On this sunny SoCal morning, I woke up to a bit of marine-layer fog, knowing that later the sun would come out and warm my heart over again at the thought of the Yankees losing a series in Los Angeles.  Mind you, my heart lies with the Dodgers, but I have MUCH love for the Angels.  And to see the Yankees LOSE there...well, the only way to beat that is to see an NL team win the World Series, especially if that NL team is you-know-who...but I digress.

My joy in seeing the Yankees lose is evidenced in the very fabric that holds the Yankee Nation together: this elitist, pompous bourgeois sense of entitlement that engulfs any discussion around the Yankees actually having a losing streak.  But in this case, "losing" is a very fluid term.

See, not only are the Yankees SEVEN games up on the Red Sox in the AL East (count them: 7.0), but Boston may also lose David Ortiz for the season if it turns out that he needs further treatment for the irregular heartbeat--good luck Papi.  The Yankees could literally obliterate the division, despite the haphazard play out West.  And then there's A-Rod.

Yes, A-Rod, the $250M-man.  There's all this discourse regarding the slump: 1 for 15 with 10 Ks in Anaheim; 1 for 5 in Seattle, blah blah blah! 

Since baseball revolves around its numbers, let's look at a few more of A-Rod's. As of August 29: .380 OBP, .492 SLG, 26 HR, 93 RBI, .279 AVG.  From outside of New York, that looks like MORE than respectable numbers.  Maybe they do New Math in the Bronx, because it appears that nothing but a 1.000 across the board will yield any love from the Yankee nation.

Ahhh, yes, there's that word: love.  Make no mistake, folks: in the Bronx they don't know the meaning of that word.  A-Rod may look mortal now , but maybe y'all should have thought about that before you displaced a natural shortstop and planted him at 3rd base just so you could shout to the rest of us "We've got A-Rod"; maybe you Yankee boo-birds ought to hurl some of that vitriol toward your hurlers, because Yankee pitching is nothing short of LOUSY, unless you count the last #42 in the league; maybe New York could take a lesson from their archrival Red Sox, who show us ALL how to love a team, and love the game.

So leave A-Rod alone.  Show the man that the way out of the slump is via the love of the game, and the love of the fans, and not by JEALOUSY of his paycheck.  Because the view from the West is that as long as you hate, you lose...and when YOU lose, WE WIN!

This is going to sound like a horrible clich

Padres fans ought to count their blessings...their disloyalty and ingratitude is almost as bad as their driving.

Reason: I took a break from watching the DISMAL play of the Dodgers to check out the Giants-Padres game Sunday (July 2) at Petco Park.  Despite the fact that my blood always runs Dodger blue, I do have love for both the Giants-if you can believe that--and the Padres as well.  In this game, I wanted to see the old-guys pull one out, so it was GO GIANTS  for me.

Both teams played a GREAT game.  The Giants simply played better, lighting up the Padres for 5 runs in the 7th; Randy Winn fouled off SEVEN times, and eventually got a walk--it was about an 11-pitch at-bat.  Just some great baseball with two solid teams, and the better team won that day. 

I have much love for the Padres, with a good balance of veterans and new talent able to play and back-up in the outfield, at catcher, third base, and a bit at shortstop.  And that's not even mentioning a pitching staff with Young, Peavy, Woody, Trevor, and a pretty deep bullpen.  This is one very solid team, and if they get more of a killer instinct with puting teams away in late innings, they can beat just about ANY team on any given day.

With that said...

...Padres fans by-and-large do NOT like Bruce Bochy.  On the way home, I listened to the buzz-kill fans' comments on the radio, and I really got pissed.  Fans were saying that by starting Josh Bard instead of Mike Piazza, Geoff Blum instead of Khalil Greene, and Mark Bellhorn in place of Vinny Castilla, Bochy is not trying to win.  This one guy said something to the effect of "Bochy needs to man-up and play some real baseball, and really try to beat some of these teams and win."

