And now a brief moment to mourn the passing of ... the Dodgers’ Hollywood Stars game
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Hoo-ray for Hollywood … and then again, maybe not.
Not at Dodger Stadium. Not this year.
Alas, Hollywood just no longer loves the Dodgers. No longer fancies cozying up with ballplayers at Dodger Stadium. It’s an official Hollywood falling-out.
The days of Frank Sinatra sitting a few rows behind the Dodger dugout are a fading memory. As are the days of Sinatra and his Rat Pack playing in the Hollywood Stars game.
So this year, for the first time since it began 52 years ago at the Coliseum, there is no Dodgers’ Hollywood Stars game.
It just disappeared, kinda like Rene Russo. Killed off without an announcement, without fanfare, without a famous last scene.
Died from lack of Hollywood interest. The A-list guys who used to populate the game are no more, and haven’t been for years. Maybe they all live in the south of France now.
Instead of stars, the game featured a bunch of B-list and C-list people that 99% of the world have never heard of.
The Dodgers may have accidentally contributed to the watered-down star power when they elected to dumb the media, in their excellent role as the Washington Generals, and replaced them with another team of stars.
Or as it turned out, itty-bitty stars. They were having trouble filling out one legitimate team of Hollywood celebs, and now needed two. Pretty soon if you delivered a pizza to the Paramount lot, you were an invitee.
Once they had great movie stars in the game. Now they had actors with small supporting parts in TV shows you might possibly have heard of. Plus, they turned it into a softball game.
This year the Dodgers decided to dump the game, then changed their minds and scheduled it for Aug. 7. Breaking up is so hard to do.
An effort was being made to bring in stars people would actually recognize -- Jack Black, Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner, Joe Mantegna were supposedly on board -- but apparently they couldn’t pull it off.
Officially, the game was canceled because the late reboot didn’t give them enough time to get the game organized. Unofficially, the Dodgers weren’t going to play another game where the headliner was Tony Danza. Although, ironically, I did think he was excellent in ‘Hollywood Knights,’ which unfortunately came out in 1980.
You could round up more A-list stars courtside at any regular-season Lakers’ game than the Dodgers could drum up for their Hollywood Stars game.
It’s a sad passing, but overdue. There aren’t many 51-year runs in Hollywood.
-- Steve Dilbeck