in his way.

Word to Cano: When the team captain and future Hall of Famer is chasing after a ball, GET OUT OF THE WAY. Jeter is worth $20 million a year; you’re worth $20,000 a month. If the ball falls for a hit, it’s not the end of the world. But if you bang up the franchise, you’ll be on the next Irabu out of town.

Jeter continues to astound. Even those who are not Yankee fans can recall half a dozen plays from his highlight reel. The relay from left that nailed Timo Perez at the plate in the 2000 World Series. The catch against Oakland in the playoffs where he fell into the let-field stands to catch a ball. The dive into the stands against Boston to prevent the winning run from scoring. The grounder deep in the hole that he fields, then jumps and pivots in the air to make the throw to first, which he has done so often that people now expect other shortstops to emulate it. And of course the Giambi flip.

Add this latest catch to his long list of highlights. And start a list of NFL highlights for the Yankee shortstop. This catch was as good as anything Jerry Rice or Randy Moss has ever done.

Jeter’s stellar defense is made all the more impressive by the cast of designated hitters that surround him. The Yankees could almost start an all–DH lineup with Jason Giambi, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Ruben Sierra, and Tony Womack. Perhaps they can acquire Mike Sweeney from the Royals, who are eager to dump his salary, and Mike Piazza from the Mets. Those guys can stand around while Jeter makes all the plays.

A Too Familiar Ring

Is there anything more tiresome in baseball than a pitching change? The team at bat gets into a flow, the game gets into a flow, and all of a sudden, some sexagenarian starts a slow walk from the dugout to “have a chat” with his pitcher. If I wanted to see an old man “have a chat” with a struggling youngster, I’d watch the Pax Network. This is baseball, not a Quaker Oats commercial.

In the past decade, however, the “call to the bullpen” has become a too-familiar ring. It’s now as much a part of the game as the home run trot or the obligatory salute to God (more on that another day). We can thank Tony LaRussa for this development. LaRussa, a lawyer when he’s not screwing up the flow of a baseball game, discovered some time in the early 90s that you didn’t have to have a decent bullpen if you had enough guys who could get out certain kinds of hitters.

So he packed his pen with lefty and righty specialists and used all of them practically every night. It was a loophole that few managers had taken advantage of up until that point—imagine that! A lawyer taking advantage of a loophole—and it worked, forming a bridge between Oakland starters like Bob Welch and Dave Stewart and closer Dennis Eckersley. In fact, the notion of a “closer” dates to that era. Before Eckersley and LaRussa redefined the reliever’s role, a team’s top reliever often pitched two or maybe three innings in a game.

Because it worked, every team followed the model, and now it is the rare starting pitcher who lasts more than seven innings, and the rare reliever who throws to more than a few batters.

But the effect on the game has been awful. What was once a two and a half hour affair now drags on for three-plus hours, with five-minute lulls in the action every time a new Christian comes in to face the lions. Then there are the “trips to the mound.” Outside of family vacations where you fought with your sister in the back seat about who was over the middle line, I can’t think of a more horrific trip. Their saving grace is that they’re not followed by a new pitcher throwing his 8 warmup tosses before the game can begin again.

In last night’s Dodger game, Felipe Alou used six pitchers, including three in the eighth (one batter each!) and two in the ninth. Jim Tracy, not to be outdone, used five pitchers in eight innings. And they’ll continue to do it because it works. Neither pen gave up a run.

The situation won’t change without unilateral action from higher up. In case anybody’s listening, let me suggest two possible solutions.

1) Limit trips to the mound. Under the current rules, each pitcher is entitled to one visit from the coaching staff, but must be replaced on the second trip. That made sense in the era of starters who went nine innings, and a well-placed word to keep the fastball down might get him through an arduous fifth inning. But these days, a conference on the mound is about as productive as a Congressional hearing.

Instead of two mound trips per pitcher, how about two mound trips per inning (or per game?) This would return some strategy to the game, with managers hoarding their visits like football coaches saving their timeouts until the end of the game.

2) Raise the minimum. Currently, pitchers must face a minimum of one batter. Why not double it to two batters, or raise it to a full inning? That would rid the game of the lefty specialist who can’t get out righties and the left-handed pinch-hitter who can’t hit southpaws. The beautiful thing about baseball is that players must have multiple skills. The designated hitter has allowed fat guys who can hit the tar out of the ball but can’t field to remain in the game. That has created additional scoring, which pleases the offense-happy owners , but it has been an overall scar on the game.

Raising the minimum would create just as much offense as the loathsome DH, but especially so in the late innings. That means fans might stick around until the completion of the game, knowing that it isn’t truly over until it’s over.

NOTES:
What’s the Korean word for Strikeout? According to my Korean-English dictionary, it’s Hee Seop Choi. I’m surprised there isn’t a K somewhere in his name. The Seoul Man with the Olé swing had two more whiffs in last night’s game, giving him a total of 27 for the year. If you’re keeping score, his hit total is still above his strikeout total, 32-27, but it’s a horse race.

The game against the Giants fit the stencil—scratch out a lead, blow it, watch it all come undone in a single inning, bring in relievers to stanch the bleeding, but fail to mount a comeback. But unlike the losses of the past few weeks, last night’s episode came against a bad team. Without Barry Bonds and now Marquis Grissom, San Francisco’s offense is punchless. Yet Jeff Weaver somehow managed to give up home runs to the eight and ninth place hitters (yes, pitcher Jason Schmidt did more damage with the bat than with his arm).

Even Jeff Fassero held the Dodgers scoreless for two innings. Jeff Fassero! He’s older than my dad! Wasn’t Fassero the opposing pitcher during Don Larsen’s perfect game? Weren’t he and Walter Johnson teammates? Didn’t he once strike out the Babe?

On the Road

The Dodgers had an off day yesterday. The team is 23-20, in third place. They begin a road trip against division opponents San Francisco and Arizona.

Much has been written about how L.A. is such a tough place to drive. The traffic is truly horrendous. Some friends recently came out from New York, and though they had been warned, they were still amazed. “Every road is as bad as the Long Island Expressway,” they complained. Welcome to L.A.

But L.A. has New York beat on many other road-related scores. Although the occasional road rage incident captures the headlines, I’ve found that drivers here are actually very polite. They don’t cut you off in traffic, they obey the rules of the road, they make room for you to hang a left out of a driveway, even if it means crossing four lanes of traffic, and they come to a screeching halt to allow pedestrians to cross a busy street.

And you know that guy who hangs out in the left lane, driving 56 miles per hour, causing a two-mile backup behind him? He doesn’t exist in Los Angeles. Angelenos seem to know that the left lane is for speeding and if you’re not going as fast as the car behind you, GET OUT OF THE WAY. Perhaps that’s because there are so few opportunities to reach cruising speed on the congested freeways, but still.

There seems to be a collective acceptance of the hazards of driving, a notion that “we’re all in this together,” like that communal feeling you get when you and 75 other people are trapped together in the same subway car. Drivers here are accustomed to spending countless hours in their cars, so they’ve made them comfortable, with plush upholstery, tricked out sound systems, and speaker phones. The notion of spending an extra minute in traffic just doesn’t bother people that much, so they don’t feel the need to drive aggressively and shave seconds off their commute.

In general, people don’t rush around the way they do on the east coast because they lack that urgency. Not necessarily because they’re “laid back,” but because their daily lives don’t demand it. There’s no 5:15 train out of Penn Station to catch, so there’s no reason to crowd onto that already replete subway train.

The traffic is so terrible that hardly anybody expects you to arrive on time for anything. In the event that people have to arrive somewhere on time, like a job that requires it, or the airport, people generally leave plenty of time rather than try to cut it fine.

The only exception to all this serenity is on the half dozen times a year that it rains. On those days, people lose their minds and start crashing their cars all over the place. You’d think that people who spend so much time in their cars would be better drivers, but the minute the sun disappears, they forget how to drive. To be fair, the roads do become slick when water mixes with all the oil built up over months of sunny weather. But that only applies in the first hour of rain; the numerous accidents that occur the rest of the day are simply the fault of bad driving.

NOTES:
Paul Depodesta was quoted in the L.A. Times as saying he thinks the Dodgers are built to compete against the elite teams in baseball. He flatly rejected the notion that they are a team capable of winning the division but making an early exit in the playoffs.

Has he been watching the games? The Dodgers lost three out of four to the Cardinals, two out of three to the Braves, two out of three to the Marlins, and two out of three to the Angels. The last series they won was on May 6-8, against the Reds. Since the 12-2 start, the team is 11-18.

And they’ve been firing on all cylinders. Gagne is back. The hitters are all hitting better than expected. The bullpen has been lights out. What part of the team does DePodesta to get so much better all of a sudden? The starting rotation? The slide took place before Odalis Perez went on the disabled list. Scott Erickson came to the team with a 7 E.R.A. and he hasn’t done anything to change it. Jeff Weaver was consistently mediocre last year, and he’s been consistently mediocre this year.