In a different time in my life, I would have wanted to SMACK the hell out of that caller.  First of all, Josh Bard is batting .373; Khalil was sore from being hit by a pitch; and Vinny Castilla is not a spring chicken and could use the day off.  What San Diego fans collectively fail to realise is that this is a game of strategy as well as execution and numbers.  Bochy needs to rotate his players based on their ability to execute, their injury status, and their ages, since the veterans don't recover nearly as quickly as they used to.

That's why that guy is called a 'Manager' in baseball and not a 'Coach'. 

Yes, this may seem like some basic info, but apparently San Diego fans need the refresher.  This team does not have the mighty historical market value like my beloved Dodgers; yet ironically the Padres don't have to cross their fingers and toes and rub a rabbit's foot like Grady Little does every time a reliever trots out of the bullpen.  Moreover, the Padres backups players are very consistent in their execution and don't do a sign of the cross when a groundball rolls to shortstop like we do with Furcal this season.  I could go on...

...but the Padres fans need to give Bochy a break.  The guy is in first place in the NL West with a team that requires him to 'make do with what he's got'.  This Sunday, the better team just played better baseball, and perhaps the fans in San Diego should remember that sometimes that's just how baseball works.  There...another refresher.

Ok, the logic of my beloved Dodgers is starting to wear on my nerves.  Apparently, turning a Gold Glove shortstop into a utilityman isn't bad enough.  Now, Grady Little is adding 'insult' to 'injury' yet again.

Dioner Navarro is being sent down, coughing up his starting job to Russell Martin.  Now I have become a big Russell Martin fan. This guy is not only running the offense, but he's batting to the tune of .361 and patiently bearing witness to some abysmal fielding by his compatriots. Not bad for a young 'un, right?  So instead of bringing back Navarro, who was batting a blistering .429 in his last 10 games before going to the DL, and forming a potentially rock-solid rotation of catchers, Grady is demoting him.  That's gratitude for ya.

Oh, by the way: what has Grandpa Moses--AKA Sandy Alomar, Jr--done for us lately?  Oh, let's see: Averaging .286 in his last 10 games with only 21 ABs--no doubt a part-timer.  I suppose his .360 in 50 ABs is respectable, but is Grady telling us that there isn't room for Dioner in his Catchers' Corps??  His hard-line brass-balls management had BETTER carry us thru 1st place in the NL West for the better part of the season.  If it doesn't, he won't end up the steely take-no-prisoners Captain of the ship...he'll just end up a dick.

Today, I sent a question to MLB.com's Ken Gurnick, asking his opinion of the shortstop bottleneck that is quickly approaching in the Dodgers clubhouse.  Gold-glover Cesar Izturis is about to take a cleat to the backside, in one form or another:

My question:

All indicators are pointing to Cesar Izturis being trade-fodder as the Dodgers gear up to make more mid-season changes.  But given [Rafael] Furcal's sloppy infielding, why isn't Izturis being considered more as the long haul option?

Mr Gurnick's reply:

because colletti likes furcal

Who says getting in the boss's good graces isn't a beautiful thing??

I have always been a Rafael Furcal fan while he was with the Braves. He played hard, and always seemed to know how to make a difficult play work.  But watching the meltdown against the Padres last night--two first-inning errors leading to FOUR unearned runs--it just makes the whole Cesar Izturis thing worse.

See, it doesn't seem like the Dodgers are doing the right thing with respect to Izturis. He goes away for Tommy John surgery and returns to find his position "outsourced" to the tune of $39 million to Furcal's normally more-than-capable glove.  What's more, Izturis will be bludgeoned--excuse me, reassigned to another infield position with no plans to "make room" for him.  Gold Gloves just don't buy corporate loyalty like they used to.

Somehow, from the beginning this whole transaction just didn't seem right. 

The Dodgers exhibit virtually NO patience with injured players--there's already talk of demoting Dioner Navarro in place of Russell Martin full-time.  It just seems hard to swallow that Izturis gets so little loyalty after playing so well.  And speaking of "swallowing"...

...let's hope that Colletti's love-affair with Furcal can see past his rising error total, and the $39 milliion those errors will cost him.