Anyone who has watched the 2019 Dodgers for a half-dozen games already knows what is going to keep this team from its first World Series championship since 1988. The bullpen. Yesterday, the club had its last chance to address the problem under the new trade deadline of July 31 … and chose not to. “We’re […]

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Two years ago I suggested it was time to tear down and replace Dodger Stadium, perhaps the least comfortable big-league ballpark still in use. That has not happened. And some fans made clear to me that they believe tearing down Dodger Stadium was a horrible ideal. But I will concede the Dodgers did the next-best […]

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I have held a Baseball Writer’s Association of America press credential for the past 30 years or so, which goes a long way toward explaining my shock and horror at the price of Major League Baseball tickets. BBWAA credential-holders do not pay to enter the stadium. Any MLB stadium. In my mind, when I get […]

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I was watching the 2011 movie Moneyball in the wee hours last night, and I was struck, anew, by one big question: How did baseball writers evaluate what they were looking at … before the dawn of advanced analytics? How did veteran reporters — including most of them right on through the Baby Boomer demographic […]

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Been donkey’s years, as the Brits would say, since I did a list. It’s time. This one is going to be a little apples-and-oranges. My favorite road trips as a professional sports journalist. Some considerations: –What is more important? The travel? Or the event I was there to cover? –Or will we almost certainly get […]

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It is a cool November night, and I don’t know it yet, but I am sprawled on my back at the Cal State Los Angeles football field. Above me, a rectangular patch of vision switches on inside my facemask. On the fringes, darkness broken up by banks of electric lights. In the center, dominating the […]

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Baseball injury updates. Hah. At best the information disseminated to media is good ol’ fashion (very ol’ fashioned) American optimism. At worst, it is a method for teams to get the player in question, as well as fans fretting over the loss of a key guy, to come to grips with something that can be, […]

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The Los Angeles Angels play at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Doesn’t mean they really want to. Also doesn’t mean they will be moving somewhere else anytime soon. Why are we talking about this? Because the mayor of Long Beach says the seaside city is in talks with the Angels about the club relocating to a […]

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I make a habit of having a copy of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract in my home. Never know when you might have a few minutes for reading about “baseball in the 1890s” and I can consume James’s treatment of it, at length (the book runs 998 pages) — or in short bites. […]

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Adios, Yasiel Puig, the man dubbed “Wild Horse” by Vin Scully. Sometimes you were great, sometimes you were awful … but at all times you commanded attention. (And a second “see ya” goes to Matt Kemp, who gave the Dodgers half a season of something clearly above average, before time and a creaky body reduced […]

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