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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The Meme That Launched A Thousand Drips: Bill Dwyre On The "Invisible" Angels

There's the urge to call Bill Dwyre and ask him whether Frank McCourt slipped him a Franklin or two under the editorial door before penning this odd piece, inverting the usual Angels = good, Dodgers = not good pieces we've come to expect from the local press. Not that there aren't parts of this that make some sense: "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim adopted a city, and the city it adopted mostly shrugs in return." Sure, if by "city" you mean exclusively the city of Los Angeles proper, but Arte knows that it's the TV market that matters. By failing to research broadcast ratings — that is, his lazy refusal to back his baseless opinion with verifiable fact — he drifts into the land of Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers. Which, perhaps is understandable; he was, after all, the former editor of the sports page, and therefore the man who agreed that both those columnists were worth having.

One final and vital point, though: Manny may be here today. Will he be in Dodger blue come spring training 2009? The Angels could certainly use Mark Teixeira. The Dodgers need Manny. Good as Manny is, the cost of acquiring him as a two-month rental has been rather steep (and getting Casey Blake was rather steeper). If that is how the team is run, it's hard to see how the Dodgers will compete beyond 2008 without squandering the fruits of Logan White's labors. Over the longer haul, fielding a winner is what counts.

Quasi-related: This is what passes for quality editorial content on latimes.com:

Times alumnus Matt Welch:

The whole “But that’s not the team that’s REALLY captured L.A.’s imagination!” thing is a marvelous bit of self-fulfilling prophecy, not hard to do when you can walk from your office to Dodger Stadium (if, in fact, you ever got yr ass out of the building, or ever — shudder — walked up a hill).

I was at the Dodger playoff game in 2004 (back when the Times was saying the same stupid thing), and there was no contest between the fan buzz (and knowledge) inside the stadium, compared to that at the Big A.

The Times has chased off nearly every halfway decent writer in that section, and kept all the self-important losers. They deserve to fail.

Harsher than I would have put it, but yeah. C'mon, the crack about "Newspapers put Angels' results well back in the sports section, as this one did Sunday morning" — well, so what? T.J. Simers, "astute"? Self-fulfilling prophecy, indeed.

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Comments:
yawn.

perrenial loser trying to get into playoffs will always generate more buzz than a consistent winner that clinched weeks ago.

you make a good point about 'check back next year', but how about 'check back in a week or two'?

(Knock on wood. maybe i should have waited a week or so to say that, but then again, Dwyre should have too; however on the other hand, this may be his only chance the rest of the year to write such a column like that piece. i'm tempted to say 'decade' but who knows what 'superstar big name' will be rented next in Chavez Ravine to generate some "buzz".)
 
As I've said for some time, the Ned Colletti regime is unloading prospects for rentals or worse faster than Logan White can find and develop them. This is going to hurt them going forward. Put it this way, 2009 will be interesting. They'll have their young pitching, which is good, but the offense will look pretty anemic. It could be a replay of 2003 with the difference being an improved if somewhat depleted farm system.
 
I was at that '04 playoff game too. It was the most intense game, in every way, that I've ever attended. Loud, crazy, fun, wild. Two Shawn Green homers...
 
Rob, I gotta absorb the rest of your post before commenting, but in the meantime I want to say I am thrilled that latimes.com just discovered lol cats. Like, oh, ~2 years too late.

Next up for LAT.com: "iTunes may be changing the way we listen to music"
 

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