DePodesta says maybe the team needs a fifth starter, but he doesn’t intend to make any changes of the magnitude he made last season. Too bad. What the Dodgers need is not a fifth starter; it’s a first starter. Brad Penny and Derek Lowe have been nice additions, but neither is a bona fide ace. Match them up with the number one starters for possible playoff teams and they come up short:

Mark Mulder of the Cardinals, Dontrelle Willis of the Marlins (last week’s win over him notwithstanding), John Smoltz or Tim Hudson of the Braves, Jake Peavy of the Padres (4-0, 2.29 ERA), Jason Schmidt (we’ll see tonight whether he’s returned to 2004 form). Those guys are all capable of giving their teams a 1-0 lead in a playoff series. Can you say the same about Lowe or Penny? Not yet.

An Unfair Advantage

Imagine if a wide receiver were permitted to wear a big pillowy jacket around his torso so he wouldn’t be afraid to get hit going across the middle. Imagine if basketball players were allowed to stop play any time they were too tired to run allthe way down the court on each play..

There would be an outrage. You can’t change the game just because certain players aren’t ready to accept the risks inherent in the game.

But baseball makes this kind of exception for hitters by allowing them to wear body armor to the plate. Hitters like Barry Bonds and Mo Vaughn and countless others now strap huge plastic casts onto the arm facing the pitcher, ensuring that even if they get popped in that arm, it won’t hurt.

I’m all for protecting the players—Kevin Seitzer’s faceguard, ankle and shin guards for batters who consistently foul balls off their feet, and the like—but the body armor has to go. It removes the hitter’s healthy fear of a ball hurtled at them at 100 miles per hour, and allows him to dig in at the plate. I’m surprised that hitters who use these elbow guards haven’t dipped their fortified arms into oncoming pitches as a cheap way of getting on base.

It’s probably folly to think baseball will outlaw these prosthetics any time soon. Baseball is in love with offense, and the guards give hitters just one more advantage. The also keep the big-money sluggers in the lineup longer, allowing them to return to action soon after injuring an arm.

NOTES
There’s no indication that Jim Tracy (or anybody else, for that matter) reads these pages, but he’s certainly noticing the same run production statistics I see. He moved J.D. Drew out of the three hole, as I suggested in my post last week, and it paid dividends immediately in the Dodgers’ win over Los Anaheim. I still don’t like a lineup that lines up three lefty hitters at the top of the order in the switch-hitting Izturis, Drew, and Choi—I’d rather see Kent in the middle of all those lefties—but Tracy has shown a willingness to fiddle in hopes of getting more runs out of a lineup that’s hitting well, just not all at the same time.

The Dodgers showed their formula for winning yesterday—good starting pitching, timely hitting, and a lights-out bullpen. For the first time, we got to see what the combo of Yhency Brazoban and Eric Gagne looks like, and it’s impressive. The closer and the heir apparent shut down the Angels with barely a whimper. It’s not time to get too excited, since the Angels simply aren’t the same team with Vlad out of the lineup. But the Dodgers can take heart in the notion that their opponents will only have seven innings in which to score in a typical game.

Sounds of Interleague

INTERLEAGUE BASEBALL BRINGS A DIFFERENT STYLE OF PLAY TO AN AUDIENCE UNACCUSTOMED TO SEEING IT
Hoowwee Becky Jane. I sure do love me that newfangled brand o baseball they play over thar in the Merican league. They got this thing called the Dedicate Hitter. Why he don't even go out and play ball half the game. He just sits on a bench and chews his tobacco between innings.

"Why that sounds like you, Cletus."

"I don't reckon he can whittle like me, though."


"Dude, check it out. There's this team playing against the Indians tonight and they're like SO old school. They wear these totally retro high socks--they are so totally metrosexual. And here's the best part. They let the pitcher hit. I mean how unbelievable is that?


INTERLEAGUE MATCHES UP TRADITIONAL RIVALS
"Hey Bob, those rat bastards from Detroit are coming to town to take on our beloved Diamondbacks. Want to go to the game?"

"Of course. I've already got my face painted, and I've been working on my Tigers Suck chant. Listen: Tigers Suck. Tigers Suck."

"That's fantastic. Where did you learn it?"

"From some friends in Detroit."


"Senator Nelson, is there any chance I might use the luxury box at RFK this weekend?"

"This weekend? Heavens no. Our traditional rival, the Toronto Blue Jays are coming to town. I wouldn't miss it for the world. It's the biggest party in all of Washington."


"Hey Gary, do you want to go see the Twins game tonight. The Brewers are in town for another old-fashioned midwest barn burner. I gotta tell you, I can't stand those Milwaukeeites. They walk around like they're the most important city in the midwest that starts with M. They act like they've never even heard of Moline."

"Man, I can't stand those bastards in San Diego. One day of rain and they start complaining about how the sky is falling. Get them up here to Seattle for a week and you'd think they'd melt. I hope the Mariners kick their sunburned asses.

As Predicted

Did I say the Dodgers were going to beat Dontrelle Willis? I confess I did.

Does it mean they're out of their funk? Hardly. They were simpy due to win a game and he was due to lose one. The law of averages caught up with everybody Tuesday night.

But by Wednesday, the world was set right on its axis. Jeff Weave pitched five good innings and Cesar Ituris got his customary two hits, but it al came crashing down in a big middle inning. It's getting so you don't even have to watch the games to know how they will turn out.

One positive sign is that JD Drew may be coming out of his slump. In the Tuesday night game, he twice struck out looking on 3-2 counts, hoping to get a walk. If I may be so bold, JD, SWING THE BAT! You're hitting in the third spot in the order. You're being paid to drive in runs, not walk. When there are runners on second and third, your job is to drive them home. Hit the ball to the outfield somewhere. Even if you make an out, you will probably drive home a run and your precious on base average will not suffer.

NOTES
Scott Erickson avoids waivers for one more week, taking the spot of Odalis Perez, whose shoulder isn't right.

Time to Panic? No. Time to Shuffle? Yes

What happens when a good team playing badly runs into a better team playing worse? In the case of the Dodgers and Marlins, the answer is the better team wins. Florida used good pitching and timely hitting to ease to a 6-2 victory at Dodger Stadium last night.

Despite going up against fifth starter Brian Moehler, Los Angeles was never in the game, falling behind 2-0 before they even came to the plate. When the team in blue did bat, they left eight runners on base, including four in scoring position with two outs.

It’s not as if the team isn’t hitting (except for Jeff Kent, who has had one hit in the past week). They pounded out 10 hits in last night’s game; five of the eight starters have averages over .300. But they’re not hitting when it counts.

The temptation to panic is strong, as the team slides from first to second to third place. But they’re only a game and a half out of first, with a whole lot of season left. San Diego has been reeling off victories like singles at a strip bar; they will cool down soon. Arizona has been taking advantage of the soft underbelly of their schedule, beating up on teams like San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Colorado.

That said, the Dodgers will probably go out and hang an L on Dontrelle Willis tonight. That’s just how baseball is. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, you come out and beat a tough team and a winning streak is born.

NOTES
Three Dodgers are among the top 10 national leaguers in runs scored: Milton (Game Time) Bradley, with 29; Jeff (Dirk Diggler) Kent, with 28) and Little Cesar Izturis, with 26. All three are on pace to score 100 runs this year.

But the fact that Izturis, the guy you pay to get on, get over, and get in, hasn’t scored more often suggests a lack of production in the second and third spots in the order. Seoul Man Choi has 18 RBIs; Jesus Devotee Drew has 15, the same number as Izturis, and fewer than Bradley, Kent, and Jason Phillips.

It may be time to reshuffle the lineup a bit. I’d move Kent and his .390 OBP to the second spot and Milton Bradley to the third spot. Bradley is quickly becoming the heart of the team, coming up with the big hits in the big spots; third is where you want your best hitter. Choi (or Olmedo Saenz, against lefties) can hit fourth, followed by some combination of Drew, Phillips, Ricky Ledee (Jayson Werth against lefties), and whoever’s playing third.

Jim Tracy is not averse to juggling the lineup. Last year, Adrian Beltre started the season hitting seventh. When it became apparent that he was carrying the team, Tracy slowly moved him up in the order until he was hitting third or fourth pretty much every day.

Taking the Fifth

Now what? Scott Erickson, the Dodgers woeful fifth starter, pitched well enough to merit another audition for the role with his two-run, six-inning outing against the Braves yesterday. Uncharacteristically, it was the bullpen that blew the game. Then again, if the Dodgers had scored a run in the bottom half of the sixth, when they loaded the bases, Erickson might have gotten a win.

By the way, Cesar Izturis, who never walks, needs to swing the bat in that spot. Two on and two out with Oscar Robles hitting behind you, if there’s a pitch near the strike zone, you have to try and put it in play. I know Izturis is a leadoff hitter, and not called upon to drive in runs, and I know patience is the mantra of all big league hitters. But this ies exactly why on base percentage is not the be-all statistic that DePodesta and Beane claim it is.

Under their system, Izturis did a positive thing by taking a walk and loading the bases. But by not getting a hit, he didn’t drive in any runs. Granted, we already have a statistic for driving in runs, but until on-base percentage gives higher credit to those who not only reach base but also move runners along or drive them in, it’s a deceptive statistic.

But I digress. The Dodgers won’t need a fifth starter until May 28 because of off days. Erickson is still the likely candidate, but the Dodgers are talking about Duaner Sanchez as a possible fifth starter. That leaves Erickson in limbo, and the Dodgers with a roster problem. Unless Odalis Perez’s shoulder injury is more serious than we know, Erickson will merely be taking up space in the bullpen for the next two weeks. Meanwhile, because the Dodgers are carrying 12 pitchers, the bench is weak.

