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This was the week the Dodgers got a head start on getting started all over again . . .
1. Colorado Rockies: Judging from appearances the last couple weeks against the Dodgers, they look like they were spawned in a science lab with DNA from the ’27 Yankees and ’75 Reds.
2. 1988 Dodgers: They look better and better every autumn.
3. Dodgers fans: They bought more than 3.76 million tickets this season to break the franchise home attendance record. The fans didn’t tank.
4. Alex Rodriguez: The fifth player in baseball history to compile 50 home runs and 150 RBI in the same season, joining Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Hack Wilson and Sammy Sosa. However, October begins on Monday.
5. Cubs-Indians World Series: It’s coming. You know it is. We might as well stop fighting it now and just accept it.
6. Phillies: Incredibly, they have mounted this stunning turn-about in form without putting on garish yellow and powder blue uniforms designed in 1933.
7. Angels: No home-field advantage. No momentum. More and more, they are looking like the fourth-best team in a four-team AL tournament.
8. Pete Carroll: Interrupts his weekly media briefing to take a good-natured, well-deserved nudge at ranting, grand-standing, take-a-seat-already Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy. It’s good to be the king.
9. Hope Solo: She was right about at least one thing. U.S. women’s soccer coach Greg Ryan made a mistake for the ages in switching goalkeepers before a World Cup semifinal match against Brazil. She was also presumptuous in saying she would have made the saves Brianna Scurry did not. She has the makings of a great sportswriter.
10. Hans Solo: Not even he could have stopped Brazil in that semifinal. But he would have been smart enough not to change goalkeepers.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
It wasn’t the perfect ending for the Dodgers’ direly dysfunctional season, but it was close. All it needed was Grady Little and Ned Colletti car-pooling to the game and getting lost because Little got a little mixed-up and started driving the wrong way down a one-way street and Colletti just sitting there and stewing with his arms folded, refusing to consult a map or make a phone call for some help.
Well, OK, it needed that and a post-game Texas steel-cage wrestling match out on the Dodger Stadium infield, Dodgers veterans versus Dodgers kids -- losers forced to sit next to the winners in the home clubhouse the next five days and actually initiate conversation.
The Dodgers’ season-sinking 9-7 defeat to Colorado Tuesday night included:
-- An under-achieving performance by a key starting pitcher (Brad Penny requiring 99 pitches just to get through five innings).
-- Jeff Kent getting hurt (on a slide into home that demonstrated to all the Dodgers youngsters exactly how not to do it).
-- Four Dodgers relief pitchers surrendering five runs in three innings.
-- A three-run home run by James Loney going for naught.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys -- that was your 2007 Dodgers irregular season condensed into a bitter yet awfully familiar 3 1/2-hour pill.
Just as fittingly, the team in the other dugout, expected in spring training to finish well behind L.A., demonstrated how a mix of young and old players and a strategically suspect manager can overcome built-in flaws to peak in the week before October, not the All-Star Game.
With NL MVP candidate Matt Holliday going 2-for-4 and NL Rookie of the Year contender Troy Tulowitzki driving a two-run home run off Mark Hendrickson, the Rockies won their ninth game in a row to remain one game behind San Diego in the wild-card race.
That home run was Tulowitzki’s 23rd of the season, the second-highest by a rookie shortstop. Number one on that list? Nomar Garciaparra, who hit 30 home runs in 1997 as a 24-year-old spark plug with the Boston Red Sox . . . and seven home runs in 2007 as a 34-year-old supposed Dodger energizer who never came close to justifying the two-year, $18.5-million contract extension Colletti gave him last winter.
That was a big 2006-to-2007 theme for Colletti: A signing that pleased a lot of people at the time . . . and that was about it. (See also: Schmidt, Jason; Pierre, Juan; Wolf, Randy.)
All those people would like to know what Frank McCourt thinks about all this, but the Dodgers told The Times’ Bill Plaschke that McCourt is “not doing any interview until the season is over.”
What then is the wait?
