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Column: At last, baseball feels fresh again with Dodgers on TV

Dodgers third baseman Juan Uribe (5) is greeted by center fielder Yasiel Puig after scoring on a sacrifice fly by Dee Gordon in the fifth inning against the Giants on Monday night.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
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Up till Monday, this was the best Dodgers season we’d never seen. From newspaper reports and radio, we could keep up with the boys ... their heroics, their hissy fits. Constant tweeting added another layer of nuance and understanding. When I want fully blossomed, in-depth reporting, I always turn to Twitter.

Still, there was no joy in Mudville.

Till Monday.

Like cowboy campfires across a Western ridge, TVs finally came ablaze with Dodgers baseball Monday night, after a standoff over (of all things!) money. The kid Scully, who if you ask me has a real knack for the TV biz, started off the festivities with the opening line we always fall for: “It’s time for Dodger baseball!”

Well, it was time six months ago, actually.

But just seeing Scully again gave the moment a World Series buzz, didn’t it? I got chills. In game No. 3,427, in a season that goes on far too long, baseball felt fresh and alive again.

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Baseball often seems like the party guest who never leaves. Some three-hour games, coffee isn’t strong enough to get me through, so I just guzzle a bucketful of beans.

But come September ... sweet September. The Christmas stuff is finally in the stores again, and baseball actually matters. Irony upon irony — a triple-decker cheeseburger of irony — is that it’s not till football returns that baseball really gets exciting. Football: the son Mom always liked better.

For various reasons, baseball seems more comforting this year (hint: Football is one arrest away from adding guard towers). And now, with just a six-pack of games to play, we’re seeing the Dodgers on TV again. What a wonderful world.

I’d organized rallies, threatened to sue, chained myself to Charlie Steiner, and it accomplished what? Nothing, that’s what. As Dodger Stadium’s resident dramaturge, I tried to shame them into action on this stupid TV standoff. Some people, it appears, are above shame. Millionaires, mostly.

Yet, that’s all in the past now. I savor these flickering moments of televised baseball, soak it in like the last rays of summer sun. If Monday night’s game were a telethon, I’d have sent money.

I don’t know where TWC dug up this station to carry the games. Before this TV rebirth was announced last week, I’d never heard of KDOC. Now it’s Stan Kasten’s super station.

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With 13 cameras and a crew of 50, TWC producer Glenn Diamond and director Dustin Denti punched up a fine game, with production values equal to the networks. Particularly liked the around-the-horn headshots to set up the Dodgers defense in the first inning.

Still, I wish TV directors in general did a better job showing defensive positions with runners in scoring position. And why not send one of your roving cameras into the booth with Scully once in a while? Isn’t that where we all want to sit, in the chair next to Vin?

These Dodgers make good TV though, don’t they? A.J. Ellis walks up to Taylor Swift songs. Yasiel Puig, aka Notorious P.U.I.G., plays center field like a stolen car. If Matt Kemp glared at him one more time, I was going to call their mothers.

Other than that, all seemed well enough during the Dodgers’ return to the tube, on Tommy Lasorda’s birthday, no less.

After a while, I almost started to understand TWC’s new slogan, “Enjoy Better,” a motto that must’ve been coined during some marketing department drinking game. Enjoy Better? What did they reject: Enjoy Worse?

Monday’s telecast also reminded me how I still prefer the whole thing in person, baseball being one of the few sports that you can still enjoy better that way.

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No telecast ever captured the smell of a ballyard, the murmur of the crowd, or Hall of Fame vendor Roger Owens yelling, “NUUUUUUTS!!!”

Yeah, we’re all nuts, Roger. Because the owners treat us like infield dirt and we keep crawling back — well, most of us anyway, enough to keep this Dodgers franchise around another year.

They say that opera is what happens when your enemy stabs you and instead of dying, you sing.

Well, Monday, we all sang again. Such suckers, right?

Such beautiful music.

chris.erskine@latimes.com

Twitter: @erskinetimes

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