The Trolley Dodger

The “still can’t let go” brigade has landed in the LA Times somehow with Bill Shaikin writing a story that wouldn’t have seemed out of place, like, a month ago. “The two sides of Manny being Manny”. No Dodgers apart from Manny are quoted. Several Red Sox are. I guess the propaganda squad wasn’t content with the east coast coverage and had to do a poison piece out here as well.

This gem ends the column:

The Red Sox were 11-13 with him in July, and the Dodgers were 11-16 with him before Saturday. The Red Sox were 17-8 without him.

“There,” a Red Sox official said, “is your story.”

Yeah, because Manny was the only guy having an effect on either team’s record. You know how many ABs David Ortiz had in July? 23.

And what about June, when the Red Sox went 16-11 with Manny?

Manny hit .347/.473/.587/1.060 for the Red Sox in July. But, you know, don’t let reality get in the way of your agenda.

I have a feeling the “There is your story” quote was the Red Sox “official” telling Bill Shaikin he had sent him a Word document with the story in it already written.

A post on MetaFilter today — “Baseball in the Japanese internment camps” — reminded me that I hadn’t posted about my visit last year to the euphemistically named Manzanar War Relocation Center, now known as the Manzanar National Historic Site.

While the many impressions I took away from that visit could fill several blog posts, I’ll focus this one on a few photographs. (Click on them to enlarge.)

The Japanese-American prisoners made the best of their internment at this and other camps, often playing baseball (among other activities) to pass the time when they weren’t working.

The caption next to this display read, “Home Plate, c. 1943. Pieces of home plate from a baseball field located in the North Firebreak between Blocks 19 and 25.”

You can take a driving tour of the entire camp — there aren’t many buildings left, though some are being restored — and see signs like this one, giving you a sense of what used to be there. If you’re like me, though, you get out and start exploring. Luckily, this was encouraged by the docents.

There is a small baseball diamond here, with a home plate and pitcher’s rubber embedded in the sand. As a lover of the desert environment, I was conflicted by the beauty of my surroundings juxtaposed with the ghosts of prisoners and buildings.

Looking back at home plate. Baseball can distract you from a lot of ills, even the worst of them. It can’t solve them, it can’t bust you out of a camp in the middle of a deadly desert, but it can help a little to ease the isolation.

I just wish baseball hadn’t had to do it here, in this place, for these Americans.

A Rockies series at Dodger Stadium starting tomorrow night. Colorado is eight games back of the D-Backs and Dodgers in the NL West, but are coming off a three-game sweep of the Nats. The Dodgers are 7-3 in their last 10 games, with a four-game sweep of the Phillies, as well as winning two out of three from the Brewers — both pennant contenders in their respective divisions.

Probable pitchers:

19th: Jimenez vs Kuroda
20th: Francis vs Billingsley
21st: De La Rosa vs Lowe (day game)

Should be a good series.

ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark has a bee in his bonnet. I use that cliché purposefully, as his latest column chastising Dodger fans for cheering Manny Ramirez sounds nothing so much as an old biddy waggling her finger at the children playing stickball too loud in the street.

“Paying Manny $100M would set a dangerous precedent”

Hey, we couldn’t be happier for those Los Angeles Dodgers, who are selling about 30,000 tickets a day now that they’ve moved their home games to Planet Manny. But we’d like to ask one little question of all those people in L.A. who are showering their man Manny Ramirez with so much love:

What the heck are you cheering for?

Mostly the balls flying over the outfield walls. Also the scoring more runs than the other teams. I like that part especially.

Just like the old biddy stereotype, Stark has a gaggle of gossips feeding him column-ready one liners — GMs and other league sources, all anonymous of course.

“It really bothers me,” one GM said this week of the Manny-mania lovefest that has unfolded in L.A….

(And here I’m seeing the GM throwing himself on a Victorian settee, casting an arm over his eyes and attempting not to faint in despair.)

…”What he did in Boston was criminal. Now he goes there, and everything’s OK? No, sir. It doesn’t change the fact that how he got there was criminal.”

Criminal? Really? Go read up on Darryl Strawberry or Michael Vick and get back to me on “criminal.”

Here’s the crime that Manny perpetuated on the Red Sox in July: .347/.473/.587/1.060. The nerve!

Look, everyone knows how much ESPN functions as the propaganda wing of the Boston sports establishment. Listening recently to the normally sedate Peter “Older Biddy” Gammons splutter anti-Manny invectives in between Red Sox talking points, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out where his allegiances lie.

But even Gammons has moved on now. It’s been forever in ESPN Attention Span Time, and it’s only a little surreal seeing Manny in Dodger Blue. I know you’re feeling antsy what with the Angels and Devil Rays (insert Paradise Lost joke here) owning your Boston overlords’ butts this season, but let it go already. Don’t you have any Brett Favre dead horse residue to nudge fitfully with your toe?

Quoth Matt Kemp, “Having him on our team is crazy.” Yes, yes it is.

Some rank dreaming here, but just imagine if the Dodgers re-signed Manny in the off-season, somehow fixed Andruw Jones, and then had Matt Kemp in right. Now, I love Andre Ethier and hope he sticks around, but think what it would be like to have those three power beasts roaming the outfield! Yikes!

Update: Manny doesn’t just hit the ball a long way, he also has the power to save you money.

Because Ramirez hit a home run in the fifth inning, children under 15 can get into Universal Studios at no charge with a ticket stub from Sunday’s game and the purchase of an adult ticket. (LA Times)