The Trolley Dodger

Maria Serrao, a fixture in LA sports reporting currently with COX/RPV-TV (and one of the folks featured in Bluetopia) put together a short feature on the three Italians at the top of the Dodgers organization — Tommy Lasorda, Joe Torre, and Ned Colletti. And The Dodgers Italian Connection just won an award.

[It] was my pleasure to sit down with these three men and talk about their Italian heritage. As a result the feature called the “Italian Story” won a National award this week, called The Telly.

Maria has also started up a sports blog recently called, appropriately, Maria Serrao’s Sports Blog.

(From MLB Network PR)

MLB NETWORK TO AIR SPECIAL DON DRYSDALE SEGMENT ON MONDAY, JUNE 15

Bob Costas to voice special segment on Drysdale’s sixth straight shutout game on the night of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination

June 12, 2009 - MLB Network will air on Monday, June 15 a special feature narrated by Bob Costas about Don Drysdale’s sixth straight shutout game, pitched in 1968. The game, held on June 4, 1968 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, coincided with Robert F. Kennedy’s victory in the 1968 California primary. In the first words of his acceptance speech, Kennedy congratulated Drysdale; moments after the speech, Kennedy was assassinated. Four days later, on June 8, Drysdale broke a 55-year old record for consecutive scoreless innings and wore a black arm band to honor Kennedy’s memory.

The piece includes original interviews with Drysdale’s former teammates former Dodgers first baseman Wes Parker and Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton, Drysdale’s widow Anne Myers and Kennedy’s speechwriter Jeff Greenfield.

“Baseball’s past is incredibly important to today’s fans and this feature shows how baseball intersects with all aspects of our country’s history,” said Tony Petitti, President and Chief Executive Officer of MLB Network. “We feel a responsibility to baseball fans to describe and relive these key moments.”

The piece will first air between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m. ET and re-air throughout the night on MLB Tonight and Quick Pitch.

About MLB Network
MLB Network launched on January 1, 2009 and is currently in 52 million homes. With live games, original programming, highlights, classic games, and coverage of baseball events, MLB Network is the ultimate television destination for baseball fans. For more information, go to mlbnetwork.com.

Thank goodness Bill Plaschke has been distracted by the Lakers playoffs this past week. Let’s hope the Lakers go all the way, if for no other reason than to keep him preoccupied and away from Dodger Stadium.

For those just tuning in, Plaschke submitted a diatribe 10 days ago, in which he lambasted Dodger fans for getting on with their lives without Manny Ramirez, calling them no better than San Francisco Giants followers. Them’s fightin’ words.

Today came an article by Randy Cohen in the NY Times, “Is Manny Ramirez Really All That Bad?”, in which the reverse of Plaschke’s “tar and feathering isn’t good enough for Manny” argument is opined:

If we admire athletes who work hard to improve their play, then why do we damn those who do just that with the use of banned substances?

Fellow commenter “Hollywood Joe” and I got into a conversation about that piece in this thread on Dodger Thoughts. My take is that Cohen skirts around what to me is the core issue — taking PEDs is against the rules of baseball. And moreover, it’s rude. :) I wrote,

Baseball is an all-too human activity masquerading (at least for some folks in the fourth estate) as a religion. The imperfect human story is always more entertaining than the flawless saint’s. If every game pitched were perfect or every hit a home run, then it ceases to be interesting. This is why I don’t play sports video games on rookie mode once I’m used to the controls.

This is also why gaining an advantage via an activity that is against the rules sullies the game, at least to me. It becomes a less entertaining game, even if the subject itself is more interesting. Cheat codes are maybe fun once or twice, to continue the metaphor, but making a habit of them while playing with friends is unsporting.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I enjoy baseball less because of the rampant PED usage. The sport is more than just the game, and the reasons to watch it are more complicated than just faceless automatons throwing, catching, and hitting mechanically.

It’s the human side that adds depth to watching sports. Otherwise, you might as well just flip a coin and be done with it. The stories are what keep me entertained over the course of a long season. Not a soap opera, but the drama of a marathon grind.

Will Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, and the other “kids” continue their maturation into the ballplayers we think they can be?

Will the pitching staff keep it together with Hiroki Kuroda out, or will they fold under the pressure?

Does Jonathan Broxton have what it takes to be a closer?

Will Manny Ramirez be himself when he returns in July?

Can the team go all the way this year and erase 21 years of futility?

