Dodger Thoughts

Jon Weisman's outlet for dealing psychologically with the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball and life

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© Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers 2012

It’s official.

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Matt Kemp bids a fond farewell to April

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May day chat

23 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    I have not checked to be sure, but I think Matt Kemp leads in the triple crown categories from May 1 2011 through now. I wonder how rare “calendar-year triple crowns” are.

  2. Anonymous

    MLB network is the national cable network that doesn’t require a separate subscription.  The schedule for games they will carry in May is out, and the boys in blue are featured as the primary game SIX TIMES (May 8, 15, 19, 26, 29, 31).

    • Anonymous

      Don’t they also offer a subscription package for out of market games?

      • Anonymous

        Yes, if you want to pay $200 for the season.  I don’t.

  3. Anonymous

    I wonder if the attendance at Dodger games will recover, now that new ownership is in place?
    .
    It was pretty weird seeing mostly empty stands even this year, with the team doing as well as it has been doing.  Although the Washington series seemed to be well-attended.

    • Anonymous

      Hopefully it will…. I’d like to think some of the low attendance this season even with hot start was due to poor weather conditions, atleast for LA standards. Though no games rained out, there was threat of rain for a few of our early home games, and also a few on the chilly side (in the 50s). I know thats nothing for other cities, but LA people arent use to watching baseball in those conditions lol… Or maybe that had nothing to do with it, but either way I hope it picks up.

  4. Anonymous

    Very few teams pack the seats for April games outside of Opening Day. The weather isn’t great, people don’t know if the team is good, and kids are still in school.

    The Washington series had deeply discounted tickets on Friday and there was a bobblehead giveaway  on Saturday.

  5. Anonymous

    Hopefully the fireworks shows will now last longer than 5 minutes.

  6. Anonymous

    Does anyone know exactly how much of the franchise Magic will own and/or what his exact role will be?

  7. Anonymous

    It’s hard to feel overjoyed about this. So much makes me sick to my stomach. Optimistic, yes, but that unmitigated elation I once hoped for is nowhere to be found.

  8. Anonymous

    Time to celebrate with a win tonight!

  9. Anonymous

    Cool photo!

  10. Anonymous

    May 1 will forever be known as the day when the reign of a horrible terrorist ended.

    • Anonymous

      The Battle of Waterloo took place on June 18. Adolf Hitler died on …. April 30.

  11. Anonymous

    I think this is fantastic news, and I salute our new owners. I’m just happy the ugly McCourt era is over, and a new one will begin. Will the team play better? No way to know, but I still feel optimistic. 

  12. Anonymous

    Totally un-related, but does anyone have an explanation for all the 6:10 start times?  They are for most, but not all, Saturday night games.  I understand the 4:15 start times for some Fox Saturday day games (sort of–I know why that has been mandated, but Fox’s incredibly bad coverage of Major League Baseball–from its insistence showing regional games instead of national games, [which is dumb because a local viewer could otherwise see those on a local broadcast, and in our case, wtih Vinny calling them, instead of Fox’s trained monkeys, whereas someone out-of-market cannot see a good naitonal game, and cannot even get the game streamed on MLB.com premium] to their insistence on using Tim McCarver (whose best years as a baseball broadcaster were 20 years ago, and not even that good then), to the excessive commercial breaks which draws an otherwise 3 hour game into 4 hours, causing the audience they want ot attract to tune out, and now starting games late in the afternoon/early evening instead of traditional 1 PM games that kids are more likely to watch.)

    I thought that the 6:10 games were a way to bring people to the ballpark an hour earlier on a non-work night (and create an opportunity to get the kids to bed early), which seemed pretty good.  But not all of the Saturday night games are at 6:10.  Then I thought that it was only before Sunday day games, because one 7:10 Saturday game is before a Sunday Night Baseball game, which made sense because it gives the players an extra hour before an early call for the day game.  But again, there is a 7:10 game the night before a Sunday day game.

    Some good possible explanations, but I have not seen any.

    •  I think the Saturday games are earlier for family friendly reasons, except when the game is a contender to be on Fox Saturday night primetime. But I don’t know for sure.

    • Anonymous

      The trend on the West Coast has been to start Saturday night games earlier. The Angels have done it for a few years. The Giants and A’s do it also, although they try to avoid Saturday night games. I’m not sure about the Padres.

    • Anonymous

      >> Totally un-related, but does anyone have an explanation for all the 6:10 start times?  They are for most, but not all, Saturday night games.
      .
      No they aren’t.  I’m looking at the schedule.  Saturday May 5, the Dodgers play in the afternoon (and the only game with an 8:10 CDT start time is the one in Colorado).  May 12, the Dodgers play at 8:10 CDT, the only time all month. The game starts at the usual 9:10 CDT on Saturday May 19 and Saturday May 26, with no team starting at 8:10 CDT on either of those Saturdays.

    • Anonymous

      >> from its insistence showing regional games instead of national games
      .
      During the regular season, there is no such thing as “national games”; all games are regional.  Despite the way fans of certain East Coast teams think everyone throughout the country lives and dies by their rivalry, it’s not true.

      • Anonymous

        Thanks for the answers.  I am not in town and had not heard explanations for the start time.

        nsxtasy–my point is that there used to be national games.  All the time.  NBC’s “Game of the Week” on Satruday afternoons (and sometimes Saturday mornings, when broadcast from the East Coast, and maybe a double-header) were nationally broadcast games.  You got insights into teams from all over.  You got to know the whole league.  And in an era where the Dodgers broadcast only 50 games on TV (almost exclusively road games), and when cable was not that prevalent, when the Dodgers were the featured Game of the Week, it was a great treat.

        But the Fox regional broadcast now is just moronic.  Nearly every team broadcasts all (or almost all) of their games either over the air or on cable, what good does it do for the fan/viewer in Los Angeles to see a Dodger game braodcast on Fox?  None.  In fact, it is a negative because if it is a game in the NL West, Vin Scully would otherwise be calling the play-by-play, but when it is on Fox, the BEST we can get is Joe Buck (think of that–that’s the best case scenario–their lower tier announcers are unwatchable.  I would rather listen to a game on the radio broadcast by Vin than watch a game on TV called by another announcer.)  And what is worse, if you are out-of-market (as I am for the moment), those games are blacked out by MLB.TV.  When there was a national game, if you were a fan who was out-of-market, you might get a chance to see your team play on the Game of the Week’s national game.  But now, you will always get the regional game–even if the region is not even the same metro area where you are located (for instance, in Washington DC, you get either a Nationals or Orioles game, but if they are not on Fox, it goes to like a Yankees or Braves game).

        So the result is that I am not getting to see a game I could not already watch, I might be prevented from seeing a game I want to watch, I get more limited exposure to the rest of the league, and even when I get to see the game I want to watch, it is of a poorer quality (longer with drawn out commercial breaks and a weaker announcing crew).  If you were writing a textbook about how to just annoy people, you could not do a better job.

  13. Anonymous

    Still trying to comment.

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