Season’s over.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine had their chances to stop the madness, back before it had the chance to germinate, back in June when the Titans and the Anteaters both took their shots at stopping Oregon State in the College World Series.
Fullerton lost, Irvine lost, and soon the cause was lost. Oregon State went on to win its second consecutive national college baseball championship, Oregon noticed, a new Corvallis-Eugene Civil War erupted, and Fullerton and Irvine quickly lost again.
Oregon, suddenly deciding baseball to be a face-saving priority, poached the best coach available -- Fullerton’s George Horton.
Fullerton, which leads Oregon in College World Series won, 4-0, poached the next best coach available -- Irvine’s Dave Serrano, formerly Horton’s top assistant at Fullerton.
Irvine, which now regards itself an emerging power in a sport it didn’t have six years earlier, then poached a coach with a College World Series pedigree -- Mike Gillespie, who took USC to Omaha four times and won it all in 1998 before leaving the program in 2006.
This is one more reason why college baseball is more fun than the majors. You rarely see this kind of musical-chairs scrambling in the big leagues, save for occasional base-running exploits by the Dodgers,
You also rarely see anybody from USC’s athletic department moving to Irvine. Although there were times during the 1980s when many Trojans fans gladly would have traded basketball coaches with Irvine, bringing back Bill Mulligan, a one-time USC assistant then making lots of noise in OC. They probably would have even thrown in a power forward to be named later.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
Updating the Angels’ Summer 2007 To-Do List:
1. [ ] Acquire big bat for the middle of the lineup during the pennant stretch.
(Turns out the Angels didn’t need to do anything beyond finding Garret Anderson a better alarm clock. The big bat they lacked was right there all the time under their noses. Less comforting: So too were some big rats.)
2. [ X ] Bury Ghosts of ’95.
(Just did that on Sunday. And not a minute too soon. The Angels eliminated Seattle on their last home game of the regular season, after back-to-back losses had cranked up the volume of the Uh-Oh Angst to an uneasy level, with John Lackey taking his last home turn in the rotation. Just think of the dark clouds swirling over the Angels’ team flight to Texas if they hadn’t won Sunday’s series finale. These are definitely not your parents’ Angels. These Angels don’t do everything the hardest way possible.)
3. [ ] Clinch playoff home-field advantage.
(Let’s shelve that piece of business for a couple hours. The Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees can wait. The 2007 Angels have bought themselves enough time to prepare themselves for an opponent of another kind.)
4. [ ] Time permitting, allow fans and media to toy around with an impossible-to-answer (but that won’t stop us) concept: Could the 2007 Angels beat the 2002 Angels?
The World Series winners of ’02 will always be the standard by which other Angels contenders will be measured. The ’04 and ’05 editions took their shots and fell short. The ‘07ers have excited a lot of people in and around Los Angeles-of-Anaheim, but it’s interesting to note that even if the current Angels (92-64) win their last six regular-season games, they would still finish behind the ‘02ers, who went 99-63 -- and still wound up four games behind the first-place Oakland A’s.
Playing the never-goes-out-of-style imaginary match-up game, the ‘07ers have the edge at:
First base: Casey Kotchman hits for a higher average (.296) than Scott Spiezio (.285), is a superior fielder, and has yet to form a garage band specializing in creating other-worldly sounds capable of driving rats from here to Rancho Cucamonga. Why is “Sandfrog” never around when you really need it?
Shortstop: David Eckstein will always be a fan favorite in SoCal, but Orlando Cabrera might be the best shortstop to ever play for the Angels. On Cabrera’s resume (and not on Jim Fregosi’s): Name the only shortstop since 1918 to win the World Series with the Boston Red Sox.
Right field / designated hitter: Wherever you put Vlad Guerrero in the batting order, the ’07 Angels have the edge. Over pretty much anyone.
Starting rotation: The ’02 staff was loaded with No. 2 and No. 3 types (Jarrod Washburn, Ramon Ortiz, Kevin Appier) with no true ace. The ‘07ers have two Cy Young Award candidates in Lackey (9-0 in starts after Angel defeats) and Kelvim Escobar, plus capable end-of-a-short-series depth in Jerod Weaver and Joe Saunders.