I continued in my comments,

To use an ESPN favorite, Derek Jeter’s “classiness” is much less of a big deal without A-Rod’s soap opera on the team as a counterpoint. :)

Doesn’t mean I condone A-Rod’s behavior — I don’t get why, with his innate talents, he felt the need to get even more of an advantage. And that question makes him way more fascinating of a character than the manufactured facade he worked so hard to maintain.

And none of this requires burning him, Manny, Clemens, Sosa, McGwire, or Bonds at the stake. People like Plaschke who are seemingly more interested in making sure they get back on “Around the Horn” are worse for baseball than Manny or A-Rod.

As a postscript, I feel as if I should reiterate what I said in my 5/9 post: I like Bill Plaschke. When he’s on, he can be a great sportswriter who shines a light on that human drama like few others in his field.

Let’s hope the Lakers keep him busy for a while.

Just spent some time reliving one of the happiest nights of my life.

Woke up early this morning and found I’d fallen asleep with the MLB Network going last night. This probably explains why random Dodgers started showing up in my dreams just before I woke up to find the network was replaying the glorious 9/18/2006 Dodgers comeback against the Padres, also known as the “4+1″ game.

We were lucky enough to be there that night, and I wrote about it the next day: “11-10″.

The replay is up to the bottom of the 10th. Kenny Lofton is coming up. Nomar is on deck.

The Dodgers’ seven homeruns and the 11-10 final score is quite a contrast to last night’s Dodgers-Padres game and Russell Martin’s walk-off walk. It was also awesome to see all the “kids” celebrating who are now starting and excelling.

I miss Nomar. I hope he’ll have a role with the team once he decides to retire.

There is a certain myth perpetrated about how “classy” the Yankee organization is. Derek Jeter is the poster child for this.

Of course, the organization tends to behave in the “Chandelier Galaxy” sense of the word, as evidenced in “New Stadium classy not flashy”:

[Hal] Steinbrenner said he doesn’t see the ballpark as too extravagant given the economic situation. He said the organization did its best to retain the tradition from the old stadium and integrate it with new amenities to enhance the fan experience.

“I don’t see it as ostentatious or flashy, I see it as classy,” Steinbrenner said.

Last week, there was a brief brouhaha after MLS commissioner Don Garber commented on empty seats at Yankee Stadium due to the economy and their outrageous prices. Randy Levine, Yankees President, went off on him:

“Don Garber discussing Yankee attendance must be a joke,” Levine said yesterday. “We draw more people in a year than his entire league does in a year. If he ever gets Major League Soccer into the same time zone as the Yankees, we might take him seriously.

“Hey Don, worry about Beckham, not the Yankees. Even he wants out of your league,” he said.

Humorous as the statement was, it doesn’t match up with the notion of the Yankees as big leaguers.

To go with the Classy Myth, there’s also the Yankee Mystique, which has to do with how much the club has won over the years. Their record speaks for itself.

The team has won 26 World Series, appearing in 39 of them, which “currently amounts to an average appearance every 2.7 seasons and a championship every 4.0 seasons.”

When you’re that good, when you “have an all-time regular season winning percentage of .567 (a 9472-7235 record), the best of any team in baseball,” you don’t need to act like an insecure asshole. There’s few things more pathetic than an insecure 800-pound gorilla.

To put it in terms New Yorkers will understand, it’s like the difference between a Mafia Don acting like a Mafia Don and not like a goombah pushing a guy in a bar parking lot. If somebody is beneath you, you don’t acknowledge them. They’re beneath you. If they’re insulting, you don’t care. It doesn’t matter.

In any case, Levine’s insecure jokes look even smaller today as the news comes out, “Yankees Slash the Price of Top Tickets”:

Twelve days after opening their new stadium, the Yankees on Tuesday bowed to the sour economy and the specter of empty seats by slashing in half some of their top-end, $2,500-a-game prices.

Going further, the team also announced it will provide significant numbers of complimentary seats to existing season-ticket holders in premium sections, including some of the critical, and very visible, real estate behind home plate.

Whoopsie. Guess all those empty seats looked pretty bad on TV.

Over all, the new policy represents a dramatic retreat from the team’s initial luxury-sales strategy for the new stadium, which was underlined in advertisements that crowed “Own the Greatness” and “Select the Greatest Seats in the World.”

It’s as if the Evil Empire actually still wants to have the class and mystique of the Old Republic. That way lies madness.

Be Darth Vader, or be Mace Windu. Either way, you’re a bad ass. But if you try to be both, you look like a whiny prick.

You know, like Anakin Skywalker.