How To Get To Dodger Stadium, 2007*

and here’s how to get out:

I’m so lucky that the people with whom I attended today’s game insisted on getting there almost two hours early. The traffic was apocalyptically bad. A relatively small crowd of us saw all this pomp and circumstance. Many more only heard explosions and flyovers from their cars. There were still plenty of empty seats as late as the fourth inning, and traumatized fans started heading for the exits in the seventh, in hopes of avoiding a worse ride home.

The McCourts should

a) apologize;

b) completely ditch the new traffic scheme, which negates the institutional knowledge Dodger fans have developed from dealing with the quirky parking patterns at Chavez Ravine since 1962, without offering any improvement;

c) tell the parking lot attendants who were just standing around, watching this mess passively that, if they can’t think of what to do about it, at least pretend to care.

The owners’ dream of 4 million in attendance will not be achieved this season. In fact, I predict that even if this pretty good Dodger team reaches the playoffs, attendance will take a big step back, because no one will be willing to put up with this nightmare.

The Dodgers lost, 6-3, but the game was okay, the weather was great, and it was fun to see our new ace pitcher, Jason Schmidt, hit a home run. Bowing to advanced age and wisdom, I only drank cold water, but in that sun, it was good as beer. I had a good time, and am grateful I got to go.

But the day will be remembered as the day the McCourts’ incompetence, which is effectively obscured when the team plays well, finally became impossible to ignore. They are in a jam. There is no PR solution to it. They need to admit their grievous error, and fix it fast.

*Update, 4/10/07:  A formerly regular Dodger Thoughts comment poster, Tommy Naccarato, articulates what I was trying to say, except more eloquently. 

This is not just a bunch of sports fans whining about parking.  This is a story out of social anthropology; what happens when outsiders try to fix something that only looked broken, and in doing so, changing what was once a challenging but live-giving experience into something confusing and oppressive: 

You see Dodger Stadium used to be a sanctuary for me. I could escape my life and completely forget about the problems going on. I could think about roster moves; what pitcher should be in the bullpen warming up; Who should be pinch hitting and which mustard was best on my once affordable Dodger Dog. I thought of just how good I had it, right then at that very precise moment.

But that’s all changed now.

Today I experienced something at the Stadium I never fully felt before–I was being controlled from the very moment I entered up until 2 1/2 hours after the Game, when we finally got out of the newly named, “Sunset Lot” through a broken down fence–and fought the traffic out the Academy Gate, down to Stadium Way.

If we would have waited for the Sunset crowd to leave, it would have taken 3/4’s of a tank of gas waiting for it to clear and maybe at least 45 minutes more. Even one of the attendants chided with us of how ridiculous the new system was, knowing that the implementation of the old system would probably mean the end of his job there!

The system that was designed 45 years ago for Walter O’Malley’s dream ballpark had it’s quirks and turns, but knowledge of the ballpark; the ability to get out of the right gate the fastest way in relation to the size of the crowd–well you learned. I know I might be a bit resistant to change and that change is good, but honestly, and I say this knowing that your being released into traffic at rush hour–even at night, this is going to be a disaster, and frankly it’s not something I’m looking forward to for the rest of the year. At least not when you can stay at home, watch the game on T.V. and save money.

I guess it all amounts to this: What was so wrong with the old system? Even during sell outs, like last year’s season ending loss to the Mets, I was out of there quicker then I got in.

But most, it’s presents an even more alarming thought of what is left to come.  

If you want to read the whole thing, it’s comment #157 to this post.  

P.S. Welcome, LA Observed readers, and thank you Kevin Roderick for pointing to this post.

P.P.S. And welcome also to Dodger Thoughts readers.  I’m proud I could make Jon Weisman laugh.

“Supreme Adequacy”

“BE ADEQUATE,” all in capital letters, were the words with which Lindsay Lohan ended her meandering tribute to director Robert Altman after his recent death. 

The e-mail, and indeed Ms. Lohan’s entire existence, gets attention because she is part of a celebrity cohort that would make a nun pine for the comforting rectitude of the Rat Pack — booze, broads, battered paparazzi and all. But I always feel a little sad for Lohan. Unlike Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Nicole Richie and their interchangeable sleazy parasite boyfriends, she had talent.  Because I was raising children during the 90s, I saw Lohan’s version of “The Parent Trap” a time or two.  She was 11 when she made it and did a fine job.  But nowadays, when Lindsay Lohan contemplates adequacy, she is looking up at an ideal that is fading away.

Jon Weisman found an interesting way to talk about “adequacy” the other day, in this post on his great blog, Dodger Thoughts.  About the Dodgers signing Luis Gonzalez to play left field next season, Jon said he is “not excited.” Gonzalez was once an excellent player, but his skills are in decline.  But then Jon added:

At the same time, I am very open to the idea that with superstar talent at a clear premium, there may be something to the idea of trying to dominate with depth, with supreme adequacy.

I like that idea.  Sometimes, “supreme adequacy” is a high enough goal for an organization — a baseball team, or anything else.   Things like genius or ”superstar talent” can’t be planned for; they are four-leaf clovers.  Truly great ideas — they’re rare. But you can assemble a team where everyone is adequate.  Not mediocre: Adequate.  Everyone knows their roles and performs their roles.  The roles are clearly delineated.  To be adequate is not easy, but it’s achievable. It’s not a mystery. 

Greatness is a mystery. There is nothing more awesome to me than observing a person who is extraordinary at … really just about anything.  But sometimes, people who think they’re special, aren’t.  And their striving to be seen as great becomes an obnoxious drama of self-delusion. 

Even the great have to master “supreme adequacy” first.  I think people used to know that, before celebrity became a goal in itself.  Maybe Altman’s death disclosed this truth to the befogged Ms. Lohan, and her subconscious is trying to point her back in the right direction. 

Have you heard the call to be supremely adequate?

Manny 2.0

It was the 1970s, a heyday for the Los Angeles Dodgers and their fans.  We had Steve Garvey.  We had Ron Cey. We had Don Sutton. We had Dusty Baker.  And so many more. 

But my favorite, and all my friends’ favorites, was Manny Mota. He was just a role player.  His role was to hit, to pinch-hit, late in games.  And he did it very, very well.  Manny was a man.  He was stoic, fearless, reliable. 

Now, three mostly inglorious decades have passed and another Manny might be knocking on the Dodger Stadium door — Manny Ramirez.  This Manny’s moody, temperamental, sometimes undependable.  A few years back, he told his current team he was too sick to play against the Yankees, but then he was spotted in a bar.  He’s got only two things in common with Manny Mota.  A Dominican heritage.  And he can hit.  With the decline of Barry Bonds, there are now two super-elite hitters in baseball:  Albert Pujols and Manny Ramirez. 

So, needless to say, I want him on the Dodgers. 

He will cost the Dodgers some of their cherished prospects.  We fans almost have a fetish about these prospects — the best collection of young talent the Dodgers have had since, well, the 70s. 

Our fetish is not misplaced. Last spring, Russell Martin, Jonathan Broxton, Chad Billingsly and Hong-Chi Kuo were mere prospects.  Now Martin is our starting catcher, Broxton a key relief pitcher, Billingsley and Kuo increasingly effective starters. 

Two more, James Loney and Matt Kemp (pictured), made brief visits to LA and were at times very impressive.  It’s hard to give up on any of them.

But none of them can do in 2007 was Manny Ramirez could do. 

So, I’m with LAist.  Let’s get him.  Don’t overpay for him, but pay for him. 

On Fox, O.J. Simpson, and Mike Piazza

I gather that if you spend enough time in the highly rarified strata where the biggest media executives dwell, you just lose all your wits. 

