Brian
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Post by Brian on Mar 19, 2024 23:00:15 GMT -8
It's midnight on March 20 as I post this. In three hours, the Los Angeles Dodgers will play their season opener against the San Diego Padres in South Korea. I stay up late but even if I tell myself that the first pitch is actually scheduled for 2:05 a.m. standard time, I won't be able to watch the whole game. What's the appropriate beverage for 3 a.m. anyway, beer or coffee? The rest of the Major League Baseball teams start their season on March 28. The Dodgers are the obvious choice to win the National League West again this year. But nobody I know picked the wild card Arizona Diamondbacks to be the National League champions last year -- and they improved their roster in the off season. I've tracked the player transactions, injuries and spring training games, and it's hard to admit but the San Francisco Giants appear stronger too. I picked the San Diego Padres, who wound up winning only 82 games and losing 80, to take the NL West last year based on their huge payroll. Despite trading their best hitter and losing their best starting pitcher, I feel they can only do better in 2024 because of a newfound team spirit. Welcome to the 17th annual baseball thread on the Montrose Peace Vigil message board. Please feel free to post anything here -- the last pitch won't be thrown until the final World Series game, which could be in November.
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Brian
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Posts: 3,794
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Post by Brian on Mar 21, 2024 23:00:16 GMT -8
I watched parts of the pregame show as I got ready for bed Wednesday morning and fell asleep before the end of the first half inning. Former Dodger Yu Darvish was the Padres' opening day pitcher but he seemed rusty, such as making the first of four pitch clock violations by Padre pitchers. The rule that awards the batter a ball on the count if a pitcher fails to throw before the clock runs down started last year and I don't remember more than one violation in any game I watched. But in baseball, there's always the chance that you'll see something you've never seen before. I'm still enjoying the replays of Gavin Lux grounding a ball clean through the webbing of Jake Cronenworth's huge first baseman's glove into right field, scoring the go-ahead run for the Dodgers, who won 5 to 2.
Thursday's game also started at 3:05 a.m. with the U.S. major league debut of Japanese superstar Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound for the Dodgers. The first half inning was excruciating -- it took 20 minutes for Yamamoto to get three outs, but not before giving up five runs. I've seen worse pitching meltdowns -- the six runs that Clayton Kershaw gave up in the first inning of the Dodgers' final game of the 2023 postseason still keeps me up nights. I switched to "Morning Joe" and dozed off immediately. The game didn't end until 6:49 with a score of Padres 15, Dodgers 11.
Both games were scheduled for 7:05 p.m. Seoul time. If they had been played at 1:05 -- a common start time throughout the MLB season -- Dodger and Padre fans could have watched at a more reasonable hour in the Pacific time zone, 9:05 p.m.
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Brian
Administrator
Posts: 3,794
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Post by Brian on Apr 14, 2024 23:00:06 GMT -8
I find myself enjoying baseball more every year since I've had more time to watch games on cable and to read a ton every day. This season is special because we don't have the uncertainty of the new rules that loomed over the game last year after the turmoil caused by the owners' lockout the year before. The superfan in me who went to 20 games at Dodger Stadium annually and poured over thick copies of the Sporting News every week in the '80's has been reborn -- albeit more remotely from the field of play.
I haven't gone to Chavez Ravine since 2018 for a pile of reasons -- the escalating costs, the luxury seats in what used to be foul territory, the booming sound system, the proliferation of ads and the general inattentiveness of most ticket holders -- to name a few of the small and large annoyances that progressively got worse after Guggenheim bought the team. The way that stadium security treated the woman who got Ohtani's first Dodger home run ball in the bleachers gave me another reason to avoid the place though no more are necessary. However, if I'm ever near San Diego during baseball season I'll go back to Petco Park for sure.
Let me close with kudos to the new executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, who restored box scores and standings to the sports half-section after the paper quit printing them last July. They're two days behind the action instead of the next day reporting I enjoyed my entire life, although I can still get everything from the Daily News in my driveway if the games don't run too late like Friday's 11-inning affair and Saturday's two-hour rain delay. And the Times' tables are bigger than those in the Daily News. The San Francisco Bay area newspapers have run a day behind for decades, so the Times is no outlier in what remains of the newspaper industry. The Times now provides a game day story online that's laid out like a page in print, which I also appreciate.
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