The ’02 Angels have a decided advantage at catcher (Bengie Molina, whose contributions to that pitching staff were under-rated) and at center field (Darin Erstad, whose refuse-to-lose mentality carried the team a long ways in October). You can argue the merits of Adam Kennedy versus Howie Kendrick at second base (at least until Kendrick overcomes injuries long enough to harness his enormous potential) and Troy Glaus versus Chone Figgins at third base (they bring entirely different but equally valuable assets to the table). Anderson versus Anderson at left field? No one in baseball has meant more to his team during the second half of the current season than ’07 Anderson, but ’02 Anderson did it over the course of an entire schedule (.306, 29 home runs, 123 RBI).
Playoff series, pennants and World Series are won with the bullpen, however, and that’s where the 2002 Angels would close down the 2007 club. Francisco Rodriguez setting up Troy Pervical is a much better option than anybody on the ’07 roster setting up Rodriguez.
Good news for the ’07 Angels: The ’02 Angels aren’t anywhere on their upcoming schedule.
The current group has proven it can beat the ’07 Indians and the ’07 Red Sox and the ’07 Yankees during the regular season. Doing it when it really matters, though, will come down to somebody stepping up from that bullpen to preserve a few eighth-inning leads for K-Rod in the ninth.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
The 2007 SoCal baseball season in 35 words or less: On the same day Jeff Kent loses it after the Dodgers lose their fifth straight and plummet to the brink of elimination, the Angels clinch a tie for the American League West championship.
In the process, the Freeway Series cousins continued with their wildly disparate definitions of “fighting spirit.”
In Denver after a 9-4 defeat to Colorado, Kent took on Grady Little’s strategy (join the club, Jeff) and members of the Dodgers’ nearly canonized youth movement. The kids “don’t get it,” Kent railed to reporters. “(They don’t get) professionalism (and) how to manufacture a run (and) how to keep your emotions in.”
In Anaheim during a 9-5 triumph over Seattle, Vladimir Guerrero charged the mound to protest a helmet-seeking missile launched by Seattle pitcher Jorge Campillo, soon joined by other Angels who get the concept of getting a teammate’s back.
So the Angels are on their way to the postseason for the fourth time in six years.
And the Dodgers are on their way to another desolate winter, still sitting on one playoff victory (Jose Lima forever!) since 1988.
About Thursday night’s Angels victory:
--With it, Mike Scioscia, the catcher on that once-in-a-generation ’88 Dodgers team, recorded his 700th managerial triumph with the Angels Thursday night. If you are listing the top thousand reasons why the Dodgers remain pennant-less after two decades, there are 700 for you.
--With it, the Angels (91-62) assumed the lead in the race for AL home-field advantage, moving a half-game ahead of Cleveland (90-62) and a full game ahead of Boston (90-63) . . . and how about those Red Sox?
With the Angels at last figuring out a way to bust their ghosts of ’95 (hint: a good shortstop in the everyday lineup helps), the Red Sox keep conjuring up the Great Fall of ’78, almost as if 2004 never happened.
(Key note here: Oh, but it DID happen. In 2004, the Red Sox rallied from the precipice and swept the Evil Empire and won it all for the first time since the big tea party and we have seen all the DVDs and read all the books and grimaced all the way through “Fever Pitch.” Enough already. It’s time to focus on the Cubs’ endless pursuit of deliverance, and when they win it all for the first time since the 17th century, or whenever it last occurred, we can all grab our sledgehammers and pound that story line into the ground a hundred times over.)
This must be a fun time to live in New York. The Yankees keep hounding the Red Sox. The Mets are about 18 innings away from coughing up first place to -- poetic justice lives! -- the Phillies. Hope and despair now ride the same subway.