It’s a voluntary form of sensory deprivation; to have enough money and enough people demanding your time that you decide you must completely detach yourself from ordinary people.  A form of character mutation must take place, per the theories of Charles Darwin. Certain powers of intuition grow weaker, starved for energy by the parts of your brain that must expand to encompass the business dealings of a global media empire entrusted with billions of investor dollars. 

To be an “A-list” publisher, editor, literary agent or broadcasting executive today bears no resemblance to how such people lived their lives in the past; when they drove their own cars, took taxis, rode subways, frequented local pubs and sat with everybody else at pro football games.  The income and experience gap between the executive and the audience was much narrower decades ago than it is now.  

All of this must explain the O.J. Simpson debacle.  Judith Regan and Rupert Murdoch, and the anonymous but nearly as powerful suits who directly report to them, must just be unable to look normal people in the eye and understand what they are seeing there.  I can’t think of anyone I know who wouldn’t have immediately recognized the stupidity of giving Simpson a massive public platform, and paying him a fortune to spin gruesome fantasies, masked confessions and bullshit rationalizations about the crimed he committed but absurdly denies:  Decapitating his ex-wife and an acquaintance.  How could they not have expected the victims’ survivors to object publically?  How could they have convinced themselves that this mercenary exercise would provide the victims with “closure?”

In this morning’s New York Times coverage of Murdoch’s decision to drop the show and the book, a familiar name popped up, one I hadn’t heard in awhile:  Peter A. Chernin, president and COO of the Fox Entertainment Group, which was responsible for the now-scuttled TV broadcast. 

Los Angeles Dodger fans recall Chernin all too well — for an almost equally clueless move.  From the archives of DodgerBlues:

May 15, 1998… a day that will live in infamy. After rejecting the Dodgers’ $84 million contract offer, (Mike) Piazza was traded to the Marlins along with Todd Zeile for Gary Sheffield, Charles Johnson, Bobby Bonilla, and Tourettes-inflicted Jim Eisenreich. While Sheffield has certainly paid dividends for the Dodgers, putting up solid numbers for three straight years, the Piazza trade marked the beginning of the end of Dodger tradition. It was Fox’s first major move, and it showed how much they knew about baseball: nothing. The move was engineered by two TV guys, Peter Chernin and Chase Carey. Fred Claire, as lousy as he was, would never have made such a move–trading a certain Hall of Famer in his prime, the cornerstone of the organization, a guy loved by fans. It still makes us sick to think about it.

Well, I guess Chernin’s not that great of a “TV guy,” either.

By the way, in case you were wondering what happens when a big TV spectacular is cancelled, and a mega-big book is withdrawn, here’s a primer from the same NY Times’ article:

In an interview last week, Judith Regan, the publisher, said ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, had signed a contract with “a manager who represents a third party” who owned the rights to Mr. Simpson’s account.

Because the News Corporation and ReganBooks decided on their own to cancel the book and the television special, that money is likely to still have to be paid.

A spokesman said Ms. Regan declined to comment yesterday on the book’s withdrawal.

Erin Crum, a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, said some books had already been shipped to stores. Those books will be recalled and destroyed, Ms. Crum said.

Last Friday, Borders announced that it would donate the net proceeds from sales of Mr. Simpson’s book to a nonprofit organization for victims of domestic violence.

Ann Binkley, a spokeswoman for Borders, said she received a call from HarperCollins yesterday afternoon notifying her that the book would be recalled. No explanation was offered for the decision.

“I think everybody knows why,” Ms. Binkley said.

The rights to the book could still be sold to another publisher, said the News Corporation executive involved in the negotiations.

There is precedent for a recalled book to be sold to another publisher and then to the public. In 1990, Vintage Books, a division of Random House, bought the rights to “American Psycho,” a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, after the original publisher, Simon & Schuster, withdrew from publishing it because of the novel’s graphically violent content.

As for the television interview, it could also be offered to other outlets, although at least two other networks, ABC and NBC, have reported that they turned it down before it was accepted by Fox. Ms. Regan, who conducted the on-camera interview with Mr. Simpson and is presumed to own the rights to it, could still seek a sale to either a cable channel or even a pay-per-view company.

The fact that the interview already exists on tape, executives at Fox and News Corporation said, means it is likely to turn up somewhere, perhaps on the Internet.

See, nobody ever pays for blunders like this.  By the time you’ve reached the level where you have the power to f— up to this degree, it’s too late — you can’t go back to where the normal people live.   You’d die, and your colleagues know it.  In the real world, the Piazza error would have cost Chernin his job.   But at his level, you’re kept around — and history can repeat. 

If you’re looking for a Christmas present for anyone at Fox involved with this fiasco, well, I don’t think they could ever have enough of these:

Half a Century of Credibility, Down the Drain

Well maybe it’s not that bad, but the way the Dodgers ran themselves into a double play yesterday brought back for Vin Scully “the old Brooklyn Dodgers” that he began announcing for in 1950. It reminded Thomas Boswell of the same thing, even though he’s closer to my age than Vin’s.

Throughout history, whenever too much is going right for the Dodgers, they are forced to run the bases.

In 1926, John Lardner wrote, “Babe Herman did not triple into a triple play, but he doubled into a double play, which is the next best thing.” For decades, that play inspired Brooklyn fans to respond to news that “the Dodgers have three men on base” by asking, “Which base?” To the Dodgers, a rally has always been a potential comedy skit in disguise.

Thus it was again Wednesday. In Game 1 of the NL Division Series, the Dodgers lost, 6-5, to the Mets because they turned a line drive off the right field wall into a double play with two runners tagged out at home on the same play. The first runner was out by six feet, the second by a fascinating 10 yards. Nobody could explain why, though many tried. But neither Jeff Kent nor J.D. Drew was carrying a pastrami sandwich, so they weren’t on orders to “stop at the deli on the way home.”

A year before I was born, the Dodgers won their first World Championship, ending a six-decade drought that bought the Brooklyn Dodgers a reputation as a team just as likely to make you laugh as cheer. Since that 1955 breakthrough, the Dodgers have won five more titles, all in Los Angeles.

Six titles in 51 years doesn’t sound like a lot, but in that span, think of the other good teams in baseball. The Oakland A’s have won four titles, the St. Louis Cardinals three, the Cincinnati Reds three, the Pittsburgh Pirates three, and no other team has won more than two…well, except for the New York Yankees, who have won 10 titles since 1955. So the Dodgers are the second-most successful baseball franchise of the past 51 years.

It’s been a while since the Dodgers’ last one: 1988, two years before my son was born. No wonder he’s not a baseball fan. In the past 18 years, the Dodgers have had some pretty good teams, some pretty lousy teams, and, mostly, boring teams. A few fine players have come through here, like Mike Piazza, Hideo Nomo, Ramon Martinez, Gary Sheffield and, my vote for the greatest Dodger of the past 18 years, Eric Gagne.

But to use my son’s favorite word lately, the Dodgers of the past 18 years have been mostly Dullsville. Admittedly, contenders more often than not. A playoff team three times. But not close to a championship caliber team. Dull, but respectable.

This year’s been different. The Dodgers are exciting. They were exciting yesterday, almost winning the game despite the goofy play that cost them at least two crucial runs. For the past three months, the excitement has mostly resulted in winning, not losing. But Boswell wonders if the team will recover from this classic bonehead play:

Fortune has been in their corner for weeks. In one victory over the Padres, they tied the game with four solo homers in the ninth inning, then after falling behind, won 11-10 on a two-run homer by Nomar Garciaparra in the 10th. Such extended streaks of hot play — the Dodgers are 41-19 since July 28th — can only be snapped by omens of equal weight.

This game had that eerie feeling — cubed. Immediately after the double-tag at the plate, the next Dodger doubled. So, with competent conservative base running, L.A. would’ve had a 3-0 lead with a man on second and no outs with Maine on the ropes. Instead, pitcher Derek Lowe struck out to end the inning with just a 1-0 lead. When Carlos Delgado hit a 470-foot home run off the top of the three-story TV camera tower in center field and Cliff Floyd homered one out later, the Mets led 2-1.