Jason Grabowski was one of my favorite players last year; he got clutch hits in big games early in the season before Jayson Werth arrived and stole all his playing time. Since then, he has looked lost at the plate, striking out twice as often as he gets a hit. Jason Repko has been an enthusiastic presence in the lineup, but he has struggled against better pitching. Though he’s a rookie, Oscar Robles is no kid who just needs time to mature. He’s 29 years old and has never shown an ability to hit big league pitching outside of spring training.

Olmedo Saenz is terrific, but he’s in the starting lineup so often it’s hard to think of him as a pinch hitter. The same is true of Ricky Ledee. And Paul Bako, hitting .273 in limited situations, is there for his defensive abilities. In fact, the Dodgers five starting pitchers are hitting better overall than Robles, Grabowski, Repko, and Bako. It’s hardly worth pinch-hitting.

Hopefully, the return of Jayson Werth and Antonio Perez, both scheduled for later this month, will improve the situation. Tonight, the Dodgers go against their old teammates Paul LoDuca, Guillermo Mota, and Juan Encarnacion.

Brad Penny gets the start against his old teammates for the first time since the trade; he goes up against Brian Moehler, a 33-year-old righty playing for his fourth team in four years. He hasn’t given up more than two runs in any of his four starts, but has only one victory to show for it. The Marlins just don’t score when he pitches. That’s a good sign for the Dodgers.

Better, Worse, or Just Different?

When Paul DePodesta traded away Paul LoDuca, the heart and soul of last year’s team, the GM said he knew that the Dodgers were a playoff team, but he worried that they wouldn’t be able to go very deep into the playoffs.

Two months later, despite DePodesta’s best intentions, the Dodgers lost meekly to the St. Louis Cardinals, winning one of the four games only because Jose Lima threw the game of his life. Meanwhile, Dave Roberts stole the base that saved the Red Sox season and won a World Series ring.

This past off-season, DePodesta made more moves, jettisoning even more cogs from the 2004 team like Shawn Green, Adrian Beltre, and Alex Cora in favor of J.D. Drew, Jeff Kent, and a parade of horribles at third base. Presumably, the point of any off-season move is to make the team better than they were (unless you’re the GM in Kansas City, where the point is to make the team cheaper to run).

So how have those moves paid off so far? We could sit here and compare batting averages, ERAs, slugging percentages, etc. But the simplest measure of this team’s ability is its won-lost record against the best teams in the league. And the news isn’t pretty.

While the Dodgers have beaten up on some bad teams early this year, they’ve struggled against good ones. A lot of people thought the Giants were the team to beat in this division, but without Barry Bonds, they’re just a .500 club. So the Dodgers’ early season wins against San Francisco weren’t much of a test. Nor were wins over Milwaukee or Colorado.

Meanwhile, the team’s record against suddenly surging Arizona is 2-4; they’re 1-3 against St. Louis, 1-2 versus Atlanta, and 1-2 when they play Washington. The only quality team Los Angeles has beaten more often than not is San Diego, whom the Dodgers swept early in the season.

It’s still May, and a lot can happen. And despite all of DePodesta’s tinkering, the team still seems to have some kind of chemistry that is keeping things together (thank you very much, Jim Tracy, one of the better managers in baseball) . They’re only a game out of first place in a division that must be pretty weak if the Diamondbacks and Padres can compete in it. The Dodgers may even win the NL west again. But it doesn’t look like they have what it takes to go any farther than that.

Baseball, The Greatest Game!

After the Braves and Dodgers traded grand slams in last night’s eighth inning, Vin Scully could barely contain his excitement. And why not. Grand slams by opposing teams in the same inning has only happened four times in the National Leagues since 1900, and you can bet none of those times was as thrilling or as high and low for both teams as last night’s histrionics.

It’s a reminder why baseball is the greatest of all sports. I’ve been a baseball fan for more than 30 years, and I’m sure I’ve never seen two grand slams in the same inning, or if I did, it was in an early inning of a 13-12 slugfest. And if I think I’ve seen a lot of games, think how many Vin Scully has seen. He’s been calling games since the Babe played.

And yet last night Scully and I both saw something we’d never seen before. It’s practically a cliché to say you see something you’ve never seen before every time you watch a baseball game. But it’s a cliché because it’s so often true. And it’s something you certainly can’t say about football, basketball, hockey, or any other sport. Can you imagine how boring basketball or football would be if there were 162 games in their seasons?

Watch the highlights of a basketball game on SportsCenter and you’ll see the exact same scenes repeated ten times. A guy cuts through the lane and lays one up, a guy slams down a dunk, or a guy hits a three. The narration need be little more than “he scores. He scores. He scores.”

Contrast that with a baseball game, where the highlights might be a key single, a diving catch, or a big strikeout in a tough spot. Or a play at the plate where the winning run scores. Or an outfielder turning a home run into an out.

Increasingly, and disturbingly, what we see on SportsCenter are recaps of homeruns. If you want to know where the demand for players on steroids lies, look no further. But home runs are not responsible for every outcome. Last night’s Dodger game was unique because of the opposing grand slams. But it will also be remembered for LaRoche’s inability to make an out on J.D. Drew’s grounder, which extended the inning and allowed Bradley to come to the plate.

The game typified the Dodger season so far. Dodgers scratch out a lead with single runs, then the starter comes unraveled and blows it all in one big inning. But the bullpen shuts it down, and the cardiac kids mount a furious late-inning comeback. The Dodgers may not be the best team in the National League, but oh are they a fun team to watch.

Unraveling

The Dodgers come home with their tails between their legs after getting smoked by the St. Louis Cardinals in three out of four games at Busch Stadium. The 2005 Dodger team bears little resemblance to the one that captured the NL West for the first time in a decade—Cesar Izturis and Milton Bradley are the only remaining everyday players; Odalis Perez and Jeff Weaver are the only holdover starting pitchers.

But this team does have one thing in common with the 2004 team: It can’t beat the Cardinals. In four straight games, St. Louis toyed with the Dodgers, resting a key player in each game, yet still pounding the Dodger pitching staff for 32 runs. From the Dodgers’ perspective, the most disturbing part of the trip was how everything started to unravel all at once. In the opener, Los Angeles hung with St. Louis up until the fifth, when Albert Pujols blew open the game with his second homer of the night.

In game two, the Dodger frittered away a 3-0 lead, then allowed a four-run fifth to put the Cardinals ahead 7-4. They showed resolve by coming back and winning the game, with a six-run inning of their own, but you never had the feeling they were confident about it. In game three, Brad Penny had two outs in the fifth inning of another 3-3 tie, but came unraveled after the opposing pitcher singled to start a six-run outburst.

And in yesterday’s debacle, a bad call by the second base umpire allowed the tying run to score, causing Derek Lowe to come unglued and give up three more runs after that. It was reminiscent of Lowe’s previous start against Cincinnati, in which he held the Reds to one hit over the first five, then self-destructed in the sixth, allowing six runs before being relieved.

I’ve given the Dodgers offense credit for never quitting no matter how far behind they get. But the pitching staff hasn’t shown that kind of grit so far. The minute adversity strikes, the starters seem to implode, turning one- and two-run innings into full-fledged rallies. It’s also becoming apparent that the Dodgers’ comeback-ability may have a lot to do with the fact that they keep falling behind.

The bullpen has shown a great talent in shutting down the opposition after they build a big lead, allowing the Dodgers to mount comebacks. In fact, this is the only part of the team that remains largely intact from last year’s championship club, returning Giovanni Carrara, Duaner Sanchez, Yhency Brazoban, Wilson Alvarez, and Eric Gagne to their accustomed roles. It’s time for the starters to start following their example.

Not-So-Hot Corner

The Dodgers started Olmedo Saenz at third base yesterday, making him the fifth different player to start at the hot corner, and the third in three days (journeyman Mike Edwards and utilityman Oscar Robles handled the job the previous two days). Edwards gets the start today.

When you have that many guys at one position, you really have none. Even Jose Valentin, who won the job out of spring training, is more of a shortstop by trade. Now that he’s injured, the Dodgers again have to address a situation that they never really dealt with over the off-season when they let Adrian Beltre go.

Beltre has been something of a disappointment in Seattle, where he has been hitting more like the Beltre of 1998-2003 than the MVP candidate he was in 2004. Paul DePodesta has to happy that he didn’t commit $65 million on the basis of one season.

But the Dodger rotation is full of sinkerball specialists who benefit from a tight infield, something the Dodgers had in Beltre, Izturis, Alex Cora, and Shawn Green. Only Izturis remains from that foursome. Jeff Kent has been better than expected, but the collection of players who patrol first and third have been iffy.

Placido Polanco of the Phillies is being talked about as a possible replacement until Valentin returns. Polanco has a decent glove, though he’s more of a second baseman than a third baseman. He’s a career .293 hitter, with not a whole lot of pop (51 career HR). To get him, the Dodgers will have to give up prospects, even though Polanco is a man without a job in Philadelphia at the moment.

