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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 |
The Curious Attractions Of Following A Lousy Team
Over at the Juice Blog, Will Carroll's longtime partner in crime Scott Long says with some hyperbole that
... take away Gagne and the 2004 version of Beltre and the Dodgers have been this boring for the past 5 years. Outside of Jeff Kent, the starting lineup is filled with players that even Matthew Lesko couldn't get excited about. I'm shocked that Vin Scully doesn't nod off, ala Jack Brickhouse, when calling the game. So here is my question to Dodger fans. How is it that you can keep your passion for this team?I won't lie and say I pay close attention all the time to the Dodgers; the 2005 Dodgers are as bad a team as they've fielded in my memory (which does not include the 1992 team, by the way; I wasn't paying attention to baseball at all that year). That said -- the 2001-2003 Dodgers weren't nearly this bad, and all of them were winning teams, something this team isn't destined to be. The curious attractions of a lousy team --
- The Dodgers are actually fielding some good bench guys. You can see these guys will be valuable next year, and while it's not a big inducement to see the AAA roster at this point, the 2006 Las Vegas roster might be something even more interesting. Might.
- It's major league baseball. Something interesting's always bound to happen. Heck, subtract the "major league" from that. I've even been known to attend a few Cal State Long Beach games from time to time.
- It's the Dodgers, dammit. Why do any of us follow the games this year? I can only surmise that, at heart, it's because we're fans, yet with some hope, no matter how bad they are this year; the Dodgers have what Eric Neel called "the easy proof of past glory". That glory, that hope is what keeps the "Time Since Last Great Dodger Moment" clock ticking on the Dodger Blues mast. Maybe it's false hope; maybe, like the Cubs and the Red Sox after them, for whom curses become metaphors and icons for front office incompetence (or worse, malice), the Dodgers' long run at last is done, and like every year since 1989, 2005 is just another in a long string of sad, mediocre or worse years, years in which the Dodgers become perennial also-rans.
Yet, the injuries, we know, give us room to imagine. The team is out of it -- yes, eight and a half out of this division, and eleven games out of the wild card, means sure death for any postseason hopes. Not all hope is lost, though; Milton Bradley and Jose Valentin could return soon. The pitching could recover from their early-season tatertude. That is, they might not win the division, but...
- ... they could still play spoiler at the end of the season. This team, this hopelessly bad Dodgers team, on pace for a 72-90 season, likely the worst since the 1992 squad that lost a LA-record 99 games, could still beat a few teams. For one thing, they're 8-4 against the Padres, 5-7 against Arizona, and 6-6 against the Giants. That means they're 19-17 against their principle division rivals, any of whom with luck (for the Giants, read that as, with Barry Bonds healthy and playing again) could win the division. With a strengthened Dodger team, these guys could play heartbreaker by the end of the year. Hey, if we can't win it, wouldn't it be cool to knock some of these guys out of it, too?
- Vin Scully. Imagine an entire season watching Mike Edwards assigned to the outfield and dropping routine flyballs, as described by Charlie Steiner. Such things are no doubt prohibited by the Geneva Convention, not to mention the laws of several states. It might drive me to suicide, or in a clearer moment, homicide, and I daresay no court in the land would second guess me. But -- for now, we have Vinnie, and all's right with the world. He's the best.
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