'Donnie Baseball' Loves L.A.

One of my favorite baseball players of all-time will get his place in the sun.
Former Yankee great Don Mattingly will replace former Yankee manager and current Los Angeles Dodger skipper Joe Torre in 2011. 
Torre said today that he won't return next year.
Readers of this blog may remember a time when the Yankees ruled in this space. Then they treated Joe Torre like shit and built that fake Yankee Stadium with tons of public money and I remembered the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame":


"Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game."


Cheers to Donnie Baseball and best wishes to Joe. Both survived the Boss and lived to tell about it; now Joe rides off into a SoCal sunset while Donnie gets to ride out the wacky carnival that is the McCourt divorce. 

And it's all still just a game...

Koufax And Torre: Safe At Home

I'm not a big fan of the TV machine, but I watched Sandy Koufax and Joe Torre with the L.A. Times' T.J. Simers last night. It was a benefit for Torre's Safe At Home foundation, and it was superb.

Kudos to two old ballplayers for talking about balls and strikes, but not only about balls and strikes.

(But, yeah, thanks for all that Inside Baseball, too.)

I will catch this thing on reruns until the videotape dissolves.

Here's a piece from the L.A. Times.