I don’t see giving up future value for a player who isn’t a significant upgrade over Antonio Perez, who is getting a crash course in third base . Perez is reportedly reluctant to move from his preferred position of second base. That’s foolish. Jeff Kent isn’t going anywhere for the next two years. But third is a revolving door. Perez has an opportunity to crack the big league roster at third; if he performs well, he could become a fixture there.

SECOND-GUESSING AT THIRD
You have to wonder why the Dodgers fell in love with Jose Valentin. He’s never really been a third baseman over his career, and he’s averaged over 100 striekouts over his 11 full years in the big leagues. His lifetime batting average is .243. The Dodgers signed him to a one year $3.5 million deal.

For less money (one year, $2.15 million), DePodesta could have inked Joe Randa, a lifetime .286 hitter with a higher on base percentage than Valentin’s (.342 to .322) who has averaged fewer than 65 strikeouts a year. Cincinnati signed Randa, and he hs played a solid third base for them.

Randa also has a great nickname, Joker, for the way the sides of his mouth naturally curl up at the edges. The only interesting thing about Valentin’s face is his pornstar mustache. He and Jeff Kent could make a movie together. What should the title be?

a) Midnight Dodger Blue
b) Getttin’ to Third Base
c) Goin’ Deep
d) __________________(write in)

Show Me

The Dodgers showed me something yesterday. They showed me that they may be able to hang with the elite teams in baseball. The Cardinals, who humbled them in the playoffs last year, have the same record as the Dodgers, but going into this series, they seemed the stronger team.

Their front four of Mark Mulder, Matt Morris, Jason Marquis, and Chris Carpenter appeared superior to the Dodgers’ rotation of Penny, Lowe, Weaver, and Perez. And the middle of their lineup--Walker, Pujols, Rolen, and Edmonds—inspires much more fear than any four hitters the Dodgers can send to the plate.

What these off the cuff comparisons fail to account for is the bullpen. Even without Eric Gagne, the Dodgers’ bullpen has been practically flawless, never giving up a lead after the eighth, and picking up the slack when the starters (especially Scott Erickson, who again failed to get out of the fifth yesterday) don’t have it. The Cardinal bullpen, on the other hand, seems to be reeling from the loss of Jason Isringhausen. And luckily for the Dodgers, it was journeyman Kevin Jarvis’s turn to pitch.

I’m not sure why you’d sign a guy with a 5.97 career ERA; I’m even less sure why you’d bring him in to relieve Morris, who admittedly was struggling, but probably could have held on to a 7-4 lead for one more inning.

But Tony LaRussa loves to make pitching changes, especially those in the middle of an inning, necessitating a boring conference on the mound and a lengthy commercial break. You’d think the guy had stock in AFLAC. LaRussa used five pitchers yesterday, and has called on the bullpen 91 times in 32 games.

Hee Seop Choi also showed me something. He showed me he’s been working on his defense—he made several sparkling plays at first base yesterday to cut down big innings. He reminded me that he’s a huge physical specimen, getting the best of a collision with the equally Bunyanesque Scott Rolen. Rolen had to leave the game, while Choi hit the three-run homer that capped the Dodgers’ six-run sixth (there are those sixes again when Scott Erickson starts).

The Dodgers also showed once again why they are a fun team to root for. They are never out of it. Jim Tracy has them truly believing that no deficit is insurmountable. After blowing a three-run lead and then falling behind 7-3 in a hurry, most teams would have quit. But the Dodgers came back immediately. Jeff Kent banged a homer to lead things off, and the scoring was just getting started.

And Yhency Brazoban showed me that he is the goods. He made Jim Edmonds look silly in the ninth inning, and whiffed Reggie Sanders, who had hit two homers off Erickson. With Brazoban closing games, the Dodgers have hardly missed Gagne. It’s hard to think of this bullpen getting even better, but moving Brazoban to the eighth and Gagne to the ninth will give the Dodgers a 1-2 punch reminiscent of the 1996 Yankees (Rivera to Wetteland) or the 2002 Angels (Rodriguez to Percival).


NOTES
In talking about J.D. Drew’s fine catch in right field, Steve Lyons, commentating for Fox Sports, showed that his Psycho nickname (now there’s a nickname!) is not that literal. Lyons said something I have believed for a long time: the only time an outfielder should slide to make a catch is to avoid a collision. These days, you see centerfielders routinely make sliding catches with nobody else around.

That’s the wrong approach. Sliding slows you down. That’s why you should never slide into first base; you can run faster. Same for the outfield. If you run, you make that catch easily. But if you slide, you get on SportsCenter. . . if you make the catch. If you miss, there’s a good chance the ball bounces over your head, since you are so much lower to the ground. Sliding makes sense to slow down when you’re about to hit a wall, like Drew was yesterday. But not in center.

Eight Out of Nine Ain't Bad

The Dodgers continued their winning ways yesterday with an impressive shutout of eight of the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium. Mike Edwards and Jason Phillips both hustled out of the box to beat the relays on double play grounders and keep innings alive; the Dodgers capitalized by getting timely hits to drive in single runs in the fifth and eighth innings.

Odalis Perez was masterful, scattering six hits over his six innings of work. He danced around trouble in the second, third, and sixth innings, putting runners on base, but bore down and prevented them from scoring. The bullpen did its usual scoreless outing.

Unfortunately, Albert Pujols was the ninth St. Louis player in the lineup, and he single-handedly sent Los Angeles to a depressing defeat. He homered twice off Perez, driving in all four Cardinal runs. His first-inning solo shot put St. Louis up 1-0, before the Dodgers scraped together a run in the fifth to tie the game. But with runners on first and third in the Cardinal half of the inning, Pujols fouled off several tough pitches before crushing a 3-2 pitch into the centerfield stands.

It’s official: Odalis Perez can’t get this guy out. Pujols was 2-2 with a walk and four RBIs against the Dodger lefty; in his career, he’s 8-for-12 when Perez pitches. Those aren’t Ruthian stats; they’re cause for a March of Dimes event. It’s a mystery why Perez would ever give him anything to hit. He should show Pujols more balls than a New Orleans cotillion season.

It sounds like a classic second-guess, but I would have walked Pujols in the fifth inning last night. The go-ahead run was already on third, and while first base wasn’t open, second base was. Scott Rolen, who hits behind Pujols, has struggled all season, and is 5-for-24 in May. The slump is even affecting his gold glove defense: he made two errors last night. He had already fouled out twice against Perez, and after the Pujols homer, Rolen grounded weakly to short.

Oh, by the way, Mark Mulder struck out 12. He was great. I’ll bet Billy Beane wishes he had gotten more for this ace lefty.

NOTES
After designating Norihiro Nakamura for assignment, the Dodgers purchased the contract of Oscar Robles, who is playing in a Mexican league. But because Robles couldn’t get to St. Louis in time for the game, the Dodgers were a player short on the bench last night (Which was already shortened by J.D. Drew’s illness). As result, Jim Tracy had no right handed bats on the bench to pinch hit, and had to use the lefties Jason Grabowski and Hee Seop Choi in key pinch-hitting situations that called for a right-handed bat. Both whiffed.

Nakamura did not impress in his short stint with Los Angeles, and he probably would have struck out too had he been called on to pinch hit. But the Dodgers got caught with their pants down. They knew they were facing the lefty Mulder last night; they could have waited one more day before making the roster move. Or they could have told Robles to get to St. Louis a day earlier before releasing Nakamura.

Alternatively, Tracy could have called on pitcher Jeff Weaver, who has pinch-run in the past. Weaver, who is hitting .278, and had a key double in Sunday’s win over Cincinnati, has as many hits against lefties (1) as Choi and Grabowski combined. Jayson Werth can’t get back soon enough.

Good Start for a Hard Trip

The Dodgers had a pretty much perfect day yesterday. No, Jeff Weaver did not hold the woeful Cincinnati Reds hitless, or even scoreless. He didn’t go nine innings, and he wasn’t ever dominating. At times, you felt like the whole game could implode on him the way it did to Derek Lowe on Saturday.

But the Dodgers did what they had to do. Weaver allowed home runs with the bases empty, and bore down when runners were on. Luckily, he was facing a team that leads the major leagues in strikeouts. And he contributed to his own cause, driving in the first run with a gap double.

Jason Phillips, who scored that run, provided all the necessary offense with a grand slam that turned the game (and the series) around. Take away Phillips’ hit and the Dodgers maybe go on to lose two out of three after bashing the brains out of the Reds on Friday night. Then we’re talking about how the team has lost its focus, going 6-10 since opening 12-2.

But all is right in Dodgerland because they beat a team they were supposed to beat, opening their most difficult road trip of the year by taking two out of three. Weaver pitched into the seventh, and the bullpen did its job. Even Sunday Night Baseball announcers Joe Morgan and Jon Miller, who usually find some inanity to beat to death, did little to upset an extremely pleasant evening.

Now if they can just get rid of that annoying 7th-inning stretch “Sound Check.” I assume it’s intended to win a crossover audience of music fans, but honestly I can’t fathom why somebody who likes music would sit around for six and a half innings of baseball waiting to see an interview with a musician. I certainly wouldn’t watch two and a half hours of MTV to see a two-minute feature on Cesar Izturis.

