Tomorrow night, Game 1 of the 2025 World Series will be played at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. The American League Champions, the Toronto Blue Jays, will host the National League Champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, in Games 1 and 2, and, if necessary, Games 6 and 7. Games 3 and 4, and, if necessary, 5 will be played at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
The Blue Jays are the American League Champions for the 1st time since their only previous Pennants, the back-to-back World Series wins of 1992 and 1993 -- 32 years, almost a third of a century.
The Dodgers are the National League Champions for the 2nd year in a row, and the 5th time in the last 9 seasons.
Before that, they hadn't won a Pennant in 29 years, 1988 to 2017. Before that, they won 5 in a span of 15 years, 1974 to 1988. Before that, they hadn't won one in 8 years, 1966 to 1974. Before that, including their last few years as the Brooklyn Dodgers, they won 10 in 20 years and, if you extend it back 1 more year, just missed 4 others, 1946 to 1966.
They've won the World Series in 1955 in Brooklyn; and, in Los Angeles, in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, 2020 and 2024, and will likely be favored to win it again this year.
On a Facebook page titled "MLB Shit Talking !!!" (space, then 3 exclamation points), a Dodger fan named Lee Salomon wrote, and I haven't altered his text at all:
You sorry ass people can't list ONE (1) LOGICAL reason for hating the Dodgers.
You try to make it about money, but almost every owner is a billionaire.
You try to make it about the Dodgers fans, but the Dodgers lead MLB in home AND road attendance every season.
.
Colin Cowherd said the Dodgers are the best run team in American sports. He is 100% correct.
I repeat, you sorry ass people can't list ONE (1) LOGICAL reason for hating the Dodgers
This was my response:
You're missing the point. The reasons DON'T have to be logical. Playing baseball requires a great deal of logic. Being a baseball fan requires none. It's all based on feelings.
Up until 1957, the Dodgers represented not just the Borough of Brooklyn, and, by extension, the City of New York, but a state of mind. They were a team of the people. Their players lived in neighborhoods alongside the team's fans. They played in a small ballpark, where the players were close to the fans. They were visible as human beings. Being a Dodger fan meant being a part of a community.
When Jackie Robinson arrived in 1947, that community grew, but instead of diffusing it and weakening it, it made the community stronger, and ennobled it. Long before the Dallas Cowboys were created and took up that ridiculous slogan "America's Team," the Brooklyn Dodgers were a team for all America. Certainly, for underdogs, as they stood up to the more successful New York Giants, and then the even more successful New York Yankees. The Dodgers were blue-collar; the Yankees, white-collar. The Giants, whose success was earlier, could, I suppose, be called stiff-collar.
(Those teams represented something very different, but no less important. Life is full of defeats, so we look for teams that will win and lift us up. The Giants represented that up until the end of the 1930s, and the Yankees have since the early 1920s.)
Up until 1957, the Dodgers represented not just the Borough of Brooklyn, and, by extension, the City of New York, but a state of mind. They were a team of the people. Their players lived in neighborhoods alongside the team's fans. They played in a small ballpark, where the players were close to the fans. They were visible as human beings. Being a Dodger fan meant being a part of a community.
When Jackie Robinson arrived in 1947, that community grew, but instead of diffusing it and weakening it, it made the community stronger, and ennobled it. Long before the Dallas Cowboys were created and took up that ridiculous slogan "America's Team," the Brooklyn Dodgers were a team for all America. Certainly, for underdogs, as they stood up to the more successful New York Giants, and then the even more successful New York Yankees. The Dodgers were blue-collar; the Yankees, white-collar. The Giants, whose success was earlier, could, I suppose, be called stiff-collar.
(Those teams represented something very different, but no less important. Life is full of defeats, so we look for teams that will win and lift us up. The Giants represented that up until the end of the 1930s, and the Yankees have since the early 1920s.)
Having risen from essentially team clerk in 1942 to owning 25 percent of the team to owning 75 percent of the team and bullying the owners of the remainder in 1950, in 1957, Walter O'Malley took the Dodgers out of Brooklyn, and moved them to Los Angeles.
While some of the Brooklyn "Boys of Summer" hung on for a while -- Gil Hodges until 1961, Duke Snider 1 more year -- by the time that Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, who barely pitched in Brooklyn, became baseball's dominant pitching tandem and led them to a title in 1963, they bore no real connection to their former identity, and that's how O'Malley wanted it.
They represented something else: Greed. To build their stadium, O'Malley saw to it that the people living on the land had their homes stolen from them. He maneuvered the City of Los Angeles into letting him have all the parking revenue, when the original offer was half. He refused to install water fountains in the ballpark, because he didn't want fans to have anything for free.