The Dodgers tied it at 4 on a two-run double by Garciaparra in the seventh, but Kent, trying to hit one so far that he would have infinite time to circle the bases, struck out to end the inning. Finally, in the ninth, with a runner on second, Garciaparra struck out to end the game, leaving Kent on deck and Drew in the hole.

Which, all sins considered, is exactly where they belonged.

The Mets are a tough team — probably the best National League team this season. But the Dodgers have been a much better team lately.  So I think they will overcome this jinx, and win this round in five games.

Tonight will tell the tale.  If left-handed rookie Hong-Chi Kuo can tame the Mets like he did last month, we’ve got Greg Maddux going in game 3, which would put LA up 2-1 with two to play.  In Game 4, Brad Penny will be fighting for his credibility as an ace starter.  That game’s not too promising.  But Derek Lowe comes back in Game 5, and I think he’ll have better luck if he’s given a second chance at this lineup.

Go Kuo!

Baseball Diaries

The major league baseball playoffs began yesterday, but here in Los Angeles, today is the big day, as the Dodgers bring their streaky, drama-queen team to New York for their first game this afternoon at 1 p.m. LA time.

Major League Baseball has invited several playoff participants to keep blogs. The Dodgers’ Game 1 pitcher Derek Lowe is one of them. Here he describes how he spent part of his day off yesterday in NY:

Today started about as far from baseball as possible. A few of us left the hotel and went to Ground Zero. I hadn’t been there in three years. We walked around and thought a lot about what it means. I went over to Station 10, the fire station that’s located right across the street from where the towers fell.

A couple of the firemen recognized me and yelled my name. They called us over, and we spent maybe an hour with them. They showed us around the station and we talked. I didn’t want to get into too much detail, but I was curious and they told us about what it was like on Sept. 11. They were the first responders, being right there across the street. It kind of puts our job in perspective. A bad day for us really isn’t like a bad day, compared to what those guys go through.

I put Lowe first, because he’s our guy, but the best playoff blog by far is the Oakland A’s Barry Zito, who beat the Twins in their game 1 yesterday. Zito is going to be a free agent after this postseason. Based on his talent alone, I hope the Dodgers sign him. But his writing ability is a plus for a city that likes a good story:

You know that Kevin Costner movie, “Love of the Game”? You know when he talked about, ‘Quieting the mechanism?’ I don’t know how I did it, but I quieted this crowd in my head today. Last time I pitched in the playoffs here, I’d look in for the signs, and Ramon Hernandez’s fingers looked like they were shaking from sound waves bouncing around. But today my focus was so sharp, and it was like I just turned the volume down in my head. It was just me and Jason, pitch and catch. That, more than anything, was the key for me today. It’s not easy to block out 55,000 people, but I — we — did it somehow. Just an awesome day.

I might not be blogging so much this month. I could tell you it’s because I’ve got some new work, and that would be true. I could tell you it’s because of developments in my legal case, and that would be true also. But the fact is, I’m always kind of distracted in October. I would give up all the holidays and my birthday if I had to, but I always want to be watching postseason baseball in October. It’s especially exciting if you’ve got your team in the mix, but even if you don’t — do-or-die baseball elevates this great game into truly compelling entertainment. Myths and legends are created during these weeks. It’s important to pay attention — it just is.

NomaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhH!!!!!! (updated*)

If you’re into baseball, it was a great night for Los Angeles.  Comebacks do happen!!! LA Dodgers 11, San Diego 10, 10 innings   LA Dodgers 11, San Diego 10, 10 innings   Preview – Box Score – Recap By JOHN NADEL, AP Sports Writer September 19, 2006 LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Dodgers hit four consecutive homers in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game and Nomar Garciaparra’s two-run homer in the 10th lifted Los Angeles to an 11-10 victory over the San Diego Padres on Monday night. The Dodgers moved back into first place in the NL West, a half-game ahead of the Padres. After Los Angeles tied it in the ninth with four straight homers — just the fourth time that’s happened in major league history — the Padres took a 10-9 lead in the top of the 10th on Josh Bard’s RBI single off Aaron Sele (8-6). But Rudy Seanez (1-2) walked Kenny Lofton to begin the bottom half, and Garciaparra followed by hitting his 18th homer deep into the left field pavilion. The capacity crowd of 55,831 at Dodger Stadium stood and cheered for several minutes afterward.

*Update:  Josh Rawitch’s in-house Dodger blog, Inside the Dodgers — which is surprisingly independent given that Rawitch works for the McCourts — added this perspective on the game…and perhaps an alibi for those who left the Stadium early, or who, like me, gave up on the game in the 8th inning, and was lucky to flip back to it at a crucial moment in the ninth. 

The fact is, your 2006 Los Angeles Dodgers do a lot of things well, but not comebacks:

This is a team that hadn’t erased a four-run deficit to win a single time this year. Not once. Only once had they erased a three-run deficit to win. And yet, they erased two four-run deficits in the game, one in the ninth inning.

This is a team that is last in the league in homers and they hit seven on the night. Four in an inning. Four in a row. Three on consecutive. Off the game’s best closer ever.

This was a team in a must-win game. Not a “it’d be nice if we took this game from the Padres.” Players before the game were calling it must-win. And falling behind 4-0 isn’t a great way to come out the gate. But in a must-win situation, this team won in arguably the best game anyone here has ever seen. Greg Maddux just told me he’s never seen anything like it. Same with Grady Little, Dave Jauss, Derek Lowe and just about anyone you could talk to downstairs.

You can also relive the key moments by reading the Dodgers Thoughts’ game thread, here.  Start at post #553, time-stamped at 10:32 p.m. in which “Steve in Rochester” reaches the depths of despair as the Dodgers fall behind 9-5 in the ninth:

2006-09-18 22:32:30

553.   Steve in Rochester

this is as discouraged as I have been about anything in a long time

Within eight minutes, the four consecutive solo homeruns have occured, including the last one by recent acquisition Marlon Anderson: 

2006-09-18 22:40:30

598.   Vaudeville Villain

OMG  

Marlon Anderson!!!!

Fourteen minutes later, as Dodger reliever Aaron Sele gives up a run in the top of the 10th inning, despair again: 

2006-09-18 22:54:06

675.   joekings

I think I’m going to be sick.

2006-09-18 22:54:37

676.   underdog

{{cursing quietly to self at home}}

But just eight more minutes later, something obviously has happened.  Poster “confucius” is felled by the vapors:  

2006-09-18 23:04:15

700.   confucius

Oxygen!

And finally, 28 seconds later, some clarification:

2006-09-18 23:04:43

701.   Greg Brock

The greatest game ever played.

2006-09-18 23:04:47

702.   KG16

Just in time…

2006-09-18 23:04:51

703.   StolenMonkey86

NOMAHH

2006-09-18 23:04:54

704.   Telemachos

OMG.OMG

OMG!!!!!

2006-09-18 23:04:57

705.   Linkmeister

OMG!

Read the whole thing, and the next post, too, which has a bunch of aftermath posts. Almost like having these guys in your living room. 

A Perfect Sunday Evening at Dodger Stadium

Could it be that after 18 years of frustration, the Los Angeles Dodgers finally have a team it’s fun to root for again? Based on Sunday night’s game against the San Francisco Giants, which I attended with my wife, my brother and my 4-year-old niece, the signs are good. 

(O, muse, give me the wit and skill to write this post that people indifferent to baseball might enjoy it!) 

