The Trolley Dodger

Today (11/12/11) marks the fifth anniversary of the Trolley Dodger — this is the date back in 2006 that I registered the domain and prepared to move the baseball/Dodgers portion of my blogging from my primary site, celsius1414.com, to its own home. Here’s the very first post that day.

Thanks to everybody who have been around the last five years, especially my fellow Dodger bloggers. A big thanks as well to the team and its PR department, who have been open-arms with online fans and writers.

This has been a trying year to be a Dodger fan and, at least in my case, a Dodger blogger. I’m looking very much forward to the changes (ownership and otherwise) to come in the next few months, not to mention the hopefully swift recovery of a legendary franchise.

Thanks for reading!

Last July, I wrote a post here documenting the Midseason Malaise both the Dodgers and myself found ourselves in. An excerpt:

When an activity that is normally an escape from the depressing parts of existence becomes itself depressing…well, what is there to write about? Especially if you’re not one to tear down your favorite team for the sake of talking about something. There’s a surfeit of commenters online, not to mention talk show hosts and callers, who like nothing more than to kvetch 24/7 about the smallest Dodger problems, never mind the major issues — they don’t need any help from me.

Here we are, a mere few weeks into the 2011 season, and the malaise is already upon us. Except that this year, the depressing news applies to the Lakers as well. Things turned ugly last night. Real ugly. No amount of seeing writing on the wall the last month of the Laker season could forewarn us that the writing would end with a string of profanities.

(As mixed as the Dodger season has been so far, the Boys in Blue haven’t been acting like the Purple and Gold. The team, however, has had its own ugliness to deal with.)

Things are also not exactly like the (newly re-minted) Silver and Black, with a string of heartbreaking losses in their playoff series versus the Sharks. The season is still young.

No, we have ownership issues. Such issues. And now with no historical hitting streak to distract us from the latest bad news, I joked to friends of mine that I was thinking of giving up watching the local teams and switching to World News so I can cheer up a little.

As the Lakers and Kings were gearing up for their playoff runs earlier this year, I was pondering expanding the Trolley Dodger into more of an LA sports blog rather than just the Dodgers. Lakers and Kings, sure, not to mention the suddenly intriguing Clippers, the “5th-sport” teams Galaxy and Chivas USA, and the reportedly inevitable return of an NFL team to LA. Now, I’m not so sure. If all the bad news keeps up, I’m going to need intensive therapy to get over my sports depression.

I do have a summer to get over the 2010-11 Lakers and Kings, and hopefully the 2011 Dodgers will put it all together during that same period. And it’s not as if there is no good Dodger news. Ethier and Kemp are carrying the team, and despite the bullpen woes, our starters are doing pretty well. New manager Don Mattingly has been impressive enough for a rookie. There might even be a pot of gold at the end of the McCourt rainbow. As usual, patience is called for. Lots and lots of patience.

Besides, I’m not desperate enough for World News yet.

As readers might recall from earlier in the summer, I injured my right knee in a fall on our back steps, spraining my MCL, getting a bone bruise on my femur, and partially tearing my medial meniscus. The first two items have healed in the interim, but I’ve been awaiting surgery for some months to repair the last item. Finally had that surgery yesterday, and it all went well — a partial meniscectomy removed the errant bits, and now I’m into the process of healing. It was all done arthroscopically, so that’ll make it much quicker to heal.

The doctor who performed the surgery was Dr. Christopher Jobe, a renown orthopedic surgeon in his own right, working at Loma Linda University Medical Center. But it turns out he is also the son of Dr. Frank Jobe, known to all Dodger and baseball fans as the inventor of Tommy John surgery!

This was a total coincidence, and since I was concentrating on my knee, it actually took a friend of mine (and a Rockies fan, unfortunately ;) to pose the question to me after my initial consultation with Dr. Jobe fils. Since I didn’t see the doctor while I was in a conscious state yesterday, I confirmed the relationship with one of the hospital staff — all of whom, by the way, were incredibly friendly folks, so thanks to them.

Also coincidentally, one of the other patients at the surgical center yesterday was a defensive back from (I believe) the University of Arizona. He had a torn ACL and was getting it repaired. I didn’t catch his name in my hazy state, and my Google-fu is still out of whack this morning, but I’ll keep looking and update this when I find out. I seem to remember it having gone well, if I wasn’t hallucinating in the recovery room when he was brought in.

Thanks to Ken Levine and Josh Suchon for having me on as blogger of the week on their KABC AM 790 Dodger Talk show this afternoon. It went by in a flash, so I hope I was making sense. :)

Thanks to the USA Today folks for the interview, which you can read here: “These days, Dodgers blog is also Manny watch”

UPDATE: Thanks to the following for linking to the interview:

• Jon Weisman: “Express Lane News: 10 items or less”
• Sons of Steve Garvey: “Trolley Dodger Goes National”
• Dodgerfan.net: “USA Today Turns to Local Dodgers Blogger”