They represented something else: Greed. To build their stadium, O'Malley saw to it that the people living on the land had their homes stolen from them. He maneuvered the City of Los Angeles into letting him have all the parking revenue, when the original offer was half. He refused to install water fountains in the ballpark, because he didn't want fans to have anything for free.
He was so devoted to the reserve clause and holding salaries down that he even gave his managers only one-year contracts, and after he died in 1979, his son Peter continued this until selling the team in 1997. Walter Alston got 23 one-year contracts; Tommy Lasorda, 20.
They also represented Hollywood glitz and fakery, instead of the real people of Los Angeles. They wanted Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen to come to the games. They didn't want Joe Washington from Crenshaw or Ricardo Gonzalez from East L.A. I'd be interested to know how old Walter would have felt had he lived to see Fernandomania in 1981: How would he have felt about all those Mexicans coming into Dodger Stadium, his monument to himself? Aside from those 5 years, 1962 to 1966, when the blue-collar Jewish hero Koufax pitched every 4 days, it was the first time the Dodgers seemed human.
Rather, the Dodger hero of choice was Steve Garvey: Mr. Clean, the All-American Boy with the perfect hair, the perfect teeth, the beautiful blonde TV talk-show host wife, the powerful swing and the nice glove, who was actually a supreme hypocrite, leading to the "Steve Garvey is not my Padre" jokes after he went to San Diego and didn't have the protection of the L.A. media anymore.
They also represented Hollywood glitz and fakery, instead of the real people of Los Angeles. They wanted Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen to come to the games. They didn't want Joe Washington from Crenshaw or Ricardo Gonzalez from East L.A. I'd be interested to know how old Walter would have felt had he lived to see Fernandomania in 1981: How would he have felt about all those Mexicans coming into Dodger Stadium, his monument to himself? Aside from those 5 years, 1962 to 1966, when the blue-collar Jewish hero Koufax pitched every 4 days, it was the first time the Dodgers seemed human.
Rather, the Dodger hero of choice was Steve Garvey: Mr. Clean, the All-American Boy with the perfect hair, the perfect teeth, the beautiful blonde TV talk-show host wife, the powerful swing and the nice glove, who was actually a supreme hypocrite, leading to the "Steve Garvey is not my Padre" jokes after he went to San Diego and didn't have the protection of the L.A. media anymore.
And speaking of supreme hypocrites: Lasorda treated his players like family, except for Glenn Burke, whom he dumped after seeing baseball's first openly gay player get a little too friendly with Tommy Jr., whom Tommy Sr. insisted until his own death was not gay, and refused to accept that Jr.'s death from pneumonia was aided by AIDS. Lasorda didn't just eat too much: He was so fat because he was full of crap.
O'Malley was never baseball's best owner, Lasorda was never baseball's best manager, and wasn't even a very good one. Vin Scully was never baseball's best broadcaster. And Dodger Stadium wasn't even the best ballpark in Southern California. But all those ideas were pushed by the L.A. media machine, which is as strong as New York's and stronger than Boston's and Chicago's.
Then, in 1997, Peter O'Malley sold the Dodgers -- to Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News baron, who, by aiding people such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and eventually Donald Trump and Britain's Brexit movement, has done more damage to the world than any living person, even Vladimir Putin. That is a stain that can never be washed away, and makes the sins of Walter O'Malley look tame by comparison.
Murdoch sold the Dodgers to Frank McCourt in 2004. He had to sell the team in 2012, to a group whose public face is basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson, who is rightly beloved. But the current regime has actually embraced the team's Brooklyn past, including putting a statue of Robinson outside the stadium. At first glance, this would seem like a good thing to do. After all, while he never played for the team in Los Angeles, Robinson grew up in nearby Pasadena.
Except the current regime wants it both ways. They want both the Los Angeles legacy (Koufax, Lasorda, Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson) and the Brooklyn legacy (Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider). And it doesn't work that way. The Giants can sort-of get away with it, because Willie Mays did play for them in both New York and San Francisco. Same with the Braves, with Hank Aaron playing in both Milwaukee and Atlanta. But the A's barely even mentioned their Philadelphia success.
The Dodgers' owners want you to think Jackie Robinson played for them. Jackie Robinson did not play for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not one damn game. Not only did he not play for Los Angeles, but Walter O'Malley actively resisted his acquisition, told manager Alston to move him around and eventually bench him, and finally traded him to the arch-rival Giants, before Jackie announced his retirement, which he had planned anyway, but it became a "To Hell with me? No, to Hell with YOU" moment.
