The Trolley Dodger

In an Al Jazeera opinion piece, Dave Zirin weighs in on the current situation: “Dodger’s bankruptcy reveals much about the US”

Much has been said about the business practices of Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and his battle against the efforts of Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig to forcibly seize the team. But what does an insolvent Dodgers franchise say about the state of America in the 21st century?

Maybe it says nothing at all. Maybe it’s as simple as saying that Frank McCourt mismanaged the team. Yes it’s true that McCourt looks terribly incompetent and used the team as a personal ATM to live a lifestyle that would shame Caligula.

But that doesn’t explain the broader economic crisis in the sport. It doesn’t explain why the Texas Rangers in 2010, on the road to the World Series, had to be auctioned off at a bankruptcy sale. It doesn’t explain why the New York Mets, playing in the game’s biggest market, are flat broke after team owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz thought Bernie Madoff would make a fine personal investment banker. It doesn’t explain why Selig, when he crows about baseball’s rosy financial picture, sounds like he’s living in the last days of disco.

But more than anything else, it doesn’t explain how – of all teams – the Los Angeles Dodgers find themselves in this crucible of humiliation. The Dodgers are arguably the most culturally significant franchise in the history of American sports. It’s the team of Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela, and Hideo Nomo.

That’s more than just a tradition. That’s a Ken Burns epic.

Games at Jackie Robinson Stadium at UCLA are watched over by a certain kneeling player.

Photo from Trolley Dodger correspondent Alex Justice.

The set of people who are both readers of this site and users of the Mac flash card program iFlash is probably quite small, but just in case I’ll let you know I uploaded a “Dodgers Retired Numbers” deck to their Deck Library if you’d like to memorize those.

Here’s the Dodgers Retired Numbers page on Dodgers.com as well.

(I discovered over the weekend that you can also sync up iFlash decks with an iPhone/iTouch app for on-the-go memorization, so that’s pretty handy. I grabbed a couple of GRE vocab study decks to keep up my vocabulary chops. :)

I am jazzed that 1) the MLB Network is finally hitting the airwaves soon and 2) my TV provider will be carrying it. Alex forwarded me a note about one new feature of the network: Studio 42 named of course for Jackie, which “will allow the MLB Network experts to explain the intricate details of the game.”

So there’s that. Excitement mounting, I checked the schedule for the very first day, January 1st. The words “Brooklyn Dodgers” jumped out immediately when the page loaded. Then the full description dampened my enthusiasm:

1956 World Series Game 5 Brooklyn Dodgers @ NY Yankees featuring Don Larsen’s Perfect Game. Stay Tuned Following the Conclusion of the Game for a Sit-Down Interview with Batterymates Don Larsen and Yogi Berra

Of course they have that game. ;D More seriously, I’ll enjoy watching it, but hopefully some day they’ll show a certain Dodger game versus the Cubs on September 9, 1965.