'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...

Buy Me Some Peanuts & Cracker Jack, Eh?

Andre Dawson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this week. The first major league game I attended was at Jarry Park in Montreal during the Expos maiden season in 1969, when Rusty Staub was La Grande Orange and owned that town. Their red, white and blue beanie-like hats with the odd logo seemed to cry out for a propellor on top.
The New York Times has a fine piece about what was, at times, a great organization. I would go on to split my allegiance to Les Expos with the New York Yankees, but I'll always hold a warm place for that long-gone team from the north deep within my border boy, baseball heart.

(UPDATE: More bittersweet Expos news. This report says Dawson wants to be inducted as a Cub, although the final decision on which team an inductee will represent rests with the Hall.)

All Hail The "Village Voice."

New York's legendary free weekly having some fun at the expense of hometown douchebags (just like the one in the picture!)

Wait 'Til Next Year.

10-4.

Phils eliminate Dodgers for the National League pennant.

So much for that Dodgers/Yankees World Series...

Let's Go, Dodgers!

Here we are in October, one of my favorite months--setting sun and all. It's baseball playoff time, and although summer is gone, its game is only now heating up.
Readers of JackRabbit Cafe´ may be aware that I was a long-time New York Yankee fan. But time, distance and Take Me Out to the Ballgame have converged to change all that.
Growing up where I did can result in some twisted allegiances. I was a fan of the long-gone Montreal Expos and Yankees, yet I loved Boston's Celtics and Bruins. I was a New York Giants fan with little regard for the Bills, Jets or Patriots. I left the North Country in '87--in mind, even before then--and have been an expat East Coast sports fan (almost) ever since.
The Expos are no more, and, sadly, I really don't follow hockey any more. And this year, I crossed the Yankees off the list. (The Celtics stay. Period.)
Take Me Out to the Ballgame reminds us to "root, root, root for the home team." So now I bleed Dodger Blue (but I still think Tommy Lasorda was and is, well...)
Time and distance and a sentimental song all have their place, but so did the decision by a bunch of greedy bastards to abandon the shrine that was Yankee Stadium to build a $1.5 billion gussied-up replica. Luxury--at a bunch of taxpayer-funded dollars--for struggling straphangars and lunchpail Larrys. Oh, and they threw Joe Torre on the garbage heap after the '07 season and killed acres of Bronx park land in the process.

(In a related story, I didn't notice the Red Sox building a fake Fenway or the Cubs publicly funding cushy new friendly confines.)

As long as Jeter, Rivera and Posada wear pinstripes, I'll always have a little Yankee in me. But give me the wistful vistas of Dodger Stadium, the poetry of a Vin Scully-called game and please, please, please give me a Dodger-Yankee World Series.

(While you're at it, give me a ticket broker who won't want a kidney for a Series ticket, too...)