Is it just me, or is there a lot of hate coming the Dodgers’ way now that they are throwing around money like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Angels have in years past? It’s not like they are the first team to do it.

As a die hard Dodger fan, it sure is nice to see them with flush coffers after a decade of the Frank McCourt debacle. Is nearly 150 million for Zack Greinke good business? Probably not. I’d like to have seen them take that money and give it to Clayton Kershaw in the form of a long extension, and then get multiple good pieces like Anibal Sanchez, a good lefty out of the pen, and figure out a trade for an upgrade over Mark Ellis at second base. But hey, at least they are committed, as shown by going after the best available player.

So, all you haters, shut the hell up, will you? Most of you are probably Yankee fans anyway.

Kicking It:

Two of my favorite days of the year are when the two Manchester Teams square off in the EPL. I detest them both, but it’s always good soccer.

Sticking It:

I’m tired of the NHL situation already. Los Angeles Kings winger and player rep, Kevin Westgarth has recently stated that the sides are not far apart in resolving the lock out that there should be optimism. I’m beyond caring. My Kings won their cup last year. I don’t care if they ever get a chance to defend it. Dissolve the league and all of you on both sides get real jobs.

Hating it:

Fantasy Football. How on Earth does Matt Ryan have less than 100 yards and no scores in the first half against Carolina? Carolina!!!

Who will remember him? Well, I will. My friend Mary will. My fiancee will. His son will. Ben. I play pool in a league called the American Pool Players Association. It’s purely an amateur league, but we cheer for our teams and our friends with every bit the vigor that we cheer for our pro teams.

In the wake of the Jovan Belcher tragedy, there has been a glut of articles and blogs and what have you about the Chiefs persevering for a win against Carolina in the face of incredible adversity. And you know what? Good for them. Those guys needed that. They did not choose to end up in that situation, but they did what they needed to do. This may very well end up on ESPN’s next 30 for 30 series. Young man kills young woman. Young man kills self. Young man leaves friends and family devastated, wondering why. How? What could possibly bring a young man who overcame significant odds to be an NFL starter to commit such a heinous crime, and then the ultimate sin?

Nobody will ask those questions when it comes to Marty Pena. He was 54 years old. He was an avid pool player. He was a kind and gentle soul. People liked him, and they loved him.

On Thursday, November 29th, 2012, Marty Pena left the joint where he had played pool. On the way to his car, he had a heart attack. And then he died.

It’s always easy to say after someone dies, that everyone liked them. What a nice guy! What a good dude! Well, those aren’t just empty statements when it comes to Marty Pena. Admittedly, to call him “my friend” would probably be an overstatement. He was a guy that I ran into at pool league or pool league events several times a year. And he was also a guy who would yell really loudly, “Torsten!!!” when I walked into a place he already was, and subsequently deliver an enthusiastic, and occasionally painful, bear hug. It was impossible not to like the guy.

I know his real friends. Those that saw him more frequently than I did. They’re crushed. I’m crushed, because they are, and also because he treated me the same as he did them whenever he saw me.

Now that I’m well into this… whatever you want to call it, I’m not certain anymore what my goal was. I guess I wanted to put something on the internet, where all things are eternal for lack of a better word, to remind sports fans, the few that read our humble blog anyway, that people die all the time. Good people like Marty Pena.

I would not be surprised if information came out that Jovan Belcher was suffering from CTE, or something else that could cause a young man to do the things that he did. A successful young man, no less. And you know what, I’m really glad that Kansas City won today.

But the sad fact remains, Jovan Belcher’s death was his own choice. Marty Pena’s wasn’t. He was a guy, young by life expectancy’s standards, who really shouldn’t have gone so soon. Sure, he liked to enjoy some “aiming fluid,” or if things didn’t go so well as far as shot making goes, “excuse juice.” And, to be truthful, a few Marlboros. Maybe he was the architect of his own demise. But…

No buts. I’m just gonna miss this guy. I’m going to rue the fact that I only saw him and hung out with him as infrequently as I did. I’m going to feel a bit of pain every time I see his friends, one of whom I share a day job with. And I will take no solace in the fact that the angels are in good company with him, because I’m a selfish son of a bitch, and that’s how I operate.

Maybe Marty’s pool teams will win their matches this coming week. Maybe they won’t. But they’ll remember him. And not just for this week, or the next couple. For as long as they play pool in the APA. That’s just the kind of person and team mate that Marty was.

Grief is a weird thing. People deal with it in their own ways, but they’re really not in control of it. In a selfish way, I’m almost glad that I wasn’t closer with Marty on a personal level, because his passing has affected me profoundly anyway. On a human level, I wanted to put something out there. On the internet. Wherever. Because Marty’s death was not of his own choosing, and would never get any publicity regardless. But people need to know, Marty Pena was a good man. A sweet, kind, and gentle soul, who was taken from us too soon.

May God and the angels enjoy his company as much as we did here.

RIP Marty Pena.

There’s no doubt a disparity between professional soccer in most of Europe and that of the MLS as far as quality goes. Still, the MLS Cup is a match I look forward to every year, especially when my hometown Galaxy is a participant. Here are some thoughts:

David Beckham and Robbie Keane are the best players on the pitch, and it’s not close.

The Galaxy should have let Beckham take the final PK instead of Keane.

If you’re going to give up a penalty kick, might as well do it with a right hook to the sack ala Tally Hall.

I’m impressed with how much the players care, especially Juninho, the little Brazilian midfielder who toughed through a painful achilles heel injury and defended resolutely in front of a kind of rickety back four before exhaustedly hobbling off late on.

Landon Donovan was among the worst players on the field again, despite slotting home the winning penalty kick. It’s time for him to retire before his legacy as one of the greatest American soccer players ever is compromised. It’s a “what have you done lately” sports world, and continued decline in his play will be what fickle fandom remembers, rather than his World Cup goal against Slovenia.

Houston has a future star in center forward, Will Bruin.

The Galaxy should make an effort to get Beckham to play one more year.

The Elephant in the Room

The game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Carolina Panthers will go on as scheduled in the wake of the Jovan Belcher tragedy from earlier today. Belcher apparently killed his girlfriend and then himself shortly thereafter at team facilities.

Yahoo! Sports’ excellent football columnist, Michael Silver disagrees with this decision, but I think it’s the right one. No doubt, some of the Chiefs will need grief counseling, especially GM Scott Pioli who apparently witnessed Belcher shoot himself after unsuccessfully trying to talk him out of it with coach Romeo Crennell. That said, tragedy’s most pronounced scars are left beneath the surface where we are alone in the confines of our thoughts. For one hour, the players and coaches affected by this horrible sequence of events will have an escape.

Silver is definitely right about one thing though. As awful as today’s tragedy is, it’s not on the scale of the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the assassination of President Kennedy. It’s also not on the level of, say, the sudden death of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher, Darryl Kile in 2002 of an apparent heart attack. I don’t want to take away anything from those who are grieving today. It’s sad to an unspeakable degree. But, assuming that the events indeed transpired the way all appearances would have it, Jovan Belcher was a murderer. The woman he killed was 23 years old, and the mother of his 3-year-old baby. Of course Belcher had friends on the team who no doubt loved him, and they’ll be understandably crippled emotionally. But I truly feel that today’s events are a tragedy that must be overcome, not simple waited on until it fades away. Maybe Jamal Charles will get his team a win with a long touchdown run the way Mike Piazza crushed a home run in the first game at Shea Stadium after 9/11.

If there are players who simply can’t or don’t want to play, they should not be compelled to. But those who are ready and willing to play should be allowed to. This isn’t the first tragedy professional football has encountered and it won’t be the last. To say that the show must go on is not in any way a suggestion that today should be forgotten about. But it needs to be moved past. That’s how the long road to healing and recovery starts.

I am not a person that believes to live in America you need to speak English.  I do think if you want to make life in America easier, learning English is beneficial.  We do not have a national language, against popular belief, but freedom of speech actually includes freedom to speak the language of your choosing.  That has nothing to do with people that are not here legally, but that is enough of the political type thoughts from me, but background leading into this Smear does help lend some perspective.  

Tonight, I found myself watching a Laker game and re-examining my water to see if I had just downed a liter of vodka instead.  I looked at the sign in front of the scorer’s table, and I saw a website and had a flashback to my freshman year Spanish class alphabet chart.  I saw a sign that said enebea.com.  I was sure I was hit in the head and was for some reason seeing the nba.com URL spelled out in the Spanish alphabet pronunciation form.  So I grabbed my computer, entered this delusion of an URL into it, and what did I find?  A Spanish language version of nba.com.  I was shocked.  So, naturally, I looked up the English version of the pronunciation form of nba.com…enbeeay.com apparently doesn’t exist.  Strange.

Now, this new site has just confirmed my suspicion that the NBA has no clue how to market to the non-Asian or European markets.  It is amazing, the third-world Spanish speaking countries tend to have two popular sports, soccer and baseball, yet in America, baseball is not popular because it costs too much money to play.  That is the reason basketball is so popular in the inner-cities, right? I am a baseball nut, and I concede that point, but why then are poor Spanish speaking countries so good at baseball and so indifferent to basketball?

Simple, ignorance by the wealthy American hypocrisy that runs the NBA.  The NBA and MLB are guilty of it, but when it happens on a baseball diamond, you can almost sense the embarrassment the few times “Los” has been included on uniforms.  It almost seems like a footnote in the games it has appeared in.  Then you turn to the NBA and “Los” is not only featured, but is constantly referred to as Latino appreciation.  Really?!?!  Three letters mean you appreciate a cultural background?  So, when a uniform says “Los Suns” rather than “Los Sols”, what does that mean?  The “article” of the team name can be in the Spanish language, but the name, the word that truly represents the team isn’t worthy of being properly translated?

Seriously, if you are going to try and highlight the different cultures that follow your sport, there are two ways to do it, keep it in the language and names it was designed, or truly commit to honoring the other cultures that follow basketball. Completely translate the team name in the language you are representing that night.  Go all out German night, Italian night, Spanish night, Greek night, Russian night, etc.  Do yourselves a favor, just commit or don’t, and for the first time in my life, I will suggest you take a page from ESPN, use Deportes, and respect the language you are targeting, don’t hold yourselves in higher regard than your customers, it is just plain embarrassing to me, as a sports fan.

There isn’t a football fan in the world who hasn’t by now heard of Jim Schwartz’ epic, game losing blunder on Thursday. Now, it’s not exactly news that the Lions lose on Thanksgiving, but Thursday’s crusher had to be a new low. To recap, the Texans’ Justin Forsett blasts up the middle for about a 7 yard gain, gets “tackled,” and then springs back to his feet and runs the remaining 73 yards untouched into the endzone for a touchdown, bringing the Texans back to within striking distance. Now, any blind man could see that about 85% of Forsett’s body hit the turf, including at least one of his knees, and a forearm. He should have been ruled down, and it wasn’t close. Who knows if the refs were merely poorly positioned, or incompetent, but they allowed the play to continue. Fortunately for the Lions, all scoring plays are reviewed these days, so the only thing in the world that Schwartz could do to make the score stand was to throw the red challenge flag. Since all scoring plays are reviewed anyhow, you are not allowed to challenge them. So what does he do? Yep, the one thing that could crush his team, though to be fair, they still held the lead at this point. They would also have a chance to win in overtime, but Schwartz ruined that too. More on that in a sec.

I love sidebars, so we’re going to have one here. This rule that forbids throwing the challenge flag on a scoring play, penalizing the offending coach’s team with a 15 yard penalty, I absolutely love. Why? As a Rams fan since the 80s, including the post Superbowl winning Mike Martz era, I can virtually guarantee you that Martz was the inspiration. You see, Martz used to LOVE throwing the challenge flag on plays that had no bearing on the game. If the spot was half a yard off on a play where the Rams got the first down anyway, out comes the challenge flag. All you really accomplish by doing that is embarrassing and thereby pissing off the refs. I would not be the least bit surprised that if some expose came out revealing that in the early 00s when Martz was in charge of the Rams, refs would routinely spot the ball off by half a yard deliberately to get Martz to waste his challenges early in a half so that when it came down to a potentially game changing play in the fourth quarter, he’d be all out them. Anyway, I would also bet that the 15 yard foul for challenging a scoring play is kind of an homage to the refs from the league. A way of saying, yeah, you guys take a beating out there from the players, fans, coaches, media… and you do kind of deserve it because you freaking suck at your jobs… but seeing as we lack options for improvement at this time, we’ll give you this little gift. And it ended up being the ultimate middle finger to Schwartz and the Lions.

Moving on, earlier I mentioned that Schwartz’ incompetence didn’t end there. In fact, I think his gaffe in overtime was even worse. What he did is part of a disturbing trend among NFL coaches in a position to win a game late in the fourth quarter or in overtime. In fact, Houston’s Gary Kubiak was equally guilty of the same crime earlier in overtime, but was much smarter about it for his second crack at it. Back to the Lions, after an interception gave them the ball in Texans territory, they drove to about the 30 yard line. Rather than try to get closer for an easier field goal to win the game, Schwartz was content to run into a ten man front twice, gaining nothing, before attempting a long field goal to win the game on THIRD DOWN!!!

Anyone with a brain can tell you, field goals get more difficult as they get farther away. If your drive stalls and you’re left with a 46 or 47 yarder to win it, fine. Go for it. But if you have a chance to get closer, wouldn’t that be the perfect time for a play action fake? Anything more inventive than a bull rush into a defensive front banking 100% on the fact that you are going to run the ball?

Predictably, Jason Hanson missed the long field goal, as did Shayne Graham for Houston earlier in overtime, as Kubiak made the same mistake, actually losing five yards on three consecutive runs to make matters even worse. The point is this. Matt Stafford had not turned the ball over all game. Wouldn’t you trust him to make a good decision with the game on the line? If you trust him not to throw a pick when you are deep in your own territory, and such a mistake would surely be game ending, wouldn’t you trust him to botch up a pass when you are in position to stick the dagger in?

These guys are not alone though. The Rams’ Jeff Fisher, probably the worst head coach in the league, and one of the worst in history with at least 100 games coached, did the exact same thing last week against the 49rs, with an additional epic moment of idiocy to boot. Trusting Greg Zuerlein’s monster leg to be good from 52 yards, Fisher mailed in the offense and basically ran three concession plays, resulting in negative one yards. Rather than let Sam Bradford try to get a bit closer by running some kind of passing play, after Bradford had been uncharacteristically brilliant all game, he for all intents and purposes settled for a 50+ yard field goal on first down. No worries though, as Young GZ nailed it… unfortunately, with Fisher looking right at it, the play clock expired and GZ’s next attempt from 58 yards was wide right. Fisher has a long history of ineptitude, barely managing a .500 record with a supremely talented Titans team over more than 15 years. How you can you have a track record of accomplishing little when given a lot and be respected as a good coach? Nobody can argue that the Rams have “a lot,” but like many coaches who are criminally overrated, Fisher lacks any ability to adjust when things are not going well as originally planned, arguably the most important skill for a coach to have. For example, he’ll be getting shredded as the Rams did by the Patriots in London a few weeks back, and refuse to budge from his original defensive game plan. Additionally, he will unfailingly see that something is working, such as Steven Jackson gobbling up 6 yards a carry throughout the first half, and then never give him the ball again.

These guys have head coaching jobs!!! Doesn’t that amaze someone other than me?

This is not limited to football, of course. One of my favorite examples is Phil Jackson, even though I hate basketball. But wait, you say? What about his gazillion championships, you say? Look, when you have a team that features (and you can apply this to his Bulls teams as well as his Lakers teams) two or three of the top 20 players that ever played, five or six of the top 100 in history, and round that off with a group of reserves, most of whom had been allstars at some point, isn’t anything less than a championship a complete failure at that point? Take the ’94,’95 season, without Michael Jordan, all he could manage was a .500 record before MJ’s return, despite the presence of the great Scottie Pippen and other good players such as Steve Kerr, BJ Armstrong, Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper and more. My favorite epic failure of Jackson’s to point out is the 2010-2011 conference semis against Dallas. When Dallas began to trounce the Lakers, on their way to a sweep, all Jackson did was sit there like a deer in headlights. Why? He had no answers! The ruse was up. Like he had for an entire career, he banked on an all world line up, this time Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Ron Artest, Andrew Bynum et al, to just win. Triangle Shmiangle. Sure, it can be effective, but when it starts to fail, shouldn’t you be able to make adjustments? When Dallas starts to just overrun you, shouldn’t you be able to tweak the defensive approach? Sure, if you could coach… Jackson has a way of managing egos, but when it comes to actually coaching, he’s useless. It would take me seeing him coach a team that isn’t replete with hall of famers to make me believe it.

Joe Torre is another great example. George Steinbrenner bought all the talent that money could buy, and while the Yanks did end up in the playoffs every year, they won only one more World Series after the threepeat at the end of the 90s. Sure, four World Series titles sounds great… but at the risk of repeating myself, if you are loaded with all of the best players, isn’t anything less than a championship a failure? The truth behind Torre is, he just another clueless guy who lucked into some managerial “success” after a good playing career. Make Derek Jeter the player/manager during this same 15 year period and the Yankees probably win 12 World Series. Tell me I’m wrong! Look at his Dodger tenure after his time with the Yankees, and you will see him for what he is as a manager. A guy who cannot manage a bullpen and can’t get an offense to generate any runs without 7 guys in the lineup who can hit 30+ home runs.

Let’s look at the truth of the matter here. Most guys with coaching or managing jobs aren’t worth salt. They are no different than any Joe Fan. Aren’t real managers and coaches supposed to be able to do more with less? Take Wigan Athletic (English Premier League Soccer… I love that felt compelled to clarify that…) manager Roberto Martinez. Every year, Wigan is tipped for relegation. And really, they should be. Their payroll, and therefore their roster, is meager. They have few fans. Yet somehow, Martinez manages to squeeze the most out of his players every season and avoid the drop. Not only that, his misfit squad is showing signs of possibly contending for a top ten spot this season. Not familiar with soccer? Look at Baltimore Orioles skipper Buck Showalter. Are you telling me that if you saw that roster before last season you would have picked them for a playoff spot? Bob Melvin anyone?

Again, tell me I am wrong.

I have a bunch of San Diego Chargers fans for friends.  I know, I know, I am really the moron in that equation. After all, I know this little fact and yet I am still friends with these folks. To a man, they all want Norv Turner fired. Really? The guy who has nearly a 60% win ratio despite not being given much to work with in the post LaDanian Thomlinson era? Maybe AJ Smith is the problem? 

And don’t get me started on the media. They are part of the problem too! In fact, let me tell you… dammit, my fiance just shot me a look from the couch that said something like, if you don’t finish that article in a minute, you can take that word that Jack’s wife spelled in that one Jack In The Box commercial where they were playing Scrabble and permanently affix it to our relationship… So… good night.

Rivalry games sure are fun, and college kids sure are creative.  With the cross town rivalry coming up this weekend between UCLA and USC, students in one of the dorm buildings on UCLA’s campus decided to leave USC a message.  Here at The Stain, we do avoid typing any profanities, but I figured I found a loophole, I am not writing it, I am just posting a picture of a dorm building…enjoy.

I know it is easy to pick on the officials, but today was one of the worst officiated game I have ever seen.  It is bad enough after 75 minutes of football a game ends in a tie, but what about the fact two terrible and one questionable decision by the officials may have very well cost the Rams a football game today.  In the first half of the game, the ball was spotted very close to the first down yard to gain.  As is the norm, they brought out the chains and measured.  What they didn’t do was stop the clock.  Nearly two minutes later, they line up to run the next play, clock still running, when the officials stop the clock to review and get the clock right.  Well done…except they didn’t change the time left on the clock.  Final drive of the first half, Rams run a fake punt and work up towards mid-field before the time runs out.  Would have been nice to have that minute plus back.  Then, in overtime, Young GZ kicks a 53 yarder to win it…only delay of game was called.  Now, you may think once the clock hits 0 it is a delay of game, but that is not necessarily true.  The back judge is responsible for looking at the play clock, when it shows 0, he must look down, if the ball is still stationary delay is the call.  When the replay showed the clock right next to the ball, it appeared the clock reached 0 at the same moment the ball was snapped, therefore, I don’t feel delay should have been called.  Then, later in OT, while the Rams are trying to run the hurry up, the official spots the ball 5 yards away from where the runner was marked down, both teams line up over the ball, before the official picks the ball back up and moves it.  Again, the clock runs for a good 6-7 seconds while the officials try to remove their heads from their backsides.  The Rams later complete a pass and get out of bounds just as time expires in 49er territory.  With the time wasted by unexceptable officials, the Rams could have easily thrown a Hail Mary or run a quick out and been in long field goal range.  It is easy to say the officials cost the Rams the game, and there is no telling they would have taken advantage of the two clock mishaps, but regardless, the officials took the chance away.  The NFL never will, especially since they didn’t even admit the officials were wrong in the Seahawks-Packers game earlier this year, but the league office deserves the fans that devoted 4 hours to that game an appology.

The age old question remains, does God give a damn who wins a game? If you listened to the winners, it would certainly seem so with how many players are in a hurry to give the Almighty One all the credit. How come God never has to bear any burden for a defeat though. Praise abounds, but you never hear anyone blame Him/Her, do you? Where are the, “Yeah, I think we were doing well there until Jesus made me throw that interception.” Why no, “First, let me just blame God because God is bad.” Sure, Stevie Johnson hinted at Jesus not wanting him to catch a perfect overtime pass in the end zone from Ryan Fitzpatrick, but nobody has ever really pinned a defeat on divine intervention.

Truthfully though, if you were God, wouldn’t you do it? If for no other reason than to eff with people, wouldn’t you affect the outcomes of certain things? I’m not talking about Angels in the Outfield stuff here. I’m talking about karma. I’m talking about rebuttal to hypocrisy. I’m talking about penance for willful disregard of honorable play. Take Evander Holyfield for example. Holyfield was a boxing champion, an entertains brawler with a granite chin who never ducked an opponent no matter how fearsome (or hungry in Mike Tyson’s case). He was easy to cheer for because of his boxing exploits, but once he opened his mouth after a fight, it was nauseating. The Lord this and The Lord that…from a man with numerous illegitimate children outside his marriage. If you were The Lord, wouldn’t you bestow upon him crippling financial problems and slurred speech due to likely CTE?

Or what if you were Jesus, just chillin with your dad on a fluffy cloud, draining a few beers, watching a very entertaining NLCS between the Giants and Cardinals with no vested interest in a winner. Wouldn’t Matt Holliday’s borderline criminal slide to take out Marco Scutaro, a classy veteran who plays the game right, compel you to afflict Holliday with a bad back, forcing him to sit idly by and ultimately participate at a fraction of his ability while you flatten out his pitchers’ breaking pitches at crucial times and turn his teammates’ formidable wooden bats to flimsy cardboard giftwrap rolls?

Tell me you wouldn’t. Tell me you wouldn’t punish the hypocrites and charlatans. Or maybe you already are, and while you’re at it, just for kicks you’re condemning the blogger who outed your shenanigans to the sporting world to a mundane and banal existence jockeying a painfully bland desk for a living. I’d like to thank The Lord…especially if He/She can now throw a Dodger fan a bone and not let San Francisco beat Detroit in the World Series. If God can do me that one solid, I’d like to thank The Lord…

Please, add your own thoughts.

20 game winner. NL strikeout leader. Uh…knuckleballer. Three gin and tonics ago, I probably could have come up with another superlative for R.A. Dickey, the Mets’ amazing right hander who has experience a career renaissance at an age when most guys are staring retirement in the face. Did I just spell renaissance correctly? Don’t know. Don’t care. Don’t feel like opening another internet window to go to dictionary.com.

If Dickey does not win the NL Cy Young award this year, it will be nothing less than criminal. The award, by definition, goes to the league’s best pitcher. The numbers he has put up are rivaled by only one, the Nationals’ Gio Gonzalez. However, Gio’s numbers are just slightly inferior in every category, wins notwithstanding, and he plays for a better team across the board.

So here’s the facts. Dickey plays for a lousy team but leads the NL in most pertinent pitching categories. Gonzalez is second in most while playing for a very good team. Take nothing away from Gio. He’s a big reason why his Nats are a playoff team. But has he been the best? Nope. R.A. has.

If I may, I’d like to vomit for what I’m about to say. The MVP award is a bit different than the Cy Young. It is supposed to go to the most valuable player in the league, not necessarily the best or most skilled. So, as much as it kills me as a Dodger fan, I’d also like to say that if anyone but Buster Posey wins it, the award is a joke. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is more responsible for a Giants team running away with the NL West after losing its most productive player at the time (Melky Cabrera) to a doping suspension.

Oh, one more baseball bit for you. And more on this in an upcoming smear, but what kind of discussions about awards and such do you think Luis Cruz would be involved in if the Dodgers were not about to be eliminated from playoff contention? On a team with Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, Adrian Gonzalez, and Hanley Ramirez, the name Luis Cruz should not be the answer to the question, “Who is the Dodgers best hitter?” Is he? Nope. But he’s hitting close to .350 the last two months. When it matters. And nobody else on that offense has come close. It’s really too bad. At least for Dodger fans.

The fourth gin and tonic is now taking its effect. It just took me three minutes to type that sentence. So I’ll sign off here.