First thought: This is no kind of team to give 88-year-old Vin Scully in his last season as the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers. These are not The Boys of Summer. They are not The Big Blue Wrecking Crew. The Dodgers not quite awful but they certainly are not good — which you might […]

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It is odd for me to follow the Dodgers in the playoffs. When I am not paying close attention, when my subconscious is the ascendant, I am rooting for the Dodgers to win. That is what I did during my formative years. I was a fan of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and Maury Wills […]

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Any day now, the Los Angeles Dodgers will win the National League West, sending them to the playoffs, with the chance to win the World Series. And do any Dodgers fans really think they will do that? Win a World Series? This year? (We could ask “in their lifetimes”, but let’s not be dramatic.) It […]

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August has been an ugly month for the Best Player in Ball. Through games today, Mike Trout looked like a slow, tired impostor who somehow had gotten access to Trout’s No. 27 jersey. With two games left in August, the Los Angeles Angels outfielder was 18-for-93. That’s a batting average of .194. With five runs […]

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The Dodgers melted down spectacularly in Pittsburgh tonight, blowing a 5-4 lead in a nine-run Pirates seventh inning. It ended 13-6, with the Pirates completing a sweep of the most expensive team in baseball. This game had the feel of a milestone, a turning point, even from the other side of the Atlantic. Consider: –Another […]

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Back in February I looked at the list of the 10 bobblehead nights the Dodgers were planning for the 2015 season, and saw a name there barely familiar to me: Justin Turner. And I did a post entitled The Unknown Bobblehead … referring to this Justin Turner person, who for all I knew might have […]

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I try to make one major-league baseball game per year. Not always do-able, when you live in Abu Dhabi. This one turned out well on several fronts … starting with the Maury Wills bobblehead doll we got upon entering the stadium.

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In a corner of my mind, that semi-hopeful, semi-bitter cry was particularly associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Who for a long time were bad, and then for most of a decade were quite good but couldn’t get that elusive first World Series championship. “Next year” finally came in 1955, when the Dodgers beat the Yankees […]

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The Dodgers clinched the National League West tonight by defeating the San Francisco Giants 9-1 behind Clayton Kershaw. Always grand to clinch against the Giants, and let them watch the team in blue celebrate. But, more important, the Dodgers winning the division, and avoiding the wild-card stuff, comes a week after the Angels secured the […]

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As noted a few days ago, when Mike Trout tripled in his first at-bat at the All-Star game, I support the concept that the triple is the most exciting play in baseball. A guy running full speed from the batter’s box to third base while an outfielder or two chases down a ball in the […]

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