Why I Love the Game

                                                          Baseball has always been easy for me to love. Even as difficult as the game can be to play, from the first time I grabbed a bat and hit a ball, I was in love with the game. The Dodgers moving to Los Angeles and big-league baseball coming to the West Coast just made it so much easier to see the players you had only glimpsed a few times on TV or seen on a baseball card. I wasn’t tall enough to be a very good basketball player, and I wasn’t really into the contact you got playing football.

                                                          Baseball was simply the easiest game for me to play. There were so many ways we could play with a ball and a bat. Three-flies out, over the line or simply just hitting fungoes or playing catch. I remember throwing the ball up in the air as high as I could to practice catching pop-ups since I was playing 1st base in little league. I played the outfield some too but really disliked the long stretches where no one hit a ball to you. 1st base was in on the action most of the time. 

                                                          The closest I could come to playing the game as I got older was softball in the Army and then some adult leagues afterwards. I quit playing actively around the age of 30. Too fat and too slow! So, my main focus was going to as many Dodger games as I could during the season and following the team on TV and in the papers. Most of us older guys remember both good and bad years. Winning seasons came now and then, and rarely in a row. 65-66, 77-78, then there would be a few down seasons sprinkled here and there.

                                                          We were proud when one of the players would win an award like the Cy Young or the award they seemed to win most often, the Rookie of the Year.  I do not know the reason, but no Dodger has won a batting title outright since Tommy Davis won his second in a row in 1963. Trea Turner won the title in 21, but he spent the bulk of the year with the Nationals. In 1956, Duke Snider hit 43 homers and won his only homer title. No Dodger would lead the league in homers again until 2004 when Adrian Beltre led the majors with 48. 

                                                          Matt Kemp led the NL with 39 in 2011 and Shohei led with 54 in 24. Those are the only homer champs in LA Dodger history. 3 players in 67 years of playing in LA. The team’s strength in Los Angeles has been its pitching. From Sandy to Kersh, and now Ohtani and Yoshi, LA has had solid pitching in most seasons. The offense at some points in the team’s history has been pretty anemic. But we loved them anyway.

                                                            Since 1958 the Dodgers have had exactly 13 seasons when they were under .500. And they have never been below .500 for more than two years in a row. It might not seem that way to some fans since there was a stretch from 1988-2017 without a World Series appearance. In 1992, the lost 99 games. That was the first time since they moved from Brooklyn that they had lost more than 89 games. They would lose 91 in 2005. 2010 has been their only other losing season since.

COOPERSTOWN, NY – JULY 27: Peter O’Malley on his father’s induction into the Hall of Fame

                                                              Whether it was the ownership of Walter O’Malley, or his son, Peter, the owners of the team have tried to have star power. When they first came to Los Angeles, most of the stars of the Brooklyn team were in their 30’s and close to the end of their careers. Campy had been paralyzed, Snider had the last of his great seasons in 57 slugging 40 homers for the 5th season in a row. He would hit more than 20 just once over the last seven years of his career. He would injure his arm trying to throw a ball out of the coliseum before the 58 season began.

                                                              Pee Wee played the 58 season mostly backing up Don Zimmer along with Bob Lillis. Furillo played his last full season. Hodges, 34 years old tied Charlie Neal for the team lead in homers. The pitching staff had five starters who were 25 or younger. Erskine had arm problems, Newcombe had been traded to the Reds. Koufax was 3 years away from reaching the potential they had always envisioned. Big D and Podres were the staff aces, but hardly household names in LA.

                                                               It would take a couple of years before the influx of talent from the minors and some trades before they began to change the persona the Brooklyn team had. Brooklyn’s lineup featured a lot of power. LA would take a different approach with guys like Maury Wills and Willie Davis adding speed to the game. Wills changed the game. He brought base stealing back after many years of being an afterthought. The Dodger way became a walk, stolen base, sacrifice and score on an out or hit.

                                                               A backup catcher helped turn Sandy Koufax into a true ace, and he became baseball’s best pitcher over a six-year run. The first MVP for Los Angeles was not a slugger or star pitcher; it was a shortstop who hit .299, with 6 homers and drove in 48 runs. What Maury Wills did that won him that award was become the first player in modern MLB history to steal 100 bases. He broke Cobbs’s record of 96 and ended up with 104. Unlike Maris getting an asterisk next to his 61 homers because it took more than 154 games with the new 162 game schedule, even though he did it in game 156, there was no asterisk. 

                                                               Don Drysdale won the Cy Young award that year with a 25-4 record. This was at a time when they still gave out just one for both leagues. LA lost a 3-game playoff with the Giants that year. It was their first season in their new ballpark, Dodger Stadium. The team played a different brand of baseball at Dodger Stadium. It was all about the pitching. Tommy Davis won the batting title, first of back-to-back titles, and finished 3rd in the MVP vote.

                                                               Frank Howard slugged 31 homers, becoming the first Los Angeles Dodger to hit 30. It was also the first time a Dodger team would win 100 or more games. It took Brooklyn 65 years after their first championship to win their first World Series. LA did it in the second year the team was in Los Angeles. They also won their first three trips to the series, and they won them with great pitching. The first four Dodgers to win World Series MVP awards were all pitchers. 

                                                               Podres in 55, Larry Sherry in 59 and Koufax in 63 and 65. The O’Malley Dodger teams were much like a family, that is the atmosphere they wanted to create. The prices to attend a game at Dodger Stadium were very reasonable. For a dollar fifty, you could sit out in the pavilion. General admission was also 1.50. Even into the 70’s and early 80’s, those seats were within most fans budgets. I remember sitting in the loge section a couple of times. Seats were 12 dollars. Parking was relatively cheap too. 

