In Which Rose Has A Thing About Numbers

I have this thing about numbers.

Oh, wait. Hi. I'm Rose. I'm that other writer. Leem, in his infinite wisdom, has entrusted me with the look and feel of this site, so it's my fault it still looks pretty bare. Sorry. Downtime's been pretty scarce, but that's a story best told on that blog without my name on it. (Don't have the address for that one? Email me.)

Anyway. I have this thing about numbers. Math I can take or leave, but numbers fascinate me. Which is fortunate, because I can't shake the little buggers. My mother loves to talk about how I can rattle off the number of every hotel room we ever stayed in on vacations. The good thing is that this is impossible to disprove; I mean, if we didn't actually stay in room 102 at that place in Salem, Oregon that summer I was three -- you know, the place with all the bees by the pool -- who's going to know?

I grew up not too far from Dodger Stadium. My preschool used to arrange occasional outings, and I remember playing in the bleachers while the adults... well, we all survived, so the adults were presumably keeping at least one eye on us. I maintained a passing, hey-those-are-my-neighbors interest in the team into the strike of '81, through the World Series, and on to the heart of fourth grade.

Here's where the numbers come in. My math teacher figured that the best way to teach us about decimals was to teach us about baseball.

It was like leading a junkie duck to crack.

During baseball season, I pored over the stats page every morning while I was eating breakfast. Well, I'd try to glance at the comics first. (And the front page. Clearly, I was not your normal nine-year-old.) But mostly, I was about those numbers. At that point, I was just looking to see how individual Dodgers were doing in comparison to other players, but I started to discern the broader picture.

Mom thought it was great that Dad could discuss baseball with one of his kids. For his part, even though he hasn't followed the Yankees for years, I think my Bronx-bred father still hasn't gotten over raising a Dodger fan.

Dodger fandom is a tricky thing. I don't think anyone really sets out to follow them. People tend to retain allegiance to their hometown team, and, L.A. being the kind of place it is, there are a lot of different hometown teams represented. Hell, even the Dodgers are from out of town. They moved out from Brooklyn around the same time as my mother's family did, not so long after her father's friend Les Rodney had used his sports column in the Daily Worker to bring a young man named Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers' attention.

But even without the tenuous family connection -- even without the proximity -- even without my numbers thing -- I probably would have ended up following the Dodgers anyway. For one thing, Dodger Stadium general admission tickets are still a mere six bucks. For another Dodger Stadium is freakin' beautiful. And I can certainly sympathize with any person or team that looks one way on paper and quite another in reality.

We're still recovering from the early days of Fox ownership, when the brass brought in GM Kevin Malone. After three years of bad acquisitions and terrible trades, he mercifully forced himself to resign by challenging a Padres fan to a fight. The job eventually went to Dan Evans, who didn't suck. When the McCourts purchased the team, they replaced Evans with Paul DiPodesta.

Poor Paul DiPodesta. It's been a little heartbreaking, watching him watch his belief system crumble around him. Apparently, he'd never learned what I figured out early on: You can't always go by the numbers. OPS is a great place to start, but intangibles trump statistics. You can't trade popular guys like Paul Lo Duca and Guillermo Mota and expect the team to stay the same. The Dodgers made it into the playoffs in 2004 on the sheer force of Jose Lima's will.

No one expected DiPodesta to bring Lima back in 2005, and he didn't. But he didn't make any moves to keep Adrien Beltre, and he made some odd choices for the pitching staff. (Scott Erickson? Really?) Still, things looked good at the beginning of the season. Jeff Kent was settling in. Milton Bradley, of all people, was stepping up as a clubhouse leader. Now, if everyone could just stay healthy...

Oops.

Yeah. See, thing is, a team can look great on paper, but if your star players keep going on the DL for months at a time, the relief pitchers you bring up from the minors can't seem to find the strike zone and the front office doesn't support the manager, you end up with a terrible record and a skipper who's only too happy to have the opportunity to take that job in Pittsburgh.

So here's where we stand at the end of 2005: DiPodesta's out; Colletti's in. He made up for his short window of opportunity and his past with the Giants by... bringing in a bunch of Giants. I'm trying not to be suspicious about this. The biggest non-former-Giant acquisition so far has been Nomar Garciaparra. It's a gamble, but worth a shot.

Earlier this year, I was offered tickets to the annual Hollywood Stars charity softball game at Dodger Stadium, which fans can watch from the field. Now, I've been on stages in front of thousands of people. I've hung out with some pretty famous names. I've visited some heavy inner sanctums. But I don't think I've ever giggled in glee like when I got to take off my shoes and walk through the Dodgers' outfield grass.

A few more notes before I go:

No matter what they tell you, it's not the "Los Angeles Angels" -- it's the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim," and no one around here is fooled. Yes, I'm friendly with a certain guitar-playing Cy Young winner who plays for a team to the north of me; his sister is a good friend of mine, and he gamely submits to the occasional karaoke outing with his sister's crew. Yes, I know lots of random stuff. No, I will not do your homework. And, yes, Vin Scully is the greatest storyteller in the English language. But I'm sure that will be covered in a future post.