Unlike in SoCal, where hope has been quarantined within Orange County limits, and despair is a condiment served free of charge at every Dodger Dog stand.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
Morrissey, who was massive in Manchester long before David Beckham sported his first professional ankle sprain, was spotted at last week’s Galaxy-Chivas USA match at the Home Depot Center -- tellingly clad in a red and white striped Chivas jersey.
Twenty years ago, when he was still fronting the legendary band The Smiths, Morrissey was renowned as a depressed idealist and hopeless romantic, but his choice of L.A. soccer teams shows him to be a steely-eyed pragmatist with his feet firmly planted in reality. Who’d have guessed it then -- Morrissey wants results!
Funny, but many of the titles of the songs he wrote with The Smiths and later as a solo artist suggest a distinct leaning toward Galaxy style soccer:
“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”
“Panic”
“Unloveable”
“Asleep”
“That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore”
“Nowhere Fast”
“Barbarism Begins At Home”
“I Know It’s Over”
“I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish”
“Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”
“What Difference Does It Make?”
“Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”
“Seasick, Yet Still Docked”
“Maladjusted”
“Trouble Loves Me”
“Sorrow Will Come in the End”
And, to paraphrase the Galaxy medical staff’s daily update on Beckham:
“Still Ill.”
christine.daniels@latimes.com
Welcome to Dodger Happy Talk, where never is heard a discouraging word (Disclaimer: We are not legally responsible for any parenthetical subliminal messages written by weary post-’88 gremlins allergic to sugar-coating) about our scrappy Boys In Blue (Motto: It’s Not Over Until Yesterday’s Doubleheader In Colorado) because, as we all know, they are all trying the best they can (to avoid being swept in the playoffs this October by failing to make the playoffs this October)!
Despite a couple of unlucky breaks against the Rockies on Tuesday (L.A. had two games on the schedule, and had to play them both), the Dodgers remain in contention for a playoff berth (assuming the D-backs, Padres, Phillies and Rockies secede from the National League this afternoon to immediately form The Three Expansion Outfits Plus One 10,000-Game Loser And We’re All Better Than The Dodgers League)!
We are in the thick of the stretch drive right now (actually on the far-far-and-falling-off fringe, but who’s counting?), the most exciting time of the season (especially for the D-backs, Padres, Phillies and Rockies)! Just 11 games to go (and for L.A. in 2007 that’ll be it)!
The Dodgers are only 4 1/2 games out of the wild-card slot! Grady Little, such a never-say-die kind of guy, says “We have to run the table now,” and that is certainly within the Dodgers’ reach (the Koufax-Drysdale Dodgers, we mean)! OK, we did catch another unfortunate break when shortstop Rafael Furcal injured his lower back, but we’ve won without him before (This is true: The Dodgers won the World Series with Alfredo Griffin playing shortstop in 1988)!
Fortunately, this Dodgers roster is very deep (you know L.A. is loaded with future Hall of Fame prospects, because Ned Colletti wouldn’t trade any of them when this season still had a chance of being saved)! And our front office has masterfully added such key late-season contributors as David Wells and Esteban Loaiza (we haven’t seen this many retreads at Sam’s Shady Almost-New Tire Shack)!
Big game tonight in Colorado (a big chance not to lose two games in one day)! So keep your chins and your spirits up, Dodger Fans! Because here at Dodger Happy Talk, we don’t know the meaning of the term “embarrassment!”
christine.daniels@latimes.com
Here’s some shocking news: In a new ranking of “America’s Best Football Tailgaiting Cities,” an index that grades the “tailgaiting-friendliness” of 32 cities -- 31 cities with an NFL team, and us -- Los Angeles came in at No. 24.
That seems awfully low for us, in any kind of ranking that does not include L.A. Kings hockey. On the other hand, that’s an impressive lofty ranking when you consider . . . WE DO NOT HAVE AN NFL TEAM!!!