Notes
Hee Seop Choi’s failure to field a hot grounder to first on Saturday opened the floodgates of Cincinnati’s six-run sixth inning. The official scorer called it a hit, but a good first baseman has to come up with that play. Choi is finally hitting, but he’s a liability in the field. Compare that with Olmedo Saenz’s performance at first last night, stabbing a line drive and turning a nifty 3-6-3 double play in the third.

What's in a Name

Remember the good old days, when players had nicknames that meant something? Ron Cey was known as the Penguin for the way he walked. Graig Nettles was Puff because his sparkling defensive play had him disappearing in a puff of smoke. Dick Tidrow was known as “Dirt” for his habit of diving in the dirt for balls during pre-game warm-ups.

Today, there’s hardly a Babe, a Lefty, or a Sparky in the bunch. These days, what passes for a nickname is a shortening or lengthening of a first or last name (e.g. Sheff for Gary Sheffield, Eck for Dennis Eckersley, Ersty for Darin Erstad) that could have been made up by someone who has never met the player (and perhaps was). Even Randy Johnson’s moniker, The Big Unit, could have been invented by anybody who read the 6’10” on his bubblegum card.

Even worse are the initials that announcers use to persuade the audience of their bosom-buddy closeness with players. The commentators for the Los Angeles Angels of the 91 freeway are the most heinous practitioners of this travesty. They use initials in combinations never used before: G.A. for Garret Anderson, A.K. for Adam Kennedy, and just plain Q for Robb Quinlan. It’s a wonder they don’t refer to catcher Bengie Molina as B.M.

When Troy Glaus was with the team, they had the annoying habit of referring to him, Anderson, and Vladimir Guerrero as The G-Force because all three had Gs in their name. What insight! Thankfully, Glaus has taken the Superfriends name with him to Arizona, where Luis Gonzalez and Shawn Green fill out the other two spots. At least all three LAST names start with G.

But the most moronic trend in sports (not just baseball) has to be the first initial of first name, first syllable of last name nickname. Now that Jennifer Lopez has pleaded with the media to call her Jenny from the block and to forget about J-Lo, can we please stop with A-Rod, I-Rod, H-Rod (remember Henry Rodriguez?) D-Lowe, T-Long, D-Fish, et al.? (I’ll make an exception for K-Rod (Francisco Rodriguez, since that at least invokes his ability to strike out opposing batters).

These nicknames are maddening because they show even less imagination than initials. Everywhere outside Anaheim and wherever R.A. Dickey and U.L Washington were from, use of initials rather than a name usually indicates a double-entendre of some sort, a reference to some other common usage of those initials. JR for junior, JP for justice of the peace, DA for District attorney, JD for juvenile delinquent, OJ for orange juice, AC for air conditioning.

For similar reasons, players with the last name Waters are usually nicknamed Muddy, while those surnamed Rhodes are often known as Dusty. It hardly qualifies for a seat at the Algonquin Round Table, but at least it shows a glimmer of thought.

The A-Rod type nickname, on the other hand, demonstrates no imagination, no sports knowledge, merely an ability to do the Anna Anna Bobanna Banana Nanna Fofanna song with a player’s name. With the exception of K-Mart, the only discerning it requires is an ear to prevent you from actually uttering even stupider possible nicknames like D-Jet, M-Teja, J-Gia, B-Bon, A-Puj, or V-Guer.

If we can’t come up with a better nickname for a player than T-Helt, maybe we should just refer to him by his name.

A Yankee Cap?

Shh! If you listen intently, you can hear the sound of thousands of frontrunners slinking off the Yankee bandwagon. Fans who couldn’t tell the difference between Charlie Hayes and Von Hayes, or who think Paul O’Neill was Secretary of the Treasury, are looking around for something else to do this summer beside take up the good seats at Yankee Stadium.

And if you have really good ears, you can hear the whinings of Yankee fans who’ve never known adversity: Boo hoo!, four years without a World Series ring!. Some of them are even starting to wonder whether a salary cap might save them from themselves and their spendthrift owner.

But before anybody gets too excited about the Yankees’ misfortunes, let me remind fans in Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, and Kansas City why a salary cap is not the answer to your problems.

The lack of a salary cap is not what made the Yankees world champions four out of five years from 1996-2000. It’s what has made them chumps from 2002-2005. Over their history, the Yankees have shown time and again that spending lavishly on salaries does not a championship make.

The Yankees spent grossly on free agents in the 1980s and didn’t win the World Series once. They didn’t make the playoffs after 1981, though had the three-division system been in effect, they would have won the wild card in 1984, 1985 and 1986.

The Yankee championship teams were built while George Steinbrenner was banned from baseball, and forbidden from trading away young stars like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Bernie Williams. Steinbrenner had to be physically restrained from dealing Rivera, the greatest closer of all time in my opinion, after he blew the 1997 ALDS against Cleveland.

Those teams were home grown, with role players added here and there as complements. They won through smart management, trades that worked out, a lack of injuries, and timely hitting. The Yankees of the late 1990s thrived despite foolish free agent signings like Jose Canseco, Glenallen Hill, Hideki Irabu, and Henry Rodriguez. Even Roger Clemens was an expensive mistake for most of the 1999 season (though he proved worthwhile in 2000).

Since then, the Yankees have grown bloated, patching large holes with large contracts: Giambi, Sheffield, Rodriguez, Johnson, Brown, the list goes on and on. They’ve shown once again that the most expensive team is not necessarily the best team. In fact, the more they spend, the worse they perform.

If fiscal restraint were imposed on the Yankees, they might realize that their farm system is a place where they can spend unrestricted dollars, and a way for them to get an edge over teams that can’t afford a scout in every two-oxen town in the Dominican Republic. They might keep their minor league talent and build a winner from within the way they did in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, a salary cap wouldn’t make the inept teams any smarter. Minnesota, Oakland, and Florida have all shown an ability to make the playoffs without a high payroll. The fact that they can do it and other teams can’t is a testament to their baseball acumen (and the lack of it in other small market teams). A salary cap would only limit player salaries artificially.

Besides, if the Yankees were to start sucking the way they did in the late 1980s, what joy would there be left for the mismanaged teams? They’ll still be cellar dwellers, but they won’t have the Yankees to beat up on any more. It’s no fun to beat up on Goliath if he has his hands tied behind his back. He’s not Goliath any more.

It takes more than money to win a championship. The Orioles, Dodgers, and Mets of proved that in the late 1990s, and the Yankees are proving it again. You need solid pitching, good defense, a little bit of luck. Some might argue that you need a bunch of guys who like to play together (a.k.a. the dreaded chemistry), though the Yankees of the 1970s hated each other, as did Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson in 2001.

The two Florida Marlins championship teams are an object lesson for building a winner. The first team was bought, and quickly sold as soon as the rings were distributed. The second team was built from the ground up, with quality pitching, speed, and defense, and a group of guys who like playing together. Their young pitchers seem poised to keep them in contention for several more years.

But a salary cap isn’t going to make Florida any more able to re-sign those pitchers when they become free agents. They’ll just be distributed about the league at artificially low rates. And ticket prices won’t go down.

Barry’s Deals with the Devil

Get out your tinfoil hats, boys and girls. It’s time for Conspiracy Theory Hour.

In today’s episode, a skinny boy named Barry becomes rich and famous by hitting singles and doubles and tracking down long fly balls hit to left field (not center, left). But Barry wants badly to hit those big homers his dad hit.

Then one day, he meets a leprechaun who gives Barry a magic potion, called the cream, to rub on his body. The cream gives Barry incredible strength, and he starts hitting prodigious home runs. Opposing pitchers refuse to play ball with him, and Barry starts losing friends as he starts piling up homers. Other boys start taking the magic potion, and they too start hitting big home runs. But none so big and prodigious as Barry’s.

One day, a prosecutor starts to notice that Barry’s hat size has increased with the length of his majestic home runs. He compares pictures of Barry’s Mr. Potato-head noggin with photos from him as a boy when he used to dress up as a pirate. He starts an investigation.

Barry protests he has done nothing illegal. He only used a magic potion. He returns to the game he loves best and comes close to breaking the all-time record for home runs.

About the same time, the prosecutor turns over a mushroom and finds the leprechaun. The leprechaun tells the prosecutor that he has been giving Barry the magic potion, and that it contains illegal ingredients. The prosecutor thanks the leprechaun and starts legal proceedings against Barry and dozens of other ballplayers who have been taking the magic potion.

Barry is distraught. He didn’t think he was cheating, and he so badly wants to be the home run king. But the prosecutor says he has Barry dead to rights.

So Barry makes another deal. The prosecutor tells Barry he’ll call off the investigation if Barry agrees to give up his bat and glove and never ever play baseball again.

“But what about the home run record?” Barry asks.

“You leave the home run record alone, and I won’t throw your ass in jail for lying under oath,” the prosecutor says.

Barry considers his options. “On the one hand, I tell this guy to take a leap, go hit a bunch more home runs, and then I will be the king of all I survey. But I also have to testify before Congress, and pee in a cup once a week. More to the point, I have to stop taking the magic potion. I never hit more than 34 homers before the potion. It’ll take me at least two more years to become the king.”

Barry frowns at the first option. “On the other hand, I could retire right now as one of the greatest players of all time and get off scot-free for all those years of cheating. In five years, they’ll elect me to the Hall of Fame and call me the greatest living ballplayer for the next 20 years.”

