I am posting this as to help me deal with the fact that the Dodgers got close but didn't get into the World Series once again. I've been a die-hard Dodger fan since 1988 when I was nine. I love the game first but the Dodgers have always been on my radio or television since I was a little boy. I wrote this piece originally in August after the Dodgers came back against the Rays after being down 6-0. I wrote a postscript to reminisce about the Dodgers and ultimately move on because life goes on.
The crowd amassed, finding their seats after a march across the parking lot—that massive and frustrating parking lot at Dodger Stadium. It is August 2013 and the Dodgers are back at the top of their division. The crowd grows and grows in anticipation waiting for the tense moments and gentle lulls where nothing much is going on except the conversation right next to you. The game is quiet. People are out there playing a game where concentration is pivotal. Three outfielders stand their position waiting for something to come their way—watching, waiting, hoping to pounce at the sound of the bat striking the ball. The game is mostly quiet and yet, when all is well, is surrounded by the ear-splitting sounds of the crowd. The crowd roars when their team scores and groans when the other team prevails.
Last night, I realize that the ear-splitting sounds were back in Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers came back with four runs in the bottom of the ninth to defeat the Rays—a formidable AL East opponent. There’s just so much magic in the air right now ever since June 22nd when the Dodgers were in last place. At that point however the team would turn a discernable corner and march their way up. The Baseball season unfurls unpredictably. To be a Baseball fan is to know that anything can happen. Last night, the crowd witnessed this simple truth.
I woke up on Saturday morning to check the scores, looking to see how the slaughter ended. When I wrapped up my tiring night, the Dodgers were dead-in-the-water, down 6-0 after a lousy, sloppy couple of innings. David Price, the Rays dominant lefty starter, was dominant for the most part and this was just supposed to be one of those games that the Dodgers would have to learn to move on from. In the late innings, the magic became reality. Skip Schumaker, the utility man with the quick speed and underwhelming glove, doubles to left field to score Jerry Hairston in the seventh inning. The crowd began to stir but quietly so.
The Dodgers star rookie Outfield Yasiel Puig figured in this game as always, showing his youthful indiscretion and booming bat. His talent is unbridled and overflowing. Every throw he makes is as if that uncorked throw would bring the whole game to a final end. He plays in order to make the crowd breathless. He overthrew the cut-off man with that powerful arm twice leading to the Rays scoring. Later, his double to right field scored Mark Ellis giving the Dodgers their second run of the Ballgame.
Juan Uribe—the veteran infielder with the World Series rings, graceful glove and once-booming bat—was, going into the 2011 season, the Dodgers big acquisition and desperate attempt to find infield power during the meager years of the Frank McCourt era. He would flounder and flail and sputter for a couple of years, going from Disabled List to having a disabled bat for the bulk of two seasons. In 2013, he has seen his career go through a mild resurgence as the Dodgers patch up third base with bits and pieces. He hit a line drive single to score Puig for the Dodgers third run.
The ninth is when the crowd would be paid back for their patience and be swallowed up by the moment of a big comeback. Dodger Stadium was a packed house in a game where they were down 3 heading into the ninth—a scene that would be improbable if it happened a couple of years ago when McCourt was the troubled owner. The crowd was alert and alive and the Dodgers were on a roll. Mark Ellis, the Dodgers’ slick fielding second baseman who began his career on the “Money Ball” A’s, hit a triple deep to left field scoring Schumaker. Nick Punto, another undersized, dynamic player who fills that indispensable utility role, drove in Ellis with a line drive double also to left field. After a coaching visit to the mound, Adrian Gonzalez, the star first baseman with amazing albeit declining power, doubled to bring in Punto and tie the game. Fernando Rodney intentionally walked Puig to get to Jerry Hairston and then Baseball happened. Rodney turns around attempting to start a double play and the ball sails to centerfield allowing Gonzalez to score and for that one brief moment causing Dodger Stadium to convulse into an uproarious state. Singing cascades and the words “We love L.A.” drown the stadium. These are the sounds you hear when the crowd comes home.
POSTSCRIPT: THE 2013 DODGERS
Today is October 20th and the Dodgers were eliminated from the NLCS by the St. Louis Cardinals on October 18, 2013. The once powerful Dodgers have now gone 25 years without a World Series game. Have the mighty just fallen? Is this bad karma from the Baseball Gods? Am I personally being punished? I remember these twenty five years vividly because they were the golden years of my life. I’m going to write a little something as a postscript to this Dodger season.