Greg Maddux is a famous pitcher, who spent most of his career with the Atlanta Braves.  He turned 40 this year, which is old for a ballplayer.  This season, Maddux was pitching for the Chicago Cubs, who are having a dismal season.  Maddux was having the kind of year a great pitcher usually retires on; a few brilliant outings that brought back reminders of past glories amid a succession of bad games that made fans think, “He’s done.”  Despite Maddux’s apparent descent into mediocrity, on the last day of July Dodgers’ GM Ned Colletti traded for him.  

Maddux’s first Dodger game was startling; a no-hitter against the Reds that he was forced to leave due to a lengthy rain delay after seven innings.  His second game was also successful, though not as brilliant.  His third game was last night, against the Dodgers’ longtime rivals, who were pitching their best pitcher, Jason Schmidt, and it was magical.  

Maddux started the first inning by giving up a hit, a solidly struck single by Randy Winn.  The next batter hit a fly ball that was caught, but the third batter, Ray Durham smacked another single.  Up came Barry Bonds, another old player possibly in his last season, but still a threat to hit a home run or at least a bases-clearing double and put the Dodgers in the hole.  And Bonds did hit the ball hard, but Maddux reflexively reached up and caught it, and then threw to first base to get another out; and the inning was over.

From that point on, Maddux did not allow another hit. He didn’t walk anybody. No Giant reached base.  He was perfect the rest of the way, until he was taken out for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the eighth.  The only reason Maddux had to come out then was that the Giants’ pitcher, Jason Schmidt, had shut out the Dodgers to that point as well.  Schmidt pitched a great game.  It was one of those 0-0 games that only real baseball fans can love.

It wasn’t just that Maddux was perfect.  It was the efficient way he achieved perfection.  Maddux no longer possesses a real fastball.  The Dodgers have several pitchers who can throw the ball 95-97 miles an hour.  Maddux fastest pitch is about 85 mph.  What Maddux can do is aim the ball exactly where he wants to aim it, and vary the speed of the ball enough so that the hitter can never feel confident that if he just swings in a certain location, he’ll hit the ball hard.  And, he threw strikes, almost exclusively, so the batters knew that if they didn’t swing, they’d be struck out. 

As it happened, Maddux only struck out four, but he didn’t have to do more than that to completely dominate the Giant hitters.  They would swing at his first or second pitch, and hit it weakly, right at somebody. He needed a few good defensive plays to help keep runners off the bases, including another one of his own. Bonds almost hit a home run off him in the seventh, but it didn’t go quite far enough, and it was caught for an out.

It is hard to convey to a non-fan how amazing the following statistic is:  In his eight innings, Maddux threw 68 pitches, and 50 of them were strikes.  (In the same number of innings, Schmidt threw 114 pitches.)  Most starting pitchers are taken out after they’ve thrown 100 pitchers, and they usually hit this threshold by the sixth or seventh inning.  The high ratio of strikes to balls is amazing.  If you divide these numbers by the eight innings he pitched, an “average” inning by Maddux last night consisted of only 8.5 pitches (to get three hitters out), of which 6.25 of them were in the strike zone.  That is a level of finesse you just never see. In his 20-year major league career, I doubt Maddux has ever pitched with such precision.  Nor have many other pitchers, ever.  

Schmidt also eventually gave way to a pinch-hitter, and so lesser pitchers for both teams finished the game.  The Dodgers’ relievers maintained the shutout.  But in the bottom of the tenth, the Giants’ pitcher — a guy named Vinny Chulk — gave up a home run to the first batter he faced, the Dodgers’ 23-year-old rookie catcher, Russell Martin. 

Martin’s home run was certainly dramatic, and very gratifying to the 55,000 people who attended the game, most of us Dodger fans.  It symbolized a part of the 2006 Dodger story — the flood of new young players. That’s the angle the Los Angeles Times emphasized in its headline and story.   

The Times’ headline was bizarrely obscure: “This Victory is Grade-Eh.”  Unless you happen to remember the 1970s SCTV characters The McKenzie Brothers, two drunken Canadians who punctuated every sentence with “eh,” and unless you happen to know that Russell Martin is Canadian, you would think the Times was saying, “This victory was so-so.” 

The bigger miss, however, was the Times failure to emphasize the exquisite artistry of this game. I can say sincerely that if the Giants had managed to win, I would have been just as amazed and moved by what I saw.  It was the greatest baseball game I have attended in person in my life. 

Stuff I Didn’t Know About Baseball & Los Angeles

Did you know that if it hadn't been for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the first major league baseball team to move to Los Angeles would have been the St. Louis Browns, in 1942?

Did you know that the Browns had another shot at moving to Los Angeles in 1953, but chose Baltimore instead?

Did you know that the Kansas City Athletics (who are now in Oakland) and the original Washington Senators (who are now the Minnesota Twins) toyed with moving to Los Angeles before the Dodgers did?

Did you know that the only reason Los Angeles was awarded a second major-league franchise after the Dodgers' arrival in 1958 was to thwart plans for a rival baseball league?

Did you know that the Angels' first owner, Gene "The Cowboy" Autry, was originally interested only in broadcasting the Angels, but was encouraged to buy the team when the Dodgers' Walter O'Malley vetoed the choice of Bill Veeck? (Veeck, the goofball promotional genius who revived the Browns' fortunes briefly when he hired a midget to pinch-hit, would have been a perfect fit for Hollywood in the early 60s. That's obviously what O'Malley was afraid of.)

You probably knew that the Angels played at Dodger Stadium from 1962-64, and when they played there, they called the ballpark "Chavez Ravine." But did you know that the '62 team was in first place on July 4th, and was a threat to overtake the Yankees that year until late in the season?

You know that O'Malley as landlord treated the Angels like dirt, so Autry moved the team to Anaheim. But did you know that Long Beach could have had the Angels, but when the city insisted the team call itself the Long Beach Angels, Autry backed out? (In Anaheim, they were known as the California Angels, until 1997, when they became known as the Anaheim Angels. Beginning in 2005, they took on the unwieldy name that only lawyers could love, "the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim." You know all about that.)

These bits of information about Los Angeles' baseball history are included in the Angels' entry in Wikipedia. Thanks to 6-4-2's Rob McMillan for pointing to it. I still can't get over that we almost got the Browns — a baseball team with arguably the most futile history of any major league franchise. In 1942, the L.A. Browns would have been just three years removed from the team that had one of the worst records in major league history, 43-111, a .279 winning percentage.

Of course, the Browns found success as the Baltimore Orioles. In fact, in 1966, the Orioles swept the Dodgers in the World Series, beating Don Drysdale twice and handing the great Sandy Koufax a defeat in the last game he ever pitched. 

Steve Howe, R.I.P.

Steve Howe, who died this week in an early-morning traffic accident, was one of the most memorable Dodgers, and one of the most frustrating and tragic. The Dodgers didn't have a bad 1980s — they were the only baseball team to win two World Championships in that decade — but I'll bet they would have been much more successful if this great lefthanded closer could have stayed sober.

Rookie of the Year in 1980, key to the 1981 team's triumph, Howe entered drug rehab after the near-miss of the 1982 season, was suspended several times in 1983 (but still managed to earn 18 saves with an ERA of 1.44), missed 1984 entirely after the baseball commissioner suspended him, returned in 1985 but was dumped in July after failing to show up for a couple of games.

After bouncing around the minor leagues and a few false starts with major league teams from 1985-91, Howe had a renaissance with the New York Yankees in the 1990s, but only after enduring another cocaine-related suspension in 1992. Substance abuse continued to give him serious problems even after his baseball career was over. Howe's was a case that traditional rehab methods could not cure — although I have no knowledge of whether he was still a user at the time of his death.

Losing Howe in 1983 forced the Dodgers to scramble to replace him, left-handed relievers of that quality being rare beasts. Before the 1984 season, they traded a promising starter, Sid Fernandez, to the Mets for left-handed reliever Carlos Diaz. Diaz was a flop, while Fernandez had a good career, and helped pitch the Mets into the 1986 World Series. Before the 1986 season they traded catcher Steve Yeager — admittedly an old coot by this time — for lefty reliever Ed Vande Berg, but Vande Berg wasn't the answer either, and was released after one season.