Barry’s face starts to light up. “Hmm, I think option two sounds pretty good. But how do I retire right now without arousing suspicion? Everybody’s been waiting for me to become the king. I can’t just be like that Wallace Simpson guy and say ‘on second thought, maybe being king wasn’t so important.’”

Barry calls his friend Des Abledlist. “Des, I’ve decided to retire.”

Des is shocked. “Barry, you can’t retire. You’re the best player in the game.”

“No, Des, it’s all a fraud. I’ve been using magic potions to hit those homers. I need a graceful way to retire quietly without anybody getting wise.”

Des thinks for a while. “I know! Come on over to my house for a few weeks while the season starts. We’ll tell everybody you have a knee injury.”

“A career-ending knee injury? In the off-season? That sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it?”

“It won’t be career-ending at first. It’ll just be a minor injury that needs an operation. You can have the operation, then the knee can get infected from the operation, then you’ll need to drain fluid periodically. It can go on indefinitely.”

“Do I actually have to have the knee operated on?”

“Of course not. That’s just the cover story. I have a few surgeons on the payroll that’ll pretend to do the operation. They’ll even give you the crutches for free. Then, a year from now, you can say the knee never healed quite right, and you have a teary retirement ceremony at the stadium at the start of next year. Everybody’ll think it’s such a shame that you had to hang it up so close to the record."

“Great idea, Des. I’ll be over in 10 minutes.”

And he lived happily ever after.

Fan is Short for Fanatic

Dear spectator:

I regret to inform you that you are not a member of _____________ (insert team name here). While we appreciate the fact that you bleed ___________(insert team nickname and color here, e.g. Dodger blue) and that you’ve named your two daughters ______________(insert first name of Hall of Fame player, e.g. Carlton) and __________(insert last name of aforementioned Hall of Famer, e.g. Fisk), you will not be receiving any shares should the team win the world series.

Please cease and desist from using the royal “we” when talking about the team. You were not selected in the draft, did not go through years of bus trips in the bush leagues, are not invited to team meetings, and are not consulted on player transactions. It that were the case, we would have contacted you before trading away _____________ (insert name of jettisoned popular player, e.g. Paul Lo Duca).

Most of all, please refrain from interfering with the game. Do not touch balls in play—it usually ends up preventing the runner from first from scoring on a double. Do not send your kid onto the field to retrieve a baseball that rolls close to you. A baseball costs $13; the seats that you will be kicked out of cost at least three times that much.

Do not throw beer at or smack a player from the opposing team, no matter how big a jerk he may be. Keep your distance from outfielders who are trying to catch foul balls that will send the team to the World Series for the first time in more than 50 years. And please do not get so drunk that you feel it is perfectly acceptable to run onto the field and attack the opposing team’s first base coach.

If you persist in hurling bottles, batteries, and epithets at the players, be they on our team or an opposing team, we take no responsibility for the likelihood that one of these players will return said object or throw a chair in your face.

We hope you’ll continue to come out to the ballpark and root, root, root for the home team. But if you cross the line between being a fan and a participant one more time, we’ll make sure that you never get back.

Sincerely,


__________________(Insert team president name here)

Erickson at Sixes, not Sevens

Scott Erickson is a 37 –year-old pitcher with a ERA over 6 who has not gone more than 6 in any of his starts all year. Last night, against a Montreal Expo team disguised as the Washington Nationals, he threw 6 scoreless innings of 6-hit ball. Lost in the shutout performance, however, was that Erickson pitched in and out of trouble all night, loading the bases once (before retiring the pitcher for the final out) and benefiting from two double plays to escape damage.

But instead of cashing this check, manager Jim Tracy chose to focus on the fact that Erickson had retired the last 6 batters with 1-2-3 5th and 6th innings. He decided to push Erickson’s luck, and left him in for the top of the seventh after the Dodgers took a 1-0 lead. This despite having one of the best bullpens in baseball ready to pitch the last three innings.

You didn’t need to watch the rest of the game to see how this one would play out, though the details were particularly gruesome. Erickson failed to field a bunt, Hee Seop Choi mangled two hot shots down the first base line, and the wheels slowly came off.

When the Dodgers start playing the elite teams (they begin a two-week stretch against St. Louis, Atlanta, Florida, and Anaheim next Monday), Erickson won’t be able to count on double plays to get him out of trouble. And Tracy will learn to have the bullpen ready to go beginning in the fifth.

NOTES
Hee Seop Choi is finally starting to hit, but he still strikes out far too much (16 hits, 16 Ks) and has one off the ugliest swings in baseball. He looks like he’s trying to start a lawnmower. And his defense is atrocious. He can’t field a ball hit to his left, and he nearly took Steve Schmoll’s arm off with a loopy toss on a grounder between first and the mound.

Make Room for Repko

When Jayson Werth returns from the disabled list in the next few weeks, the Dodgers will have an interesting problem in Jason Repko. The kid who wasn’t supposed to make the club snagged the last flight out of Vero Beach and has played himself into the everyday lineup (well, given Jim Tracy’s penchant for working every player into the lineup at least once a week, it’s hard to call anything the Dodgers put on the field an everyday lineup). But he has written Repko’s name on the scorecard most days.

Repko has impressed me not so much with his hitting or on base percentage (both are lower than that of Ricky Ledee, who has shared the left field platoon with Repko in Werth’s absence. But his youthful enthusiasm brings an electricity to the team that has been lacking since Dave Roberts was sent off to Boston. Roberts, 32 certainly wasn’t young like Repko (25), but his hustle and his knack for taking the extra base made the rest of the team pick their game up. It’s the same with Repko. His contributions don’t always show up in the box score, but I find the games more enjoyable to watch when he’s playing. He also plays excellent defense and has a right fielder’s arm.

He’s still making rookie mistakes, but he seems to be learning from them. And as long as he has the luxury of a big league roster spot from which to learn on the job, he’s only going to get better. When Werth comes back, the temptation will be to send Repko down to AAA so that he can continue to play every day. But it might be worth keeping him around to inject a jolt into the offense whenever it becomes lethargic.

Scully Says. . .

It’s bordering on sacrilege to criticize the commentating by Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, but I can’t help cringing every time he mangles a foreign surname. Thank goodness Juan EnCARnacion has been traded away, so that Scully doesn’t have to put the emPHASis on the wrong sylLABle four times a game.

On the Dodgers’ recent road trip through Colorado, we were introduced to pitchers Ryan Fuentes (Fwen-eez, in Scully’s parlance) and Jose Acevedo (Vin says A-ce-vee-do).

You’d think Scully would have heard Jose Can-say-co’s name pronounced correctly enough times to get it right, but he still can’t get away from saying Can-see-co. And how somebody reads the name Brazoban and manages to pronounce it BREZZoban is beyond me. (For the record, the Spanish broadcasters pronounce it BraZOban. )

Scully’s pronunciation problems aren’t limited to Hispanic players, although these are the ones that twist his tongue most often. When Japanese reliever Akinori Otsuka followed Mexican reliever Antonio Osuna in a game against the Padres last year, a flummoxed Scully sounded like he was describing a woman selling seashells by the seashore.

Unusual Anglo-Saxon names, on the other hand, barely give him pause. Scully deftly trills Clint Barmes (Bar-mess), Adam Hyzdu (Highs-do), and Scott Linebrink (Line-brink).

Perhaps he just guessed the pronunciations of these names and got lucky. But I’d like to think Scully is more of a professional than that. He certainly is in all other respects of his job.

More likely, he checked the media guide or with the players themselves to see how they pronounced their names before saying it wrong in front of millions of people. He owes foreign players the same respect.

For Starters, Dodgers Need Pitching Help

Which are the real Dodgers? The team that opened the season 12-2, that won games in dramatic fashion with late-inning comebacks and timely two-out hitting? Or the team that has lost six of the last seven, letting second-tier teams score early and often and then failing to mount the very same kind of late-inning comeback that made them everybody’s (including Sports Illustrated’s) early season darling?

The answer of course is neither. The Dodgers are not as bad as they’ve been playing lately, and they were never as good as their press clips from the first two weeks of the season. The ball bounced the Dodgers’ way for a while, into the gloves of Milton Bradley and Jason Repko and under the gloves of Jason Ellison. Now it’s bouncing the other way, into the glove of Craig Counsell and off the wall instead of over it, leaving Ricky Ledee at third with the tying run.

What the two streaks have in common, however, is more troubling. And that is giving up a bunch of runs early. Jim Tracy has done a remarkable job in persuading the team (if not the fans, who left en masse on Opening Day long before the ninth inning) that they’re never out of a game no matter how far behind the starters put the team. Comeback wins are great for team chemistry, but you can’t count on them to propel your season.

Going into spring training, the Dodger rotation was hardly impressive. They had three number two starters (Derek Lowe, Brad Penny, and Odalis Perez), all of whom had question marks. Was Derek Lowe the guy who won all three playoff series for the Sox or was he the guy who had a mediocre regular season? Was Penny’s arm injury career-threatening, or could he be the kind of postseason pitcher he was for the Marlins in 2003? Was Perez the guy with the great E.R.A. or the guy who seemed to lose every game 3-2?