Now, I do have some grudging respect for the Dodgers' ownership group. Yes, they spend a lot of money. But they should. It's professional baseball. The last team to win a World Championship without "buying it" was the 1868 New York Mutuals. The Dodgers do this. So do the Yankees, my team. So do the Mets. So have some other teams at various times, even though some no longer do so, and others have gone the other way, from not trying it to trying it. To paraphrase Michael Douglas in the film The American President, Yes, my team IS trying to buy the World Series, the question is, Why isn't YOURS, Bob?
I also have some respect for the Dodgers' owners for NOT demanding that the governments of City of Los Angeles, or the County of Los Angeles, or the State of California build them a new stadium at taxpayer expense, or else they will move, as happened with elsewhere in California, with the owners of the Oakland Athletics and the NFL's Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers. They have maintained and updated Dodger Stadium, and let's give them credit for that. They can build 10 new ballparks and pay every penny of the cost themselves, and never miss the money. They don't do that, but they don't demand that the people do it for them, either.
But the Dodgers remain an organization built in Walter O'Malley's image. They represent what he represented: Greed and bigotry. Those things are irrational. So don't you DARE demand that we come up with a rational reason to hate them. We don't need one.
O'Malley was never baseball's best owner, Lasorda was never baseball's best manager, and wasn't even a very good one. Vin Scully was never baseball's best broadcaster. And Dodger Stadium wasn't even the best ballpark in Southern California. But all those ideas were pushed by the L.A. media machine, which is as strong as New York's and stronger than Boston's and Chicago's.
Then, in 1997, Peter O'Malley sold the Dodgers -- to Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News baron, who, by aiding people such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and eventually Donald Trump and Britain's Brexit movement, has done more damage to the world than any living person, even Vladimir Putin. That is a stain that can never be washed away, and makes the sins of Walter O'Malley look tame by comparison.
Murdoch sold the Dodgers to Frank McCourt in 2004. He had to sell the team in 2012, to a group whose public face is basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson, who is rightly beloved. But the current regime has actually embraced the team's Brooklyn past, including putting a statue of Robinson outside the stadium. At first glance, this would seem like a good thing to do. After all, while he never played for the team in Los Angeles, Robinson grew up in nearby Pasadena.
Except the current regime wants it both ways. They want both the Los Angeles legacy (Koufax, Lasorda, Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson) and the Brooklyn legacy (Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider). And it doesn't work that way. The Giants can sort-of get away with it, because Willie Mays did play for them in both New York and San Francisco. Same with the Braves, with Hank Aaron playing in both Milwaukee and Atlanta. But the A's barely even mentioned their Philadelphia success.
The Dodgers' owners want you to think Jackie Robinson played for them. Jackie Robinson did not play for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not one damn game. Not only did he not play for Los Angeles, but Walter O'Malley actively resisted his acquisition, told manager Alston to move him around and eventually bench him, and finally traded him to the arch-rival Giants, before Jackie announced his retirement, which he had planned anyway, but it became a "To Hell with me? No, to Hell with YOU" moment.
Now, I do have some grudging respect for the Dodgers' ownership group. Yes, they spend a lot of money. But they should. It's professional baseball. The last team to win a World Championship without "buying it" was the 1868 New York Mutuals. The Dodgers do this. So do the Yankees, my team. So do the Mets. So have some other teams at various times, even though some no longer do so, and others have gone the other way, from not trying it to trying it. To paraphrase Michael Douglas in the film The American President, Yes, my team IS trying to buy the World Series, the question is, Why isn't YOURS, Bob?
I also have some respect for the Dodgers' owners for NOT demanding that the governments of City of Los Angeles, or the County of Los Angeles, or the State of California build them a new stadium at taxpayer expense, or else they will move, as happened with elsewhere in California, with the owners of the Oakland Athletics and the NFL's Oakland Raiders and San Diego Chargers. They have maintained and updated Dodger Stadium, and let's give them credit for that. They can build 10 new ballparks and pay every penny of the cost themselves, and never miss the money. They don't do that, but they don't demand that the people do it for them, either.
But the Dodgers remain an organization built in Walter O'Malley's image. They represent what he represented: Greed and bigotry. Those things are irrational. So don't you DARE demand that we come up with a rational reason to hate them. We don't need one.
O'Malley was a man who, if he thought he could make more money by staying in Brooklyn, or by moving them to Miami, or to Tokyo, or to Moscow, or to Antarctica, than he could by moving them to Los Angeles, then that is where the Dodgers would have been playing since 1958. NYC construction czar Robert Moses wouldn't condemn the land on which he wanted to build his new stadium. But O'Malley could have gotten around Moses if he really wanted to stay in Brooklyn. He didn't.
So don't ask me to like or respect the Los Angeles Baseball Team, and don't ask me to come up with a rational reason for why.
Let's go, Blue Jays. Beat L.A., eh?
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