With vast expanses of no cars and no barbeque grills and no ice coolers and no portable satellite TV screens for as far as the eye can see on NFL Sundays at the Coliseum and Rose Bowl parking lots, L.A. still came in ahead of:
25. Minnesota. (No one arrives too early when Tavaris Jackson is quarterbacking.)
26. Dallas. (Cowboys fans became very disenchanted after buying “Tony Romo Special Tailgaiting BBQ Mitts” last season. They were Teflon-coated and everybody who used them kept dropping tongs full of meat on the tar of the Texas Stadium parking lot. So that has curtailed a lot of Cowboy tailgating.)
27. Chicago. (Bears fans do their carbo-loading at pizza places, ribs restaurants, steak houses and burger shacks as they graze their way to Soldier Field. By the time they arrive, they are so well-fed, all they want to do is squeeze into their stadium seats and make a group guttural noise that sounds a lot like cows mooing whenever Rex Grossman two-hops a pass to a wide-open receiver.)
28. Atlanta. (And this ranking was released before Sunday’s 24-3 loss to Minnesota. Soon-to-be-published memoirs by new Falcons quarterback Joey Harrington: “Nobody Tailgates for Me.”)
29. New Orleans. (Saints fans are surrounded by some of America’s finest eating establishments, many of them located within waddling distance from the Superdome. Why settle for hot dogs when beignets, BBQ shellfish and jambalaya are calling your name hours, if not days, before kickoff?)
30. St. Louis. (Rams fans of Missouri, we could have told you.)
31. Detroit. (The Lions lose an awful lot of games at Ford Field, aka “Indigestion City.” Joey Harrington and Ford Field both began their NFL careers in 2002. Thus, bad tailgating became instantly ingrained as a 21st-century Detroit tradition.)
32. Seattle. (Evidently, most tailgating before Seahawks games is done at the 14,378 Starbucks shops located within easy-access blocks of Qwest Field.)
# # #
This blog has a bye week on the schedule. Will be back some time early next week. In the meantime, L.A. NFL fans, don’t get out there and do what we do better than eight once-proud (before these rankings were released, anyway) NFL cities! Non-tailgate! Non-tailgate!
christine.daniels@latimes.com
This was the week Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson, in a Haley’s Comet-crossed-with-a-Bigfoot-sighting kind of moment, found common ground. . . .
1. Appalachian State: They are 1-0 this season, same as USC, and 1-0 in their last meeting with Michigan, same as USC. Tiebreaker: Appalachian State did it on the road, in the Big House. USC beat Michigan in a virtual home game posing as a “neutral-site” game, the Rose Bowl. Appalachian State might have just knocked Michigan out of the Rose Bowl.
2. USC: Went easy on Idaho, which avoided enough injuries and psychological trauma to be able to return home and proceed with the remainder of its season. Grateful for the humanitarian goodwill, the Idaho state legislature has decided to name a new breed of spud "Potato Pete."
3. UCLA: Karl Dorrell feeling so good after the season-opening victory over Stanford that he actually agreed to a Sunday evening conference call with Bruin beat reporters! Audiotape of the historic interview can be purchased for $45.17 at karldorrellgonewild.com.
4. Garret Anderson: Is it possible to win an American League Most Valuable Award with half a season?
5. Angels: They defeat Cleveland in opener of match-up of cities that once had and then lost the Rams. Final score, predictably, was 10-3.
6. Dodgers: They have found a team, the Cubs, they can beat in the playoffs. Now, they just have to make them.
7. Kobe Bryant: Back home after his winning stint with a bunch of NBA all-stars taking out an entire catalog of frustrations on the likes of Argentina and Puerto Rico. You know, Kobe reports, turns out the grass really is greener on the other side.
8. Phil Jackson: Has Kobe’s back while his chiropractor has his. Takes Kobe’s side while firing a broadside at his Buss bosses. Obviously, he’s feeling good about his Power Ranking position.
9. Indianapolis Colts: If Thursday’s 41-10 rout of the Saints was truly a “Super Bowl preview,” they ought to call off the season now. Roger Goodell’s lawyers certainly could use the extra prep time.