So far, the answers to those questions have been mostly positive. Lowe has been a terrific addition, compiling an ERA around 2.00 over his first five starts. Perez has walked too many batters, and given up too many runs, but still won three of his first four. And Penny pitched, which is more than many expected of him at all.

The rest of the starters have been depressing. I don’t understand why the Dodgers thought they could fill the back of their rotation with guys who had proven their inability with other clubs, but that’s what they’ve gotten in Elmer Dessens, Scott Erickson, and Jeff Weaver. Dessens has pitched like the career 39-49 pitcher he was when the Dodgers acquired him. Erickson was a frontline starter during the Nixon administration, but hasn’t had a winning season this millennium. And the best thing that can be said about Weaver is that he’s cheaper and less atrocious than Kevin Brown, the man the Dodgers unloaded to get him. Weaver’s 6.23 ERA includes a shutout. In his other four starts, he’s given up 21 runs in 21 innings. That’s only a run per inning!

One of these three (probably Dessens) is losing his spot now that Penny is back for good. But for the Dodgers can’t compete unless they get another quality starter. The bullpen has been lights out, and will only get better with the return of Eric Gagne. But when you play from behind, you don’t get many save opportunities, leaving one of your greatest weapons in your holster.

Choi in Mudville

It’s beyond me why the Dodgers persist in the Hee Seop Choi experiment. General Manager Paul De Podesta, who has made clear his love for on-base percentage statistics, saw Choi’s .350 OBP with the Cubs in 2003 and .388 OBP in the first half of 2004 with the Marlins and was blinded to the fact that the guy is still a .236 hitter (As of April 27). DePodesta couldn’t resist giving up team leader Paul LoDuca and setup man Guillermo Mota to get Choi and Brad Penny.

Let’s forget for the moment that giving up LoDuca left the Dodgers short at catcher last year, and gave them a surfeit of players at first base. Let’s forget that DePodesta then traded another favorite, Shawn Green, to Arizona, where he hits home runs only against the Dodgers, to make way for Choi to play first.

Instead, let’s focus on the fact that it’s time for the Choi experiment to come to an end. He’s a mediocre defensive first baseman who doesn’t hit for average, doesn’t hit for power, doesn’t drive in runs, doesn’t score runs, and can’t hit lefties. Mostly what he does is strike out, which doesn’t advance runners or force fielders to make plays.

Choi has had more strikeouts than hits each year of his short career. This is not surprising given his 6’5” strike zone. The fact that he gets any walks at all is rather incredible.

Perhaps he’ll get better, since he’s perceived as young. But he’s already 26 years old, a year older than Albert Pujols and a year younger than Lyle Overbay, two other young first basemen who are both much better players than Choi.

I know DePodesta is reluctant to admit his mistake in trading for Choi, but the Dodgers need to get him out of the lineup. When Antonio Perez returns from the disabled list, look for them to move Jeff Kent to first and slot Perez in at second. That would give them some speed at the top of the order. I’d even go so far as to send Choi down to the minors to work on his strikeouts.

Failing that, look for the Dodgers to trade for Todd Helton before the season is over. He’s itching to get out of Colorado, where a promising youth movement won’t pay dividends for several more years. The Dodgers can rent Helton for half a season and see if he hits at Chavez Ravine like he does in thin air before deciding whether to pay him the kind of megamillions he’s looking for.

Maybe they can even ship off Choi in the deal.

A Black Eye for Baseball, and for America

Before I even get started, let me say that I hold Jackie Robinson in the highest regard. Not just baseball players, not just athletes, but all Americans of all races and colors owe him a great debt.

It is unfathomable to think that a modern day ballplayer would tolerate the outrageous slings and arrows that Robinson endured. Baseball recently fell all over itself to praise Gary Sheffield for not pulling a Ron Artest on a Boston fan. But just imagine what the Yankee outfielder would have done if the fan’s malice was motivated not by the color of Sheffield’s uniform, but by the color of the man wearing it.

That said, you’d think there have been no racial pioneers in this country in the 58 years since Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. In March of this year, Congress decided to give Robinson the Congressional Gold Medal, putting him in the company of such distinguished Americans as Danny Thomas, Harry Chapin, and Charles M. Schulz. Robinson no doubt deserves such an honor, joining Roberto Clemente, Joe Louis, and Jesse Owens as the only athletes to receive the award. But the timing of the medal, some 32 years AFTER Robinson’s death, smacks of tokenism.

This is the same Congress that cares so little about issues that affect blacks and other minorities living and dying today, such as a stolen election, the health care crisis, capital punishment, corporate corruption, and a war against phantom enemies. Even Martin Luther King would appear to be too controversial for such an award (though he has won the Presidential Medal of Freedom). But with one stroke of the pen, Congress hopes to burnish its race relations credentials by making Jackie Robinson the Crispus Attucks of the 20th century.

Not to be outdone, Major League Baseball has declared April 15 Jackie Robinson Day across the league. I’m all for coming up with something else to think about on tax day, but could we please honor somebody other than Robinson for contributions to baseball. Hank Aaaron, for example.

Unlike the adoration received by Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds in their attempts to break the single season home run record, Aaron was met with death threats and racial insults in the year leading up to his conquest of Babe Ruth’s all-time mark.

Thirty years later, his accomplishment seems all the more amazing, even as Bonds takes aim at it. Bonds, who will turn 41 in August, still needs 53 more homers to pass Aaron. That doesn’t seem too daunting in the modern, the steroid-juiced era, especially for a guy who has averaged 45 a year over the past three. But when Aaron played, the mound was higher, the parks were bigger, and the off-season was spent working, not working out. Aaron never hit more than 47 homers in a season, and it took him three years to hit his last 42 roundtrippers.

Also lost in all the Robinson glorification is the fact that the situation for blacks in baseball still leaves a lot to be desired. Escorting Rachel Robinson onto the field at Dodger Stadium earlier this month was Milton Bradley. The Dodgers’ hot-headed centerfielder expressed his admiration for Robinson in a column in the L.A. Daily News.

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2817257,00.html


In a perfect world, the Dodgers might have chosen a representative who wasn’t best known for throwing a plastic beer bottle at a fan last year in Colorado. But they didn’t have much choice, since Bradley is the only black everyday player on the roster.

While Robinson would have been honored by the the recognition for his accomplishment, he would have been disappointed at baseball’s overall performance on racial issues. For sure, the onslaught of Hispanic and Asian players like Cesar Izturis, Hee Seop Choi, and Odalis Perez would not have happened were it not for Robinson’s efforts. But the percentage of black players and managers is lower today that it was when Robinson died. L.A. Times columnist Bill Plaschke said it best in his April 15 column.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/dodgers/la-sp-plaschke15apr15,1,1290351.column

"In his last public address, at the 1972 World Series shortly before his death, Robinson scolded baseball for its failure to hire an African American manager.

Not surprisingly, Rachel Robinson's most passionate answer during a brief interview Thursday was about baseball's failure to recruit more African American players.

Last season African Americans made up only 9% of major league rosters.

Thirty years ago, it was 25%.

Every season, through lack of interest and opportunity, the barrier that Robinson broke seems to regenerate a few more inches.

'I'm very saddened by that fact,' Rachel Robinson said. 'Change can occur, but it has to be sustained, and I wish I could see that happen in my lifetime.'"

The Dodgers are talking about making Jackie Robinson Day an annual event, and asking Major League Baseball to make sure they have a home game on April 15 every year, the same way Boston plays at Fenway Park on Patriots Day. Before they do, they had better make sure they plan to have a black player on the roster. It would be a terrible black eye for baseball if they didn’t.

Garciaparra Gets Punked By Bob “Atrocious Judgment” Ryan

In May, 2003, after saying he would “like to smack” Joumana Kidd, wife of New Jersey Nets guard Jason Kidd, Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan was suspended without pay for 30 days.

"It was, of course, atrocious judgment on my part," Ryan said at the time.

The month off rehabilitated Ryan’s image and his standing with his colleagues on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters, where he is once again a regular. But it has done little for his judgment.

Ryan’s latest offense is his April 22 column in which he doesn’t quite accuse former Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra of taking steroids. Ryan doesn’t have any evidence that Garciaparra took steroids other than the fact that he crossed paths with Jose Canseco and has been hurt a lot lately, most recently a season-ending groin injury last week. Instead, he does a lot of speculating about whether Nomar took steroids.

This is yellow journalism for sure—casting doubt about a player’s accomplishments without a shred of proof. But what makes it worse is that Ryan punked Garciaparra from a thousand miles away, safely beyond the reach of Nomar or the fans of the team he now plays for.

Dozens of baseball players have been suspected of taking steroids for years now. The fact that Jason Giambi got caught only meant that baseball has had to confront the issue, rather than sweep it over, as it had been doing for a decade.

But Ryan’s timing has more to do with Nomar no longer being a member of the Boston Red Sox. If Ryan is so sure Garciaparra has been taking steroids, why didn’t he say something four years ago, when the shortstop bulked up for a March 5, 2001 cover photo for Sports Illustrated? Why didn’t he say anything when Nomar got injured in 2004. Could it have something to do with the fact that he was hitting .321 for the Sox at the time?

Where was Ryan’s suspicious mind when David Ortiz, who never hit more than 20 home runs as a member of the Minnesota Twins, hit double that number for Boston? What was Ryan saying about Jason Varitek in 2001, when injuries limited him to 51 games, or in 2004, when the Sox catcher hit 24 points above his career average?

