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.

Comparison articles are usually rife this time of year, wherein the harried sportswriter “compares” special new players to older ones. It’s one item in their bag of tricks — like writing a “Top 5 Reasons Yadda Yadda” article — used to fill up the insane amount of words they have to write. (Really, I don’t blame them.)

The last few years, the comparison has been Clayton Kershaw and Sandy Koufax. Of course, as a Dodger fan it’s hard not to wish for Kid K to rise to the lofty heights of famous Dodger lefties of the past. (Not many Fernando comparisons for some reason.)

A new comparison, and an intriguing one, is this from Ken Gurnick today, “Jansen’s fastball cut from same cloth as idol”, in which we find out Kenley Jansen has the makings of a crazy cutter.

So the closer of the future — sooner or later — is Kenley Jansen, who is already drawing comparisons to his idol and the best closer ever, the 11-time All-Star [Mariano] Rivera, because of something that can’t be taught, explained or intentionally duplicated.

“My ball naturally cuts,” Jansen said of the darting sideways movement of his fastball that makes it difficult for hitters to square the bat barrel on the ball. “It just has life on it. I throw a four-seam fastball, and when I want to throw a cutter, I spin the ball around and spread the fingers just a little and press with my middle finger and I know it’s going to cut.[...]“

That would be interesting enough, but he has been picking the brains of catchers Dioner Navarro and Mike Borzello, both of whom have caught Rivera.

“The similarities start and stop with what his ball does naturally,” said Borzello. “Kenley throws a four-seamer and tries to throw it straight and it has late cutting action that you just don’t see often. I don’t think he even realizes what it does, he’s so new to pitching.

“Mariano can pinpoint that pitch now, but not at the beginning. Kenley’s pitch has the same action. Where he goes from here will be fun to see. He asks me about Mariano. I told him everything — how he prepares, his routine during a game, his demeanor. I gave him a video of Mariano that he’s watched a lot. I’ll say this — there isn’t a better person to mold himself after.”

With that cutter, a “loopy” slider, and a burning desire to keep improving, the catcher-turned-reliever might have Dodgers fans loopy very soon. “Sooner versus later” if Jonathan Broxton’s season starts out like his second half last year. And if not, we have two devastatingly talented relievers to shut down the end of games.

Navarro said he’ll get Rivera’s cell number and set up a conversation between the 11-time All-Star and the closer-in-training that idolizes him.

“I hope to meet him one day,” said Jansen. “I’d just sit with him and talk and pick his brain.”

Kobe had this awesome quote after the Lakers’ 115-57 beat-down of the Cavaliers the other night, responding to a reporter asking if he had any sympathy for the Cleveland players:

“None. You forget who you’re talking to.”

That brings to mind another quote by a Los Angeles great, this one from Sandy Koufax after his 1962 no-hitter against the Mets:

“To win. Nothing else matters, and nothing else will do.”

We need that instinct at Dodger Stadium again.

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. :)

From one of my favorite photo blogs* yesterday came this cool shot of Sandy Koufax icing his arm after a game in 1965 (click to view larger):

* The awesomely titled “If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats”