Brian
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Post by Brian on Oct 8, 2020 23:00:13 GMT -8
If the San Francisco Giants hadn't lost the last game of the season, they would have met the Dodgers in the Wild Card Series last week. Instead, another team with a losing record came to Chavez Ravine. The Milwaukee Brewers went down in two games. Tonight in Arlington, Texas, the Dodgers swept the Division Series against the San Diego Padres, who had the second best record in the National League but had lost their two best starting pitchers to injuries. I swore that I would be happy if the Padres had prevailed, but now I'll never know for sure.
In the other National League Division Series, the Atlanta Braves swept the Miami Marlins. I didn't have a dog -- or a fish -- in that fight. The Dodgers will find the Braves a much tougher opponent in next week's NL Championship Series than their previous postseason rivals.
I've followed the American League playoffs a lot more than usual because of the presence of the Houston Asterisks, the eighth seeded team and holders of a losing record for the season. After sweeping the Minnesota Twins in the Wild Card Series, they took up residence in Dodger Stadium, one of the AL bubble parks, for the Division Series. Today, they defeated the Oakland A's in four games, celebrating on the same field where they stole the 2017 World Series.
In the other AL Division Series, the Tampa Bay Rays -- another fish team from Florida -- will face the New York Yankees in a fifth game on Friday, having failed to put away the Yankees tonight. I do have a fish in this fight. As a Dodger fan, I find it historically if not physically impossible to root for the Yankees. If they wind up playing the Asterisks in the AL Championship Series, I don't know how I will cope.
It's Friday. Go Fish!
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Oct 12, 2020 23:01:04 GMT -8
I confess that I care more about the Houston Asterisks losing the American League Championship Series than the Dodgers winning the National League's counterpart. The last time I remember paying any attention to the American League before the World Series was in 2004, when the Boston Red Sox won their first title since 1918. The Red Sox were a Wild Card team that season, but they had a winning record after 162 games. The Asterisks -- Anni calls them the Astroholes, even better -- lost two games more than they won in this year's 60-game season. That's enough reason to root against them. But I'm not the only one who's still incensed about their cheating against the Dodgers and other teams in 2017 and lack of contrition since the commissioner's report earlier this year. As MSNBC anchor Kasie Hunt said this morning, "This week we are all Rays fans." So far, so good. The Rays won the first two games and just need to win two more in the seven-game series. The Dodgers dropped the first game of the National League series tonight 5 to 1, after the Atlanta Braves scored four runs in the ninth inning.
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Roberta
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Post by Roberta on Oct 14, 2020 14:57:04 GMT -8
Well it seems to be trending The Blue Crew’s way tonight...I walk into an OBX restaurant and the TV shows 11-0 Dodgers in the bottom of the first. Or did I have too much beer helping Corah garden this afternoon?
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Oct 19, 2020 23:00:26 GMT -8
I couldn't be happier. On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Rays defeated the Houston Astroholes in Game 7 of the AL Championship Series. And Sunday the Dodgers prevailed over the Atlanta Braves in Game 7 of the NL Championship Series -- after losing three of the first four games of the series and needing to win the last three. The only other Dodger team to do that was the 1981 club, which won the World Series in a strike shortened season. As I wrote back in June, if the Dodgers win the World Series, it will be meaningless. Thus I find myself rooting for the Padres -- unless they're playing the Dodgers, of course. Of course, I'm rooting for the Dodgers now. Everyone on this remarkable team thinks that a 2020 World Series championship will be more meaningful than a victory in a non-pandemic year. If guys like Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen, Justin Turner, Kike Hernandez, Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger feel that way -- some of them have played all seven years that the Dodgers won the NL Western Division and didn't go all the way -- who am I to say that the first World Championship in Los Angeles since 1988 would be meaningless this year? I've seen more postseason baseball than any time since 1991, when I was unemployed. While rooting against the Astroholes, I grew fond of the Rays. You cannot count any team out in a seven-game series. Still, I predict that the Dodgers will win in six games.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Oct 21, 2020 23:00:30 GMT -8
The Dodgers won the first game of the World Series handily but dropped the second, 6 to 4. If they lose only one more, my prediction will come true.
I have my reasons for thinking that the Dodgers will win the series. After being cheated out of the championship by the Astroholes in 2017 and being defeated by the superior Red Sox in 2018, they're hungrier this time. The Dodgers have a lot more experience in the postseason than the Rays -- that franchise went to World Series only once before in 2008, when most of this year's team was in middle school. On Friday, ace starting pitcher Walker Buehler will oppose Charlie Morton on the mound. The Dodgers last saw Morton when he was a member of the trash can banging Astroholes in Game 7 of the World Series in Chavez Ravine, so they'll be pumped up at the plate.
No matter what happens, I'll enjoy watching Mookie Betts and dreaming about the future. He's a rare five tool player -- not only can he hit, run, field, throw and hit for power, he does those things better than most with heightened intellect, instinct and pure joy. In Game 1, he walked, stole second then led a double steal. He took a long lead off third base, sprinted to home when he heard the bat crack a grounder to first and slid into home plate with no time to spare. He became only the second player in World Series history to have a walk and two steals in one inning. The other one was Babe Ruth, 99 years ago.
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Roberta
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Post by Roberta on Oct 23, 2020 13:42:55 GMT -8
John and I will watch because we want to wring every moment from the short season no matter how little we care about either team. John goes further than I, claims to now feel sympathy for Dodger fans for the recent post-seasons and is somewhat rooting on the Blue. Or maybe he can’t back a non-Orioles in AL but a NL team doesn’t count? Like learning only this summer that he doesn’t like green beans, I apparently know him less well than I assumed.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Oct 29, 2020 23:00:12 GMT -8
When the Dodgers won the World Series Tuesday night in six games – which I predicted! – I didn’t feel like shooting off fireworks like my neighbors or looting downtown like a few others did. In fact, just after the victory, I didn’t feel like celebrating at all.
Baseball is a game of rules. I didn’t write much in this thread about my objections to this season’s changes, like a three-game Wild Card round and the placement of a runner on second base at the beginning of extra innings, which commissioner Rob Manfred has already asked to make permanent. I didn’t want to sound like such an old man this early into my dotage.
I'm already on record here saying that Major League Baseball's pandemic strategy wasn't strict enough. While the National Basketball Association's players entered a bubble to complete their season, MLB players refused to be separated from their families for a similar length of time. Sure enough, positive Covid tests and game postponements plagued the first weeks of the truncated 2020 baseball season. But Justin Turner, the heart and soul of the Dodgers for seven years, had addressed his teammates on a Zoom call in July, telling them they had to be more careful than the MLB guidelines. And no Dodger got a positive test result.
Until the seventh inning of Game 6, that is. I didn't think much about seeing Edwin Rios bat for Turner in the eighth. I was too caught up in the momentum, then the elation of the Dodgers' victory. My heart sank when the commissioner announced in his postgame interview that Turner had been pulled because a lab had just reported a positive test. Manfred said Turner had gone into quarantine, at the moment in the stadium doctor's office. I shut off the TV.
Later I learned that instead of the usual champagne spray in the locker room, the Dodgers brought their families out to the field for a long celebration. Justin Turner emerged with his wife after an hour, hugging lots of people and taking off his mask for a team photo next to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, a cancer survivor. He only left after a conversation with the top team executive followed by a stop to clutch the World Series trophy with both hands for photos.
In my mind, Rob Manfred has a lot to answer for. Why was Turner sitting in the stadium after he was removed from the game? He wasn't going to ride the bus back to the hotel with everybody else. Why was he allowed to remain on the field? One MLB security guy asked Turner to leave but he refused. At that point, two or three big guys should have escorted him out if necessary, risking their lives to protect dozens of others. And what happened in the so called bubble in Texas? How did Turner and one member of the Rays' entourage (so far) get Covid after three weeks of quarantine and regular testing?
I don't need to know what was going on in former Dodger Justin Turner's head. He became a free agent with the last out on Tuesday.
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Post by Sharon W on Oct 30, 2020 10:00:02 GMT -8
I've never thought sports figures make good role models. How sad this victory was marred by such selfish behavior.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Dec 11, 2020 14:41:45 GMT -8
I started following Brett de Geus when Sharon posted. He was invited to the Dodgers camp for spring training and pitched a scoreless inning in a major league exhibition game before he was moved to the minor league roster along with other A league players. Spring training ended for everybody a few days later. Brett de Geus left the Dodgers organization on Thursday. He was the second pick in Major League Baseball's Rule 5 draft. The Texas Rangers got him in the major league portion of the draft, which means that he's likely to pitch for the Rangers in 2021 after languishing at the Dodgers' alternate training site in the abbreviated 2020 season. If the Rangers don't keep him on their 26 man roster all year, the Dodgers can get him back for only $50,000.
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Post by Sharon W on Dec 12, 2020 7:32:10 GMT -8
His aunt is happy he made the majors even if out of state. Upside for Brett is no income tax in Texas.
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