                                                                 That the Dodgers relied on pitching to win was obvious if your looked at the league leaders at the end of the season. The big 40 homer guys ruled the stat sheet. Guys like Roberto Clemente, Pete Rose, Billy Williams were the guy’s winning batting titles. Mays, Aaron, McCovey. In fact, between 1962 and 1969, those were the only three who led the NL in homers. Johnny Bench broke that string in 1970.

UNDATED: Willie Davis #3

                                                                   The Dodgers star players of the 60’s were Wills, Koufax, Drysdale, Willie Davis. Tommy Davis had two great years in 62 and 63 but was never the same after he broke his ankle in 65. Their best closer in the 60’s was Ron Perranoski. Back then though, the team never had much in the way of power hitters. In 68, the team leader, Len Gabrielson hit just 10 homers. In 1969, Andy Kosco led the team with 19. In the 70’s they would finally get some power integrated into the lineup. 

                                                                  The second LA Dodger to hit 30 or more homers in a season did not arrive until 1974.  Jimmy “The Toy Cannon” Wynn. Wynn was beat out by Steve Garvey for the MVP in 74, but his one very good year earned him a permanent place in Dodger lore. The Dodgers returned to the World Series for the first time since 1966. They would lose, but it was an exciting series. In 1974 I got out of the Army, so I was better able to follow the team and the game. Since I moved back to California, I once again was able to attend games.

                                                                   Watching baseball and the Dodgers helped me relax. That along with music kept me pretty busy when I wasn’t at work. They would win pennants in 77-78 losing both series, but they set a record in 1977 when they became the first team to have four players slug 30 or more homers. Smith, Garvey, Cey and Baker got the feat done with Baker hitting his 30th on the last day of the season against the Astros. 

                                                                    No Dodger would hit 30 again until Pedro Guererro slugged 32 in 1982. Dodger Stadium was not really at that time a hitter’s ballpark. Pitchers loved it. There have been 13 no-hitters pitched at Dodger Stadium. Two of those were perfect games. Koufax in 1965 and Dennis Martinez against LA in 1991. Three of Sandy’s four were thrown there. Bo Belinsky threw the first one there as an Angel against the Orioles in 1962. Besides Martinez’s perfecto, three other no-hitters have been thrown against the Dodgers there. Kent Merker of the Braves in 1995. Jake Arrieta of the Cubs in 2015, and a combo by four Cubs pitchers in 21. The last Dodger to throw one was Kershaw in 2014.

                                                                    After winning the World Series in 1988, the Dodgers went through some slim years. They lost 99 games in 1992, but they also started a run of five consecutive Rookies of the Year. Karros, Piazza, Mondesi, Nomo and then Hollandsworth. Their next one would not be until 2015 when Corey Seager won the award. LA’s first 40-homer player was Mike Piazza in 1997. Almost 40 years after they moved to LA. He would be traded the following year after O’Malley sold the team to Rupert Murdoch and Fox. 

                                                                      After the trade, the fans were not too happy with the new owners. Things changed fast. After having just two managers from 1958-1996, they had three in the span of three years. After Lasorda’s heart attack, Bill Russell took over but was replaced in 1998 by Glen Hoffman who was then replaced by Davey Johnson. These teams had good players, but not players the fans generally really liked. Gary Sheffield, the main return in the Piazza trade, was the big star on the team, but I was not too impressed by his attitude. 

                                                                        Sheffield tied the record for the most homers in a season by a Dodger with 43 in 2000. Duke Snider had held that record since. 1956. Fox began looking around for a buyer about that time. I guess Murdoch and Fox were not making as big of a profit as they thought they might. Prices at the stadium had climbed considerably. The other problem was the team was not winning pennants nor even division titles. Jim Tracy took over as manager in 2001.

                                                                       After the Piazza trade, I did not really have a favorite Dodger. As the players from the O’Malley era started leaving via free agency or trades, I was not the huge fan I had once been. Of course, this era coincided with my being on the road as a long-haul trucker for many years. I did not attend as many games as I had before and usually followed the team on Sirrus radio in my truck.

                                                                        As we all know, Frank McCourt bought the team in 2004. As much as I had despised the ownership of Fox, I would come to dislike McCourt even more. He did bring some stars into the fold, like Manny Ramirez, and they brought a lot of excitement to the fans. And even though they made the playoffs on the last day of the 2004 season, I still felt the only reason I listened to the games was to hear Vin Scully, who was still the master of the spoken word. 

                                                                         The divorce, and the payroll problems, were distractions I did not need from Dodger baseball. When it came out the team was on the verge of bankruptcy, I was shocked. It was with a great deal of joy and happiness that I welcomed the sale to the Guggenheim group. And it did not take long for them to make their mark on the makeup of the team. I always felt that Ned Colletti did a great job with what little resources he had. 

                                                                           I always thought Ned had a solid front office team behind him, especially in the player development department. They began producing some solid major leaguers. Guggenheim’s first full season, 2013, brought a division title. Many did not care for “The trade”, a deal in August of 2012 that brought Adrian Gonzalez to LA. But it was perfect marketing, bringing a Hispanic player to LA, where many of the fans of the Dodgers are from or have a Mexican heritage. 

                                                                        I have loved watching the transition from just being competitive to being dominant. Players who are free agents, are clamoring to come to the Dodgers. One who did not, Anthony Rendon, turned out to be one of the worst free agent signings ever for the Angels. As fans, we can see three former MVPs in the lineup every night. That is the kind of lineup most fans would die for. Two in a row and counting. Will they get # 3???  As a fan, I cannot wait for the season to begin. Since I retired in 2010, it has been such a joy to fall in love with the game and the team again.