On This Day, Hopes Are High

The Dodgers will win their division title.

How’s that for an opening line?

So, come on out to the ol’ ballpark. Big doings today. Home opener. Everyone in the ravine but Chavez. The dreaded Cardinals in town. No-Hit Gross on the hill. Peanut Guy pitching in the stands. Grilled dogs safely in their buns. Lots of cotton in the candy. Our Cousin Vin up there in the booth. Sunshine expected. Not a cloud in the sky. Jury still out on what kind of spring it will be here in Los Angeles. All’s quiet on the Western front.

And, no fooling, I really am picking the Dodgers. No, seriously. I already know your reaction to this. It’s multiple choice. (1) Another feeble media stunt to sell newspapers. (2) Downey obviously still smoking old rolled-up sports pages. (3) Hasn’t this moron seen Atlanta’s pitchers yet?

Yes, to answer the last question first, I have. Those Atlanta guys are scary. I call them Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz and Avery and Pray for Bravery. Each one has an arm of steel. They shouldn’t be up for the Cy Young Award. They should be up for the Cyborg Award. I believe the Braves could have the first pitching staff in baseball history suspected of having their arms corked.

But the Dodger staff ain’t bad. Ain’t bad at all. Yes, it still needs an ace relief pitcher. But I don’t see any Eckersleys in that Atlanta bullpen. And yes, the Dodger pitchers need some runs scored behind them. But I haven’t seen the Braves knocking the hide off the horse.

No, the Dodgers have definite possibilities. And I’m glad about this, because I know that their fans are getting restless. After all, it’s been-- gasp! five years! --since the Dodgers won a World Series. Some teams haven’t won a World Series for five decades. Some teams haven’t won since the introduction of such baseball innovations as numbered uniforms and electric lights.

First off, you can’t cross off the Dodgers because of how they look on the second week of April. If players were judged on how they looked in April, neither Eddie Murray nor Ryne Sandberg ever would have been in anybody’s starting lineup in May. Brett Butler late last summer would have never done anything but pinch-run.

So, everybody relax. Lighten up. Make nice-nice. Give Strawberry the friendly “Dar-ryl! Dar-ryl!” chant now that he’s already had the unfriendly “Dar-ryl! Dar-ryl!” chant. And don’t go worrying about Darryl if he doesn’t get any wood on the ball right off the bat. He will, eventually.

Besides, Darryl is having a difficult time concentrating because he has been laughing so hard at all that fun Bobby Bonilla has been having back at Shea Stadium. Gosh, those were the good old days, weren’t they, Straw?

The Dodgers had the dubious pleasure of opening the season on the road against the National League’s worst and best teams, both of which receive their mail in the Southeastern United States. Of immediate impact, the good news was that the battery of Ramon Martinez and Mike Piazza came out smoking, and the bad news was an arm injury that befell Todd Worrell, the most expensive bull in the pen.

I have this funny feeling that, before too long, Jim Gott is going to be the guy who gets the toll-free call from the dugout with the game on the line and ends up keeping the Dodgers within hey-you distance of Atlanta. The starting pitching is such that one bullpen closer could still be all that stands between the Dodgers and first or fifth place.

They also need a leadoff man in case Jose Offerman ends up batting eighth. Here we could have the old Mariano Duncan situation all over again, a guy with everything it takes to become the perfect leadoff man, if only he can regularly put the ball in play. That way, the Dodgers can continue to bat Butler second, where he thrived after last season’s brutal start.

Steve Sax used to fill this role for the Dodgers, but time moves on. Now Sax is a third-string second baseman in Chicago, being tested in the outfield and being described, by the New York Times, as the bait in one of the most one-sided Yankee trades in years, the Yankees now believing that they received three important players for a has-been.

Nothing in baseball is predictable, no matter what anybody tells you. You say the Dodgers don’t have a chance of winning the division title? I say different.

Then again, you know how negative we sportswriters always are.