So here I am in Chavez Ravine for the first time this season. And I can’t tell you how exciting it is because the Dodgers have a chance to put up their first three-game winning streak of the season. Twenty-five games in. And on their third try.
Before the game I sat in the dugout with manager Joe Torre and the shrinking platoon of baseball writers. Torre is friendly enough, a Zen kinda guy. Nothing seems to really disturb him. Probably a coping mechanism he learned in New York with the Yankees. I mean, if you take seriously every “crisis” in the Bronx, you go nuts in a year. But Joe lasted 12 seasons there.
He was telling anecdotes. Just rambling, in that way he does. Ask him any question and he may not stop for five minutes. It can make for tedious listening, if the verbal detours go off into the tedious. But it can be fun if he free-associates himself into some telling observation. Like his random observation about Shea Stadium today. (And I have no recollection of how he got there.) “It always felt old. Even when it was new it felt like it had been there a long time. It felt like a dungeon-like place.”
Doug Padilla, a former colleague and baseball writer for the past, what, the past five seasons now, said he’s never seen a manager carry on as long as Torre does, pre-game. Just sits and chats. And chats some more.
A couple of observations:
The stands are perhaps 60 percent full. But the Dodgers will announce attendance at at least 40,000. And I’m thinking 45,000. Both numbers including season-ticket sales. But do they sell that many? Even in the not-even-half-full corners of the lesser areas? I doubt it. If they announce more than 45,000 … it’s a joke. I’m prepared to laugh.
Andruw Jones, My Huge Mistake in fantasy ball, is off to another awful day. (Real life, Andruw is Ned Colletti’s Huge Mistake.)
First inning he comes up with the bases loaded and two outs. The previous two batters, Russell Martin and James Loney have walked.
So what does Andruw do? Take a pitch or two? See if he can coax Jeff Francis into throwing him a fat pitch?
Heck no. ‘Druw takes a half-hearted swing at the first pitch … and lofts a lazy fly ball to medium left field. End of inning. End of another chance to DO SOMETHING for my ball team. Never mind the Dodgers.
The fans booed. As they had every right to do. Jones now is hitting .165 (13-for-79) with one homer and four RBI. And we have to look at this for another 300 games — when that ridiculous $36.5 million, two-year contract is up?
2 responses so far ↓
1 Doug Padilla // Apr 27, 2008 at 1:51 PM
That would be seven years now as a hardened ball writer. The thing with Torre is that he budgets a little more time than most to ramble on with the writers. Definitely a carryover from his NY days when dozens of scribes packed around him on a daily basis. Guys like Mike Scioscia and Ozzie Guillen ditch the writers once batting practice starts to start hitting ground balls to middle infielders or watch their guys take hacks in the cage. Torre is less hands-on, especially when it comes to hitting guys grounders.
Here’s an amusing Torre story that has come up a few times now in the last two weeks. Torre is catching in his first All-Star Game and Don Drysdale is the starter. So he asks Drysdale, “What sign do I give you for the spit ball?” Drysdale says he’ll just throw it off a fastball sign whenever he feels like it. Big mistake. Torre says in the first inning he was back at the backstop saying hello to the mayor three times. There to pick up another unexpected spitter that got past him of course.
2 Char Ham // Apr 27, 2008 at 7:15 PM
Got a Q — how much does Torre talk compared to when Lasorda managed? Lasorda was known for holdiing court w/his friends like Frank Sinatra, but what about how much he talked to reporters? Could you write something about that please?
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