10. Jimmy Clausen: Named to start Saturday’s game for 0-1 Notre Dame against Penn State. Be careful what you wish for, son.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
It was only a matter of time before Sir Alex Ferguson, David Beckham’s first professional manager at Manchester United, weighed in on the failed first leg (no injury pun intended) of Beckham’s “Break Soccer In America” campaign. Beckham hasn’t played for Man United since 2003, but Ferguson is as much an expert on the player as anybody on this side of the pond. At the moment, Ferguson is seeing no less of Beckham in practice than Galaxy Coach Frank Yallop.
During a recent speech at Citizen’s Theater at Glasgow, Ferguson stated the obvious (Beckham can’t popularize soccer in America by himself) and the recently evident (traveling back and forth across the massive U.S. landscape has undermined Beckham’s crusade, if not his fitness) and the clichéd (Whenever a superstar athlete’s fortunes take a downturn, let’s blame the wife).
“He was never a problem until he got married,” Ferguson said. “He used to go into work with the academy coaches at night time, he was a fantastic young lad.
“Getting married into that entertainment scene was a difficult thing -- from that moment his life was never going to be the same.
“He is such a big celebrity, football is only a small part. The big part is his persona.”
Six-hour cross-country flights are not conducive to reviving a worn-out 32-year-old athlete, especially one with a wife in the pop life and interests more evolved and involved than hitting the perfect square-ball in the 49th minute of an MLS match between the Galaxy and D.C. United.
“The size of the country makes it difficult,” Ferguson said.
“In European football, and especially in British football, you can travel easily. If you are Boston and need to go to Los Angeles it's a six-hour flight. Supporters don't travel so you are missing that rivalry between fans.
"So you have a problem. To make it substantial you would have to go regional but there's not enough teams to have four strong leagues.”
Hmm, a four-league regional MLS set-up. That has possibilities. Galaxy, Chivas USA, San Jose (bring back the Clash!), Portland (recycle the Timbers!), Anaheim (get behind the Squirmin’ Vermin!), San Diego, Seattle, Vancouver. That’s a ready-to-assemble eight-team MLS West. If you need more franchises, I have seen a few teams in the Los Alamitos and Long Beach men’s rec leagues that play more coherent defense than the Galaxy.
On the other hand, such a set-up would obviously mean a diluted MLS product -- could you imagine such a thing? It sends shivers up the spine. In a recent column for The Times of London, Martin Samuel wrote that English fans and media were wrong in their initial knee-jerk assessment that MLS (“Much Lousy Soccer”) would be “rubbish. We didn’t realize it would be rubbish and physically endangering because that is an unfamiliar combination, like the moment in the comedy show, ‘Frasier,’ when Niles is being taught ballroom dancing by Daphne. ‘This is boring, yet difficult,’ he says, bemused.”
In less colorful language, Ferguson hinted at the same concept when he noted that “the best American players go to Europe very early,” citing Blackburn goalkeeper Brad Friedel, Fulham forward Brian McBride and Fulham midfielder Clint Dempsey as examples.
“What you have got in the States,” Ferguson said, “is that that a lot of kinds are playing football in the States and there is nowhere to go.”
Translation: Major League Soccer, to Ferguson, is nowhere. And it saddens many in England to see their most famous soccer export sitting idly on the sidelines, recast in the sobering, and startling, role of Nowhere Man.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
With the NHL desperate for attention, desperate anything remotely resembling a television-ratings pulse, it was only a matter of time before the league went the reality series route. And, now, here it is:
Take a former Ducks head coach, pair him with a former Kings disappointment, shake, don’t stir (they will stir things up on their own) and watch the havoc the friction wreaks on one of the top teams in hockey -- one that handily happens to play in the same division as the Ducks and Kings.
Jeremy Roenick is coming out of retirement, coming to San Jose, coming to “blend in,” he says, with a Sharks team coached by Ron Wilson, who will tolerate a player with an ego as big as his only if the plus/minus rating is worth the trouble.
Call F/X. Call a news conference to announce its inclusion in the new fall lineup. Call it “The Ron, Jeremy Show.”