Bullpen failures plagued the Dodgers in the post-season throughout the 80s, most notably in 1985, when Howe's replacement as closer, Tom Neidenfeuer, gave up two game-winning home runs in consecutive games against the Cardinals, costing LA another World Series shot. Howe, who played with a combination of nervous energy and steely focus, might have fared better in these high-pressure situations. But it was not to be.

To me, Steve Howe was an emblematic figure of the early 1980s as I experienced them. Everywhere I went, all I heard about was cocaine. I know cocaine played a factor in the thwarted careers and busted families of some talented people I worked with. I can think of other friends who got themselves into very stupid and dangerous situations thanks to cocaine, and are lucky to be alive today. Almost without exception, cocaine made people act like jerks. Was anything more boring than being forced to listen to someone prattle on as if they were a genius, when in fact they were just high on coke? I was no Nancy Reagan, but I hated what cocaine was doing to Los Angeles.

Robin Williams' famous line of the era was "Cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money," but the people I knew who got involved with cocaine didn't have Robin Williams' income to fall back on. A lot of heartbreak in the 1980s thanks to cocaine. Maybe Steve Howe's Dodger career is only a small heartbreak in the grand scheme of things, but I took it personally. I wish his talent had given him a better, happier life.

A Few Updates

Time to catch breath. I've blogged on far more topics than I expected to when I started this up. I have received so many kind comments, both on- and off-line. I intend to continue it indefinitely, because I love writing it.

Some of the things I've blogged about deserve another quick look:

Salute to Ray Davies was prompted by the upcoming release of the longtime Kinks' leader's first solo album. I expressed nervousness about whether the CD would be good. The late Kinks albums were pretty weak.

Well, the album, "Other People's Lives" is out and it's not merely good, it's great from beginning to end. It manages to capture everything fans love about Ray, and yet sound quite different from anything he's done before. That might be because, as he explains in the liner notes, his Kinks songs were written in the studio, which suggests they were written to order, on deadline, with an expensive clock running, perhaps a little slapdash. This time, Davies labored his songs. He risked overthinking, but the extra effort pays off. I can't tell you what my favorite song is yet. There might be a "Waterloo Sunset"-level masterpiece among them.

Some will miss that shambling Kinks style. Ray's brother Dave was a guitarist of little technique and a lot of attitude. The skilled session musicians on the new one, aided by digital recording technology, come up with a much different sound — more rhythmic, more soulful, more American. Davies' vocals are strong and, as in his best Kinks music, very human. "Other People's Lives" is not to be missed.

I asked "Will There Be Flowers?" in Borrego Springs this March. I didn't make it out there, but apparently there is only a limited bloom due to the late-arriving rainfall. Things are a little more colorful in Death Valley. North of Los Angeles, the California Poppy Reserve is flourishing, and probably worth a trip. Check this site for desert wildflowers sightings throughout the desert southwest.

Hee Seop Choi is on the Red Sox's disabled list. His Dodger replacement, Nomar Garciaparra, looks like he's heading there, too, along with another new Dodger Codger, Kenny Lofton. To paraphrase Earl Weaver, Ned Colletti just got a lot dumber, and a lot closer to his injury snake-bit predecessor, Paul DePodesta.

The Tunguska meteor theory of global warming hasn't picked up much traction, although one of my commenters endorsed it. I'm not sure if I even endorse it! But I like asking questions.

Nobody's bought the former Knight-Ridder newspapers that McClatchy put up for sale, but bids are coming in, including a combined bid from the Newspaper Guild and Ron Burkle's L.A.-based Yucaipa investment firm.

Blogging turns out to be a good way to connect with old friends and forgotten enthusiasms. I wrote about the history of Elliot Mintz, spokesman for Paris Hilton and, before that, John Lennon, and got lots of great memories of 60s and 70s radio lore in the comments area. This blog has put my family and me back in touch with several long-lost friends — what could be more gratifying? People my age are starting to finally live their dreams, to rethink their careers, and to cherish the good health of their loved ones. It's also been wonderful to hear from other bloggers whose work I greatly respect, and from my fellow denizens of the greatest site on the whole Internet, Dodger Thoughts. Your kind words about this site mean so much to me.

Back in December, I started this blog with a somewhat dramatic, breathless recounting of the last three weeks of my last job — including a ferry ride across an icy lake that struck me as symbolic of my situation. In that post, I mentioned that, shortly after I lost that job, I was indicted. Now, 15 months later, I finally get my trial, starting tomorrow.

I've gotten so many wonderful notes of support and good wishes, and I'm so grateful for them. Many of these notes say something to the effect of, "You must be so stressed out." Well, the adrenaline is certainly pumping; I'm highly alert. But, no, I'm not stressed out. I'm a fortunate person. I have an amazing wife, a wonderful son, a brilliant and supportive family, and so many great friends. And, I believe our justice system ultimately will be fair.

During the trial, which will last about four weeks, blogging here will be light. There might be a guest comment or two. I'm not going to use this site to address my case while it is going on. If I do post, it will be the usual stuff I write about. Whatever that is.

The Hee Seop Choi in All of Us

Sometimes, I could identify with Hee Seop Choi.  Couldn’t you?  You try your best, you maintain a positive attitude, you experience some success, certainly on a par with your peers. But someone just doesn’t like you.

For the Dodger first baseman, it probably came down to the fact that he was the most visible symbol of a controversial 2004 trade made by former GM Paul DePodesta.  He got Choi and pitcher Brad Penny in a swap that included beloved (but overrated) Dodger catcher Paul LoDuca. 

That trade came to symbolize not only DePodesta, but the entire sabermetric (aka “Moneyball”) philosophy: No sentiment. No respect for a guy like Dukie who could hit in “clutch” situations (sabermetricians think “clutchiness” is a myth.)  Over-regard for a hitter like Choi whose eye for the strike zone resulted in many bases on balls.  Sabermetricians love bases on balls. Over-regard for “replacement level” players who didn’t cost much.  That was the key, for Choi defenders.  Was Choi great? No, but for what the Dodgers paid him, he more than earned it.

One guy who hated the LoDuca trade was former manager Jim Tracy.  He missed LoDuca so much, he took over his uniform number.  He took his despair and anger out on Choi, benching him as often as he could.  For example, when it became clear that Jason Phillips was an incompetent catcher, Tracy moved Phillips to first base, displacing Choi, who was a much better hitter and fielder.  Phillips was the kind of guy sentimentalists loved.  He played hard; poorly, but hard.  Choi was sort of happy go lucky.  He worked hard, but it didn’t show.  When he stood at the plate, working the count and often getting a walk, he appeared to sentimentalists to be unaggressive. 

Choi was a pretty decent power hitter. If he came up with men on base and the game on the line, Dodger fans loved to chant his metronymic name:  HEE SEOP CHOI!  HEE SEOP CHOI!  He had a kind of sunny charisma.  But the more fans cheered for him, the more determined Tracy was to stick him on the bench.

When Ned Colletti was hired to replace DePodesta, he quite apparently wanted to put his own stamp on the team. Of course, he wasn’t about to oust successful DePodesta acquisitions like Jeff Kent, Derek Lowe or J.D. Drew.  So it would have to be Choi.  With less than two weeks to go before Opening Day, the Dodgers today placed Choi on waivers.  The Boston Red Sox claimed him.  Choi has a fair chance of playing in Boston, because the Sox are starved for power.  Plus, the Sox GM, Theo Epstein, is the most successful sabermetric executive in the game.