The Dodgers have changed ownership four times since I became a fan at the tender age of 9 in 1988. I loved the game although I had just been introduced to the game only that year. I became a lifelong fan however in 1989. I remember every telecast beginning with the sentence: the World Champion Dodgers. I thought that this would happen every year in my youthful age. That year the Dodgers collapsed and were decimated by injuries finishing dead last. Every year the Dodgers were ready to take the title in my eyes. I remember when I was 11 and Ramon Martinez was going to bring them the title. They had his little brother the fireballer Pedro Martinez who they promptly traded for an impressive young Delino Deshields. That was a catastrophic move. My favorite memory of Dodger Stadium was in 1993 when my older brother and I cruised to the game in his Mustang he came up on for a few months. Don’t remember what happened to that car but I do remember Pedro throwing. I can’t believe how good he was that season as I look up his numbers on Baseball Reference. In any case, he was traded for someone who didn’t work out. That kind of stuff happens all of the time in life, relationships, and sports.
I have so many memories of the Dodgers because they were always my escape from poverty, drugs, gangs, graffiti, mental illness, school, work and all of those beautiful things that have been a part of my life at different extremes since I was 9. I love the Dodgers because they are my absolute passion. I want them to just win the title again. I shouldn’t feel so frustrated but I do. I remember when they signed Eric Davis and Daryl Strawberry and that would bring home the title. Entering my teens, Mike Piazza came up from obscurity and damaged baseballs without remorse. He should have brought home the title but the Dodgers decided that he was asking for too much money and traded him for the brilliant malcontent Gary Sheffield and a bunch of other peripheral filler. I remember reading articles during that time extolling the idea that the Dodgers brought over players that had just won the World Series. And they were mediocre. The Fox ownership then decided that the money that should have been spent for Piazza should now go to Kevin Brown. They paid him over 100 million dollars. He was lights out when he wasn’t injured. They traded him for a useful Jeff Weaver I believe. The Dodgers did not win a single playoff game with Kevin Brown as their ace. This just goes on. One disappointing season after another. I am now thirty-four and they have not played in a single World Series game.
I am frustrated to no end. I want the Dodgers to resign their best pitcher in decades Clayton Kershaw even if the asking price is ridiculous. I will always remember the Dodgers flailing and flailing in NLCS games 1, 2 and 6 mainly. It was such a tough series and finally at the end Kershaw gets slaughtered, the Cardinals do their impression of Babe Ruth, Puig throws the ball over the catcher, M. Ellis double-clutches, bad baseball and five innings of poor Vin Scully probably thinking “I’m too old for this shit”. I want the Dodgers to continue building the team in a smart way which doesn’t mean getting all the big names. I want Matt Kemp to come back healthy because it really doesn’t feel like the same team when he’s not playing. I want them to resign Hanley and hope he gets healthy because he has hall-of-fame type talent. I want to see Greinke do his thing because he’s amazing, just so sick. I might watch a couple innings of the World Series but it will be with a heavy heart. Through all of these frustrating years all I can say is "How many more days until Opening Day 2014". And now back to thinking about stuff.
The crowd amassed, finding their seats after a march across the parking lot—that massive and frustrating parking lot at Dodger Stadium. It is August 2013 and the Dodgers are back at the top of their division. The crowd grows and grows in anticipation waiting for the tense moments and gentle lulls where nothing much is going on except the conversation right next to you. The game is quiet. People are out there playing a game where concentration is pivotal. Three outfielders stand their position waiting for something to come their way—watching, waiting, hoping to pounce at the sound of the bat striking the ball. The game is mostly quiet and yet, when all is well, is surrounded by the ear-splitting sounds of the crowd. The crowd roars when their team scores and groans when the other team prevails.
Last night, I realize that the ear-splitting sounds were back in Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers came back with four runs in the bottom of the ninth to defeat the Rays—a formidable AL East opponent. There’s just so much magic in the air right now ever since June 22nd when the Dodgers were in last place. At that point however the team would turn a discernable corner and march their way up. The Baseball season unfurls unpredictably. To be a Baseball fan is to know that anything can happen. Last night, the crowd witnessed this simple truth.
I woke up on Saturday morning to check the scores, looking to see how the slaughter ended. When I wrapped up my tiring night, the Dodgers were dead-in-the-water, down 6-0 after a lousy, sloppy couple of innings. David Price, the Rays dominant lefty starter, was dominant for the most part and this was just supposed to be one of those games that the Dodgers would have to learn to move on from. In the late innings, the magic became reality. Skip Schumaker, the utility man with the quick speed and underwhelming glove, doubles to left field to score Jerry Hairston in the seventh inning. The crowd began to stir but quietly so.
The Dodgers star rookie Outfield Yasiel Puig figured in this game as always, showing his youthful indiscretion and booming bat. His talent is unbridled and overflowing. Every throw he makes is as if that uncorked throw would bring the whole game to a final end. He plays in order to make the crowd breathless. He overthrew the cut-off man with that powerful arm twice leading to the Rays scoring. Later, his double to right field scored Mark Ellis giving the Dodgers their second run of the Ballgame.