Alas, this one will stay on Versus, where nobody will see it, so we will have to rely on newspaper and Internet reports for gossip and updates. Talk about oil on ice: Wilson, a self-styled master psychologist, taking on a very-high-maintenance 37-year-old once-great player who hasn’t been great in a long time, who will bring more baggage to training camp that just his four-cities-in-four-seasons suitcase and duffel bag.
Two months ago, on July 4, Roenick announced his retirement by way of a text message to the Philadelphia Inquirer that read: “I’m retiring; is that still news?” Kings fans, who watched Roenick virtually vanish in 2005-2006, would answer “Are you kidding -- we thought he retired a long time ago.” So would fans of the Phoenix Coyotes, who tossed Roenick a career lifeline in 2006-2007 and saw Roenick’s plus/minus rating spin out to a millstone minus-18.
The motivation for Roenick to return is obvious: He is five goals shy of 500 for his career.
The motivation for the Sharks is less clear. Roenick had nine goals with L.A. in ’05-’06 and only 11 more with Phoenix in ’06-’07. He blamed his poor production with the Kings on insufficiently sharpened skates. He blamed his poor production with the Coyotes on Coach Wayne Gretzky conspiring to limit his ice time. This ignores a sport-wide tendency for hockey coaches to act similarly whenever a player’s plus/minus dips below frostbite territory -- oh, say, minus-15 or so.
Considering the “Roenick Effect” that has taken over the Kings and Coyotes franchises the last two seasons, causing them to drop like stones in the standings, this has to be considered a positive development for Kings fans. Now, there’s another Pacific Division team that stands a chance of finishing behind the Kings.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
We are down to the last 25 games of the regular season for both the Angels and the Dodgers. Both still have hopes for the playoffs, making this an uncommon condition in the history of the Freeway Series. But one team is in the diamond lane and the other is puttering along in the slow lane, wondering if it’s best to veer onto the next off-ramp and call off the drive, or press on a little further and see if the gridlock lightens.
Considering the gaps in the standings -- the Angels are up by 6 1/2 games in the AL West, the Dodgers trail by 4 in the NL West -- we are looking at two very different competitions and objectives. Same freeway, different worlds.
For the Angels, the new pastime to get behind is: Tracking down the Red Sox for MLB’s best record. The Angels’ recent 7-3 run has not only placed more distance between Los Angeles of Anaheim of Orkin and Seattle, but has moved the Angels to within a few more Garret Anderson home runs of the Red Sox. The race at a glance:
1. Red Sox: 83-55, .601
2. ANGELS: 81-56. .591, 1 1/2 games back.
The Red Sox have played one more game than the Angels. When the Angels get around to that one, they would need to win it, and then get a little help from a remaining Red Sox opponent or two. Should they finish the regular season with the same overall record, the Red Sox have the edge with a 6-4 record in head-to-head competition.
So, can the Angels catch, and creep past, the Red Sox?
The teams have similar schedules the rest of the way. Both play series against at Baltimore, home to Tampa Bay (Boston also has a home series against the D-Minus Rays), and a handful of games against Oakland. Both have home series against their chief divisional challengers -- the Red Sox host the Yankees for three games (Sept. 14-16), the Angels host the Mariners for four (Sept. 20-23). The Red Sox have a slight edge in home games -- 14 of 24. The Angels have 13 of 25 at home, but close the schedule with a week on the road -- three games at Texas followed by three at Oakland.
Potential key: The Angels have three more games against the going-going-gone White Sox, who actually won the World Series in '05. (That was 1905, right? Had to have been.) Then again, the Red Sox counter with a total of six more games against Tampa (.413) Bay to the Angels’ three.
So they could be taking this one to the wire.
In the Lesser League, the Dodgers are in the doubly dicey predicament of chasing two teams that are both ahead of them in the NL West. Arizona and San Diego continue to flip-flop in and out of first place in the West. The Dodgers are trying to chase one team for the divisional championship and the other for the wild card. Chances are, the D-backs or the Petcos will win the NL West, leaving the wild card to a free-for-all between the West runner-up and any number of the following: Dodgers, Phillies (L.A. and Philadelphia are tied today at 72-65, three games behind Arizona), Rockies, Braves, Brewers.