There was a lot of affection for Choi on the great blog Dodger Thoughts, and many of its regular posters will continue to cheer him on.  There were also a few posters who didn’t get the love at all.  Choi’s departure promises to halt many bitter arguments that took place on that site and other Dodger blogs — but not for awhile, not til everyone gets last licks.

I think the affection for Choi comes from a place we all have inside us.  We want to please everyone, but we just can’t.  And sometimes our adversary wins.  It doesn’t seem fair, but that’s life, and life goes on.   Choi might be in a better place now — Fenway Park, late summer game against the hated Yankees, the crowd yelling HEE SEOP CHOI! HEE SEOP CHOI! And Choi, blasting it out of the park.  Or maybe walking.  Good enough.

Three More Seasons

If you were born in the New York area in 1944, and started listening to Dodger games on the radio at age six, then moved with the team to Los Angeles eight years later, where you’ve remained til now, then you would have a perfect Vin Scully attendance record. And when Scully retires at the end of the 2008 season, you would be 64 years old.

The eternally smooth Vin Scully. He’s been fumbling his words a little more than he used to, like you’d expect a man in his late 70s would do. But his delivery is still clean and clear and his voice as young as a cool mountain stream.

Scully is an advertisement for the fountain-of-youth benefits of baseball. The game is for little boys (and girls). When the players’ competitive juices get fired up, when they exhibit the uninhibited joy of a victorious moment, Scully loves to say “you have to have a lot of little boy in you to play this game.”

Baseball still brings out the little boy in him — and that brings out the little boy in me, and probably you, too, if you’re his fan.

I assume I’ll still be around in 2009 after Scully’s current contract expires, to begin the post-Vin Scully period of my Dodger fandom. I assume I’ll still follow the team. Old habits die hard. Vin already takes about a third of the games off, so I’m used to hearing other, lesser voices describe the action.

We can let go of you, Vin. We knew we’d have to some day. But this is one of those moments when the cliche encomium “immortal” seems more like a cruel deception. The immortals are merely mortal like the rest of us. The idea of Vin Scully taking his well-earned retirement makes us yearn that it could be otherwise.

(Update 2/22/06:  Sorry if this post was unreadable earlier. PCs have an aspect-ratio problem now.  My laptop has a wide screen, but many PCs don’t.  On the narrower screen, the image of Scully & Doggett covered up part of the text.)

That Unsatisfied Feeling

Thanks to Kevin Hench, columnist at FOXSports.com, here are ten reasons why the National Football League’s post-season this year kind of felt like the 2000 election — unfair and unresolved. Fans are happy for Jerome Bettis, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are a perfectly respectable champion. But if the referees had not made so many gross blunders, you could just as easily imagine Seattle, New England or Indianapolis with the trophy.

What’s worse: The calls did not “even out.” In the Super Bowl, the Seahawks were consistently on the losing end of bad calls; in earlier rounds, the Patriots and Colts kept getting jobbed, while Pittsburgh and Denver usually benefited — the one exception being the Polamalu phantom interception that almost snatched Pittsburgh’s ill-gotten victory away.

I have no changes to recommend. Like campaign finance reform, each new officiating rule creates five unintended consequences for every one problem it addresses. But if you’re a football fan and you’re feeling a little unsatisfied with the just-concluded season, this might be why.

Anyway, with Madison Avenue’s annual extravaganza out of the way, something good to ponder: Baseball Spring Training begins in a little more than a week. Pitchers and catchers report to the Dodgers and Angels February 15.

“Moneyball” endures

When Dodger owner Frank McCourt fired Paul DePodesta as general manager in October, the move came as a shock to baseball beat reporters and columnists, but the firing was almost univerally welcomed. DePodesta was seen as the exponent of controversial, unproven, statistics-based theories of player evaluation, and a threat to the baseball establishment.

DePodesta started with, er, two strikes against him. He appeared in Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball,” which covered a year with the Oakland A’s when DePodesta was assistant general manager. In one scene, DePodesta seconds Oakland GM Billy Beane’s scathing assessment of baseball scouts.    Scouts are the lyric troubadors of baseball, men who spend their lives on the road, traveling from one cheap motel to the next, looking for the next star player on the sandlots of the blue highways. How dare a Harvard man who never played the game professionally mock scouts? 

When he arrived in Los Angeles in 2003, the Times’ columnists Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers seemed obsessed with the idea that ”Google Boy” DePodesta used a computer.  It was bizarre. All baseball teams number-crunch statistics on computers, and have done so for 20 years. It would’ve made about as much sense to criticize DePodesta for driving a car instead of riding a horse.

After suffering through weeks of embarrassing rejected overtures to GM candidates, McCourt finally hired Ned Colletti as DePodesta’s replacement, and the baseball establishment cheered.  Colletti, an official with the San Francisco Giants and before that the Chicago Cubs, was said to be an old-school guy, who would restore the traditional ways of baseball to Chavez Ravine.

In a new post on my favorite blog, Dodger Thoughts, Jon Weisman points out that, after a couple of months on the job, Colletti seems not to have broken from DePodesta’s philosophy much at all:

One of the arguments I’ve been making this offseason is that the biggest difference between former Dodger general manager Paul DePodesta and his successor, Ned Colletti, is not in philosophy, but how the media has covered them. Despite the perception that Colletti is a 180-degree reversal from DePodesta, my belief has been that in reality, the two are much closer in approach than we’ve been led to believe. Both prize the Dodger farm system. Both relied on veterans from other organizations – including veterans with considerable injury histories – to carry the Dodgers until the farm system matured.

I’m getting worried about the injuries.  Fans don’t want to see a repeat of last season’s dismal performance, which was mostly due to the amount of time good players like J.D. Drew, Milton Bradley and Eric Gagne spent on the disabled list. But a lot of Dodger players seem to be having operations this off-season, including Rafael Furcal, the new $39 million shortstop that Colletti signed as a free agent.

Colletti is a former PR man, and it shows. He calls Furcal’s knee surgery only a “clean up.”  A few days ago, the Dodgers announced that star second baseman Jeff Kent also is having surgery, but it’s only “precautionary.” In November, Drew had “clean up” surgery on his right wrist and a separate operation to repair a tear in his right shoulder muscle.  I’ve never had “clean up surgery.”  The Dodgers are making it sound elective, like getting a nose job. 

Update 1/10: Dodger Thoughts regular “D4P” offers this explanation:

McCourt wasn’t looking for a GM who differed from Depo with respect to “philosophy”, but rather a GM who differed from Depo with respect to personality and extroversion. McCourt wanted a guy that was fun for he and his wife to hang out with, and a guy with “people skills” who could schmooze with the press. If you recall McCourt’s rationale for firing Depo, none of it (that I read) had anything to do with the players that Depo brought in or Depo’s philosophy on player evaluation.

Dodger Thoughts has developed some enjoyable nicknames.  Ned Colletti is either “Flanders” (for Ned Flanders of the Simpsons), or “Mr. Ned,” (which is what Furcal called Colletti at a press conference when he couldn’t remember the name of the man who had just handed him $39 million.)  DePodesta is, affectionally, “Depo.” The former manager, Jim Tracy, was “Buntermaker” because he seemed to prize bunting as a sign of character, even when it didn’t help win games. Nothing yet for new manager Grady Little, but I’m sure something will catch on early this season.  

“Before you know it, the Renaissance will be here and we’ll all be painting.”

Thank you, Kevin Roderick! I wasn’t sure when I was going to tell anyone about this blog. Not until I gained some mastery over the form, I figured. It took awhile for me to understand how to structure a news story. Or a press release. Or a speech. Or a 600-word op-ed. I’m now learning the craft of screenwriting, which is as formal in its structure as the 19th century sonata. I figured I should practice blogging in splendid isolation for awhile before telling the world about it. (But here’s one lesson: When you “claim” your blog on Technorati, attention soon follows.)