Juan Uribe—the veteran infielder with the World Series rings, graceful glove and once-booming bat—was, going into the 2011 season, the Dodgers big acquisition and desperate attempt to find infield power during the meager years of the Frank McCourt era. He would flounder and flail and sputter for a couple of years, going from Disabled List to having a disabled bat for the bulk of two seasons. In 2013, he has seen his career go through a mild resurgence as the Dodgers patch up third base with bits and pieces. He hit a line drive single to score Puig for the Dodgers third run.
The ninth is when the crowd would be paid back for their patience and be swallowed up by the moment of a big comeback. Dodger Stadium was a packed house in a game where they were down 3 heading into the ninth—a scene that would be improbable if it happened a couple of years ago when McCourt was the troubled owner. The crowd was alert and alive and the Dodgers were on a roll. Mark Ellis, the Dodgers’ slick fielding second baseman who began his career on the “Money Ball” A’s, hit a triple deep to left field scoring Schumaker. Nick Punto, another undersized, dynamic player who fills that indispensable utility role, drove in Ellis with a line drive double also to left field. After a coaching visit to the mound, Adrian Gonzalez, the star first baseman with amazing albeit declining power, doubled to bring in Punto and tie the game. Fernando Rodney intentionally walked Puig to get to Jerry Hairston and then Baseball happened. Rodney turns around attempting to start a double play and the ball sails to centerfield allowing Gonzalez to score and for that one brief moment causing Dodger Stadium to convulse into an uproarious state. Singing cascades and the words “We love L.A.” drown the stadium. These are the sounds you hear when the crowd comes home.
POSTSCRIPT: THE 2013 DODGERS
Today is October 20th and the Dodgers were eliminated from the NLCS by the St. Louis Cardinals on October 18, 2013. The once powerful Dodgers have now gone 25 years without a World Series game. Have the mighty just fallen? Is this bad karma from the Baseball Gods? Am I personally being punished? I remember these twenty five years vividly because they were the golden years of my life. I’m going to write a little something as a postscript to this Dodger season.
The Dodgers have changed ownership four times since I became a fan at the tender age of 9 in 1988. I loved the game although I had just been introduced to the game only that year. I became a lifelong fan however in 1989. I remember every telecast beginning with the sentence: the World Champion Dodgers. I thought that this would happen every year in my youthful age. That year the Dodgers collapsed and were decimated by injuries finishing dead last. Every year the Dodgers were ready to take the title in my eyes. I remember when I was 11 and Ramon Martinez was going to bring them the title. They had his little brother the fireballer Pedro Martinez who they promptly traded for an impressive young Delino Deshields. That was a catastrophic move. My favorite memory of Dodger Stadium was in 1993 when my older brother and I cruised to the game in his Mustang he came up on for a few months. Don’t remember what happened to that car but I do remember Pedro throwing. I can’t believe how good he was that season as I look up his numbers on Baseball Reference. In any case, he was traded for someone who didn’t work out. That kind of stuff happens all of the time in life, relationships, and sports.
I have so many memories of the Dodgers because they were always my escape from poverty, drugs, gangs, graffiti, mental illness, school, work and all of those beautiful things that have been a part of my life at different extremes since I was 9. I love the Dodgers because they are my absolute passion. I want them to just win the title again. I shouldn’t feel so frustrated but I do. I remember when they signed Eric Davis and Daryl Strawberry and that would bring home the title. Entering my teens, Mike Piazza came up from obscurity and damaged baseballs without remorse. He should have brought home the title but the Dodgers decided that he was asking for too much money and traded him for the brilliant malcontent Gary Sheffield and a bunch of other peripheral filler. I remember reading articles during that time extolling the idea that the Dodgers brought over players that had just won the World Series. And they were mediocre. The Fox ownership then decided that the money that should have been spent for Piazza should now go to Kevin Brown. They paid him over 100 million dollars. He was lights out when he wasn’t injured. They traded him for a useful Jeff Weaver I believe. The Dodgers did not win a single playoff game with Kevin Brown as their ace. This just goes on. One disappointing season after another. I am now thirty-four and they have not played in a single World Series game.
I am frustrated to no end. I want the Dodgers to resign their best pitcher in decades Clayton Kershaw even if the asking price is ridiculous. I will always remember the Dodgers flailing and flailing in NLCS games 1, 2 and 6 mainly. It was such a tough series and finally at the end Kershaw gets slaughtered, the Cardinals do their impression of Babe Ruth, Puig throws the ball over the catcher, M. Ellis double-clutches, bad baseball and five innings of poor Vin Scully probably thinking “I’m too old for this shit”. I want the Dodgers to continue building the team in a smart way which doesn’t mean getting all the big names. I want Matt Kemp to come back healthy because it really doesn’t feel like the same team when he’s not playing. I want them to resign Hanley and hope he gets healthy because he has hall-of-fame type talent. I want to see Greinke do his thing because he’s amazing, just so sick. I might watch a couple innings of the World Series but it will be with a heavy heart. Through all of these frustrating years all I can say is "How many more days until Opening Day 2014". And now back to thinking about stuff.
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