That’s quite a crowd -- and the Dodgers are flat out of games against the Washington Nationals. Their long-ish-shot bid will hinge on a mid-month homestand-or-fall: three games against the Petcos (Sept. 11-13) followed by three against the D-backs (Sept. 14-16). Should the Dodgers survive that still with a chance, they will play 10 of their last 13 games against Colorado and San Francisco (with a three-game trip to Arizona filling it out).
Potential key: The Dodgers have to continue to hope and pray their Bring A Once-Useful Starting Pitcher To The Park For A Day program continues as it has. They got one good start out of David Wells. One good start out of Esteban Loaiza. Anybody else available for one Big Day Out? What’s Bartolo Colon doing these days? Oh, right. The Angels keep asking themselves the same question.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
Points scored: Bruins actually outscored the Trojans, 45 points (versus a Pac-10 team, albeit a Pac-10 team named Stanford) to 38 (against Idaho, a lower-division WAC team). If you were to assign military ranks to the UCLA-USC opening-day opponents, it would be: Corporal Stanford, Private Idaho.
Points allowed: Bruins' Big D, supposed foundation of the franchise, yielded a touchdown more than the Trojans, 17 points to 10. Cardinal red flag? Stanford scored a total of three offensive touchdowns at home in all of 2006. Saturday, the Cardinal had two.
Margin of victory: Dead even. Trojans by 28, Bruins by 28.
Spread covered?: Bruins, yes -- beat the spread (17) by 11 points. Trojans, no --missed the spread (46 . . . yes, that is right . . . 46) by 18 points. Blame the circumstances. UCLA woke up at halftime realizing it was ahead of a bunch of red traffic cones, 14-7. That was not going to cut the mustard with pollsters and alumni, so the Bruins coaches had to open up the playbook in the second half and dig out some tricks they rather would have kept hidden from BYU's scouting eyes. USC led, 21-3, at the half and opted not to show Nebraska (Trojans' next opponent, Sept. 15) not much of anything in the second half.
Quarterbacks: No doubt, the Hyper Heisman Hype Rankings will stamp John David Booty's initial statistical contribution (21-of-32, 206 yards, three touchdown, one interception) as not all that. Mean while, Ben Olson completed 16 of 29 passes for 286 yards and five touchdowns for UCLA. One more and Olson eclipses his touchdown-pass total for his injury-shortened 2006 season. Not to jinx 2007 or anything.
Running backs: How is USC going to divvy up carries between its nine waves of tailbacks? (Emmanuel Moody would really like to know.) Here's how: C.J. Gable (8 for 68 yards), Stafon Johnson (12 for 64), Joe McKnight (6 for 26), Allen Bradford (8 for 15), Desmond Reed (5 for 36), Chauncey Washington (one sprained ankle), Broderick Green (none of you), Marc Tyler (nor you), Herschel Dennis (nor you either). UCLA received 195 yards on 17 carries from Kahlil Bell and 71 on 20 carries from Chris Markey. Quick thought: Is there a Bruin running back controversy brewing? Quick answer: Nah. It was Stanford.
Receivers: USC's Vidal Hazelton sets the bar high, and early, for Highlight Catch of the Year with his leaping, falling-backward, one-handed grab of Booty's short touchdown lob in the second quarter. UCLA's Joe Cowan catches two passes, both for touchdowns. Line from BYU scout's notebook: We might want to cover him.
Dog day afternoon: Stanford Coach Jim Harbaugh, a former Michigan quarterback, had his alma mater lose to Appalachian State on the same day he lost to Karl Dorrell.
Key question: Could Stanford beat Michigan?
Key matchup: How about Stanford play Idaho? Then we might be able to make better sense of what happened, and didn't happen, in Palo Alto and the Coliseum on Saturday.
christine.daniels@latimes.com
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