Decades from now, students might enroll in academies to memorize the Five Essentials of Blogging. But no such thing exists today. There’s plenty of blogging technology, but there is no form, no set of rules. It is organic to the blogger, personal and authentic.

And, for that reason, somewhat disreputable.

Many news organizations have issues with blogs. That’s partly because so many blogs are dedicated to pointing out their mistakes and biases. More high-minded reporters and editors say bloggers don’t check facts out as thoroughly as real reporters do. No editors around to ask the tough questions editors are supposed to ask. No credentialing. Reporters remember how hard it was to get hired by prestigious publications like the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek or Forbes, and here these arrivistes come along who can just start writing and spouting opinions, without having paid any dues at all.

The smarter reporters and columnists, however, are starting to realize they can blog too. Some of them are quite good at it. Blogging also fills in crucial gaps in reporting. There was an eye-opening guest post on Jay Rosen’s PressThink by “citizen journalist” Lisa Williams, who writes a blog about her hometown, Watertown, Massachussetts:

Many of the things I put on H2otown would not make it into a newspaper where space is at a premium, and my newsgathering techniques (I TiVo local access cable of town meetings) would not pass muster. But in many cases, there’s no one else covering this stuff in any way, in person or otherwise.

I realize that my newsgathering techniques aren’t professional grade; in fact, some people might laugh at them. I’m willing to be humble and to be humbled about that. I’m also completely upfront with readers and anyone who asks about how I get material; jokes about my TiVo are standard fare at H2otown. Nonetheless, the site now gets 1,200 page views a day in a town where the local weekly newspaper’s circulation is around 4,300. My challenge was to put together something useful with my spare time, a pocket digital camera/digital videocam and a voice recorder from Best Buy, and a $40 a month account to rent community site/blogging software.

Williams’s post raises crucial points for those who see a coming clash between the mainstream media (MSM is the accepted acronym now, so I use it) and the alternative media represented by blogs. The fact is, they help each other. If there’s anything most serious blogs have in common, they are almost all content aggregators–and much of that content comes from the MSM. Sometimes, sure, the blogger links to an article for purposes of mockery, or rage. But the scribe should appreciate the compliment even still. At least someone’s paying attention and taking them seriously.

I see a much bigger challenge from blogging to the public relations industry. Fundamental to any PR or issues management campaign is an attempt to control the message. Of course, one of the first things a PR pro tells their client is “you can’t control the message,” because reporters will write whatever they want, no matter what you tell them.

Nonetheless, the standard model for most PR campaigns that I’ve had anything to do with is built around an attempt to develop “message points” about the product or issue, and then to drive those few, clear, hopefully memorable phrases into the target audiences’ consciousness through whatever communications outlets are available–including media interviews and any interactions with the public. (“Message discipline” is why talking-heads public affairs shows became so tedious. The guests are media-trained within an inch of their lives before they submit to such interviews, and they cling to those talking points like a sea anemone clings to coral.)

When the Internet first arrived, the PR industry loved it. Another medium, relatively low-cost and very much under your control, to drive home the messages. Corporations, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, government agencies all built websites with increasingly rich content and detail, to tell their stories. Consumers could use them to find out about products and send e-mails with questions or problems. Reporters could read the latest press releases. Investors could view the annual report. Cool graphics, a video message from the CEO, games and promotions, favorable news clips–all of it could be posted online.

As time passed, the corporate-model website got stale. The blogging phenomenon subtly undermined the value of it. Typical corporate websites were relatively static. The home page looked the same, week after month after year. There might be a link to something [NEW!], but you had to find it and be motivated to click it. But good bloggers update their sites frequently, some of them several times a day. When you get hooked on a blog, you keep going back. There’s a narrative going. Something important happens in the news or in the issue covered by that blog, and you want to find out: What’s (fill in the blank)’s take on this?

The tone of a blog is also completely different. PR-speak is highly refined, heavily processed. Coming up with a PR campaign’s messages can take weeks of meetings, and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars worth of research. Once a client has invested that much time, money and executive attention on “what we want to say,” they don’t like to vary from it. Bloggers? They rant and rave. They exude passion, or scorn, or a snarky sense of humor. They don’t say the same thing twice. They switch subjects on a dime. They even make mistakes–and sometimes admit them. That’s why you go back to a blog: To be surprised. PR clients aren’t fond of surprises. They want their public utterances to “stay on message.” An old saw of PR is: Once a client is completely bored with their own message, that’s the point when it’s finally “breaking through.” But boredom is deadly on the Internet.

Bloggers react anecdotally. They are word of mouth to the power of a gazillion. When Jeff Jarvis’ Dell computer didn’t work, he blogged about his problems with their customer service. He had one of those terrible consumer experiences that sometimes happens. I’ve bought two computers from Dell, and have been very pleased. Go figure. Jarvis wasn’t so lucky–and as a result, Dell got hammered.

In a new white paper launched (8/12/05), analysis clearly reveals that blogging has a direct influence on corporate reputation. The white paper, ‘Measuring the Influence of Bloggers on Corporate Reputation’ scientifically measures, for the first time, the influence of bloggers versus conventional media.

Authored by Market Sentinel, Onalytica and immediate future PR, the white paper uses the example of blogger Jeff Jarvis’s criticism of the computer retailer, Dell. It shows first that Dell has sustained long-term damage to its brand image and secondly that the cheerleaders for the poor reputation of Dell’s customer services, are bloggers.

“Bloggers have extended their influence from dominating negative perceptions of Dell to dominating perceptions of Dell’s entire reputation in the customer services area,” says Flemming Madsen from Onalytica.

He continues, “Bloggers used Jeff Jarvis’s shorthand ‘Dell Hell’ to collaboratively spread negative comment about Dell’s customer service: weakening Dell’s reputation where the company used to be so strong.”

This is all so unruly, from the traditional PR standpoint. In the old days, if a reporter was working on a story about customer dissatisfaction, the reporter wouldn’t spring the story on the company. That wouldn’t be considered fair. He or she would call the company’s spokeperson. That call would give the company enough running room to get to the bottom of the problem and either debunk it (factually of course), or acknowledge it and announce changes. The negative story might still run, but it would be (the gold standard of PR) a “one-day story.” Now anyone can say anything, true, false or in-between. If the issue gains momentum, the traditional PR “holding statement” is a pretty weak weapon.

The PR industry has spent much of 2005 struggling with this new dynamic. It’s been an interesting year to spend on the sidelines, allowing me the time to think about it without the pressure of having to process it for a specific client. A few of the links on the right column are to bloggers who are documenting the impact of blogging on PR. (I’ll add more soon.) The consistent theme is, of course, blogging is an opportunity. And it probably is–but first, I think the PR industry has to recognize that the old game is over, the rules are gone. Tens of thousands of PR people around the world must now un-learn some things they spent decades learning and practicing–and do it fast, because clients aren’t going to pay indefinitely for what isn’t working anymore.

One of the most open-minded people I’ve met in public relations is Richard Edelman–who happens to be president and CEO of Edelman (where I worked for seven+ years). He’s been blogging for almost a year and a half, and many of his observations concern what blogging means for his industry. His blog is worth reading in toto (and I recognize that among his many posts is at least one that addresses the controversy of which I’m a part), and it’s hard to find just one chunk to quote. But here’s one from last May, which is about a debate Edelman had with “blogger extraordinaire” (and consultant) David Weinberger:

I asked (Weinberger) how PR firms can work with the blogging community in a way that does not make them suspicious. We agreed on four concepts.

First, DIALOGUE. Ask their opinions. Give them a chance to influence the outcome, whether a new product launch or a debate on product safety.

Second, OPT-IN. Those of us in the private sector cannot suddenly send an email to a person who has been complaining about his/her cell phone service in a usenet discussion, suggesting a competitive carrier. We have to wait for some tangible evidence of intent to act or learn, such as going to Web site on a disease, before countering with an offer of interaction.