Ryan was in Boston, where readers would be calling for his head and players would be confronting him every day if he called their achievements into question. But now that Nomar has been safely shipped off to Chicago, and Ryan no longer needs quotes from him, he doesn’t have to worry about giving him a fair shake. Garciaparra didn’t just take the Red Sox curse with him; Ryan has conveniently made him the fall guy for any and all steroid use by Boston players.


The whole episode points out a larger problem in baseball, which is that steroids are now going to be the elephant in the room every time a player gets hurt, doesn’t get hurt, slims down, bulks up, performs well, or goes into the tank. Steroids have tainted every player in the game, whether they use performance enhancers or not. And the toothless testing policy the league has adopted to address the issue isn’t going to change anything.

As long as chicks dig the long ball, as long as ESPN does a special segment each night replaying every roundtripper hit in the previous 24 ours (but cutting the number of defensive Web Gems down to a more manageable five), as long as there is a designated hitter position for immobile sluggers who can’t play the field, baseball is going to reward home run hitters more than speedsters, slap hitters, and defensive whiz kids. And that means players have millions of reasons to cheat.

Unless these basic facts change, Bob Ryan will be able to write the same column about every player in baseball. Except those who happen to play in Boston.

Tivo, God of All Sports

There is a perverse joy in watching sports on Tivo.

It’s not so much the ability to pause the live action on the screen when the phone rings, a virtue extolled by the product’s own advertising. Nor is it the ability to rewind, to hear something a commentator mumbled unintelligibly, or to see for the third or fourth time some amazing feat of athleticism—or even a wardrobe malfunction.

No, the great attraction of Tivo is that it lets you play God with time. The average baseball or football game has become, in the words of Yankee announcer Michael Kay, an unmanageable affair of more than three hours. But between all the commercials, timeouts, and standing around posturing, there’s at least an hour of mind-numbing tedium per contest that the sports’ producers would have you believe merely heightens the suspense.

For years, there was nothing to do but rage against the machine. That, or make a quick detour to the bathroom during these purgatorial interruptions. But with Tivo, such time sucks are a thing of the past. If I wait until about an hour after a game starts, I can usually catch all the action and skip the inertia. Even better, because I live on the west coast, I can shift the entire game to an hour more leisurely than the 5:30 pm start time for most World Series games.

No longer must I endure a Tony LaRussa three-pitcher inning. Instead, trips to the mound now go on the express track. The pause for station identification is a fly-by, not an opportunity to sneak in three more commercials. The seventh-inning stretch lasts only as long as it takes for me to fast forward through the bombastic rendition of God Bless America.

The endless speculation about whether or not the replay showed incontrovertible evidence that the receiver’s foot was on some line is decided instantaneously; justice is meted out wild west style without delay.

Halftime of a football game is over as soon as I get back to the couch with my Cheetos. The final three minutes of a basketball can be watched in something approximating three actual minutes, not the 25 that it usually adds up to when you throw in all the time outs, fouls, free throws, and high fives for missing free throws.

There’s no down time between periods of a hockey game, no break after every two games of a tennis match, no rest between rounds of a fight. And a horse race: well they call it the fastest two minutes in sports, so who needs to spend 58 minutes watching all the pretty horses as they move from the paddock to the starting gate?

There is a price to be paid for all this convenience. For one, there’s the problem of keeping yourself in the dark about the result of the event being Tivoed. It’s not enough to announce to everybody within earshot who might spill the beans that under no circumstances shall they reveal the final score of the big game. In a world where sports scores are flashed at us on computer screens, cell phones, TV tickers, and even the tops of taxis, the Tivo-ing sports fan must ignore an increasing number of media.

Then there’s the terrific temptation to peek. Watching sports “plausibly live”—a term coined by NBC for its tape-delayed coverage of Olympic events in inconvenient time zones—puts you in a special kind of limbo. What you are about to see has in fact actually happened. Unlike live sporting events, in which critical plays become magnified (and suspense actually does build), the Tivo-ed event is constantly threatened by the fast-forward button that lets you skip through the seven consecutive foul balls and go straight to the action.

What’s more, because the outcome has already been decided, fan superstitions are even more preposterous. Rally caps, lucky jerseys, and refusing to shift from certain seats on the couch never had any effect on live sporting events; they have even less impact on ones that are already over.

Finally, there is Tivo’s anti-communitarian spirit. When you view sports on Tivo, you absent yourself from the larger brotherhood that watches the event live. You can’t call your buddy in San Francisco to complain “can you believe they called that a penalty!” When a cheer or a gasp ripples through your neighborhood during a big game, you know something momentous has happened, but you don’t know what. Or for whom. As you watch events unfold, you start trying to psych out what must have occurred. He couldn’t have hit a home run here, because if he had, Mike would have called me to gloat.

Despite these drawbacks, I remain a convert to plausibly live sports. Whenever I’m tempted to go back to watching sports the old-fashioned way, it only takes a couple of AFLAC commercials to remind me why I switched.

Voluntary Testing Could Solve Baseball's Steroid Problem

When it was revealed that Jason Giambi used steroids last year, major league baseball pretended to be stunned. The club owners all professed to be shocked—shocked!—at Giambi’s admission, and pledged to get steroids out of the game. And the baseball player’s union got all contrite and made an unprecedented offer to reopen the collective bargaining agreement.

But it’s hard to imagine that anybody outside the cocoon of major league baseball was surprised. Everybody who has watched the game over the past 10 years knew that something was amiss. ESPN Classic is full of reminders how skinny players of the 1980s and even the early 1990s were in comparison to today’s bulked-up Hummers.

The fact that everybody within the game refused to acknowledge the elephant in the room is a good indication that even the latest steroid bombshell won’t cause much change. The new steroid policy has already caught a few careless infielders, but it’s just as toothless as the old policy. And that’s because neither the players nor the owners have any interest in putting any muscle behind it.

The players have too many reasons to cheat--120 million reasons, to be specific, in Giambi’s case. And the owners will remain complicit in the skullduggery because they profit from all the home runs hit by juiced-up players. People don’t pay $40 a pop to see guys who can bunt. George Steinbrenner may not have known for sure that Giambi was using steroids when he signed him, but I doubt he went out of his way to find out.

But fans don’t have to sit still for this charade. Not if individual players are willing to take the initiative. To that end, I suggest a policy of voluntary steroid testing.

In an interview on ABC’s 20/20, BALCO founder Victor Conte said he would “guesstimate that more than 50 percent of [baseball players] are taking some form of anabolic steroids." Even if his guesstimate is twice too high, an accusation of that magnitude casts doubt on the achievements of every player in baseball. To remain above suspicion, players who aren’t cheating---pitchers, infielders, catchers, and Neifi Perez—should line up to be tested for steroids.

Voluntary testing skirts the privacy issue. Any player who volunteers for steroid testing isn’t giving up his Fourth Amendment rights. He’s pleading his innocence to fans who already presume him guilty. There wouldn’t even be any punishment for refusing to take the test, or even for taking the test and failing. Except in the court of public opinion.

To prevent cheating, a voluntary steroid test would have to be administered as often as once a week. And there’s no reason to test players for recreational drugs. The issue isn’t drugs; it’s cheating. Do fans care if players smoke a little weed or snort something so passé as cocaine, if it doesn’t affect their play on the field? Judging from their embrace of Doc Gooden, Steve Howe, and Darryl Strawberry, the answer is a resounding no.

But they do care if players are using performance-enhancers to shred the record books. To many fans, the expanding crowd of players in the 500-homer club is more offensive to baseball than Pete Rose’s gambling was. If players like Rafael Palmeiro really want people to believe they haven’t been shooting up, voluntarily submitting to a steroid test is a much better way to prove it than protesting their innocence before Congress.

Since steroid use wasn’t against the rules of baseball until 2003, the achievements of players suspected—hell, even players convicted--of steroid use can’t be discounted. It would be no more fair to asterisk all those home run statistics than to disqualify Burleigh Grimes’s victories because he threw a spitball before it was banned.

Even voluntary testing wouldn’t disqualify any home runs hit henceforth, though it might make fans, MVP voters, and Hall of Fame voters think twice before rewarding any player who refused to be tested. And it would validate the performance of players who proved they did it legally.

And in a perfect world, the players volunteering for steroid tests would reach such a critical mass that even slow-footed Hulks, first basemen, and designated hitters might be shamed into giving up the juice.

Would some players be so crass as to volunteer for testing all the while continuing to take performance-enhancers they knew the tests couldn’t catch? It would be naïve to think otherwise. Even the most lauded steroid-testing policies, the ones used by the NFL and the Olympic Games, are “like taking candy from a baby,” according to Conte. “In short, the Olympic Games are a fraud.” And as far as the NFL goes, just look at all the pituitary cases on the sidelines. The Raiders’ defense does a better job stopping the running game than the league’s testing policy does at stopping steroid use.

But it would be even more naïve to adopt a mandatory steroid-testing policy that sticks the onus on the owners to catch the cheaters. Voluntary testing, by contrast, allows the players to take responsibility for their own actions. They’ve been sneaking around the clubhouse for long enough. It’s time for them to step up to the plate.