Third, INFORMATION. As one example we can offer a library function, a chance to engage with information seekers, by offering a blog roll, facilitating links to interesting postings that are informative.

Fourth, NOT CONTROLLED. We can send along products that are in test phase (schweg is a Weinberger word) but with a note that makes it clear what is expected. We can ask for feedback without expectation of a certain outcome (reminds me of dealing with my 14 year old daughter.”

David and I then tried to come to a broader understanding on the role of the PR person. He contends that we are best in a matchmaker’s job…. (snip) He believes that PR professionals are not “primary content people” and that “PR people have a guarded attitude, trying to put the best spin on every situation.” He suggests that those of us in PR should continue in our traditional role of setting up our clients for direct conversations with end users of information, just as we would pitch a reporter who could conduct an interview with a client. He does acknowledge that PR could have a very beneficial role if it takes on the challenge of building Public Relationships, that involves telling both sides of a story with a serious commitment to transparency.

I told him that I disagree with his assessment of the potential for our profession. I believe that we can be content creators, in finding credible advocates and in bringing together various parties to resolve important issues, such as Microsoft’s support for digitizing content in libraries. PR can give voice to those traditionally deprived of a platform and that PR is a means of finding and then communicating the truth in this messy environment where skepticism of motive reigns. I left our meeting convinced that we have real work to do to assure our profession’s future in this new media world.

I agree with much of this, but a lot hangs on what Edelman means by “the blogging community.” It’s not just bloggers; it’s also those who read them, who leave comments, and who turn to the blog and the comments for the “real deal.” A great blog doesn’t just document the thoughts of a blogger–it creates a community. A good local example: Jon Weisman’s Dodger Thoughts, which can get 700 comments on a single post–in the off-season! Many commenters themselves are prodigious writers with distinct personae. Together, they are an extraordinarily interesting and loyal community of clever people with much more than just baseball on their minds. When Dodger management tries to sell a story Weisman’s community isn’t buying, they get picked apart without mercy.

The blogging community trusts one another far more than they trust professional spinmeisters. Bloggers are allergic to spin, whether it’s coming from a newspaper, a corporation or anyone paid to flack. They can smell it a mile away.

The “real work” Edelman talks about is to build trust in a new environment that, in a Darwinian sense, no longer favors the old species. From a more tactical standpoint, the “real work” for both PR and journalism is to figure whether, how and what to blog. Many are doing it already. My early observations are: the institutional blogs that essentially push the old message points in a new form aren’t interesting enough to make it worthwhile, except in cases where the product or company is of inherent fascination to an intensely involved community (e.g. electronic games). The ones that will succeed, it seems, are the ones that let the consumer, the voter, the reader, the stakeholder participate in the dialogue on an equal footing with the blog owner. The risk? The discussion will take off in a direction that doesn’t fit into the plan. The opportunity? To make a new plan.

But it’s early yet. There’s much I don’t know and can’t know. I feel privileged, however, to be part of a communications revolution that compares with any other cultural revolution–like the addition of perspective that revolutionized painting in the Renaissance, or the elevation of reason in the Enlightenment, which formed the philosophical basis for what we Americans take for granted–democracy. So I’m blogging “on the road to find out.”

Let’s Agree to Agree

Do all cities run this way? 

Eleven years ago, both of Los Angeles’ NFL teams moved away.  The Raiders abandoned the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, while the Rams, having ditched the Coliseum some 20 years prior, abandoned their Anaheim home.  Both teams went to places that, on the face of it, shouldn’t be stealing teams from such a big market. St. Louis? A city of little distinction, size or importance.  Oakland?  Interesting city, totally in the shadow of its glamorous neighbor across the Bay. 

Since these historic defections, what’s happened?  LA’s political community has all agreed: The NFL will come back.  It has to.  Without the Los Angeles market, the National Football League is not truly “national.”  A generation of sports fans in this gigantic market will grow up without an interest in pro football. The league will be hurt! And once the pain becomes intolerable, just watch, they’ll come crawling back, on our terms.

And what are our terms?  That the next Los Angeles NFL franchise will play in the Coliseum.

It’s an Orwellian thoughtcrime to think any other site even deserves consideration.  If you don’t think so, ask Michael Ovitz.  Or Peter O’Malley.  Or Tim Leiweke, Philip Anschutz and Casey Wasserman. Or, today, Dodger owner Frank McCourt:

The City Council, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger all have publicly endorsed the Coliseum.

“I’ve got to believe he [McCourt] didn’t understand the depth and the extent of the community consensus behind the Coliseum as the site for an NFL team in Los Angeles,” Villaraigosa said.

(Supervisor Zev) Yaroslavsky said the Dodgers had “broken ranks with what has been a united community — the business, sports, political and environmental communities, all of them behind the Coliseum project.”

Councilman Ed Reyes, whose district includes Dodger Stadium, said he would not support a football stadium there and noted that McCourt had promised to keep elected officials and community leaders informed of any potential development on the site. Reyes said McCourt had not spoken with him about an NFL stadium.

“If he’s making these overtures, it’s a big blow to the folks who are building a level of trust with him,” Reyes said. “That’s important when you’re dealing with issues of that scale.”

This “community consensus” is more accurately described as “the party line.” Deviance from it is not tolerated–despite the fact that the NFL’s made it clear in ways both direct and subtle that it doesn’t want to bring another team to this stadium.

Yes, I’m aware that just last month, local news outlets were able to shout in headlines that the NFL had reached a “preliminary agreement” to install a team in the Coliseum.  These headlines followed a meeting between NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Mayor Villaraigosa. But what did they really agree on?  According to the AP story:

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue emerged from a closed-door meeting with the mayor, stood on the steps of City Hall and announced that a preliminary agreement had been reached to finally return a team to Los Angeles.

After answering reporters’ questions for 15 minutes, even he couldn’t gauge the significance of his announcement Thursday.

“I’d rather not try,” Tagliabue said as he was guided into the back seat of a limousine and whisked away.

Even Mayor Villaraigosa’s own press release is a sticky mess of rhetoric that leads in no particular direction:

“Mr. Tagliabue and I had a very productive meeting and great exchange. There is both tremendous enthusiasm and spirited consensus in our community about the Coliseum as the preeminent venue for professional football. Leaders from the city, county and state have all come together to prepare the groundwork here. It’s time for professional football to come home to the Coliseum after 13 years — to become part of our community, to generate jobs and economic vitality, and to create new moments of football history.”

I think the agreement between the NFL and the city/county/state comes down to this.  From the NFL:  We’ll tell our owners to stop saying that renovating the Coliseum is like “trying to put a new dress on an old hooker.”  From LA: We’ll continue to pretend it matters if the NFL ever comes back.

Meanwhile, McCourt is in the doghouse for pursuing one of the various alternatives that actually makes sense–putting an NFL stadium on the Dodgers’ land.  Because McCourt is widely disliked, his political and PR gaffe is generating much schadenfreude.  (The PR people around McCourt knew full well the impact this would have; it’s surprising they let this happen.) But it reminds me of the sad hash former Mayor Riordan made when he first asked Peter O’Malley to look into the same idea and then–after O’Malley burned through about a million dollars and a year and a half of his life on preliminary studies–Riordan withdrew his support, and demanded O’Malley withdraw.

It’s been reported in many places that this embarassing chain-jerking was the final straw for O’Malley. He would have continued as owner of the Dodgers if he’d had the chance to also own an NFL franchise. The two together would have made a profit for him. But when Riordan pulled the rug out from under him, O’Malley was forced to realize he couldn’t afford to keep the Dodgers.  And so they were sold to Fox, and then by Fox to McCourt. Understandably, Dodger fans continue to wish there was such a thing as time travel so all that could have been averted.