Give Him One Reason for Downey’s Attitude

Coming after the final drama of a drama-filled postseason, Mike Downey’s cliched, regurgitated, cranky “Twenty Reasons Why Baseball Is Still Ailing,” was spectacularly ill-timed. While most of us were reminded why we love the game, he was missing all the fun--and, not incidentally for a newspaperman, the story.

Would he have written the same column had the Dodgers won the Series?

LARRY MERCHANT

Santa Monica

*

Allan Malamud picked both the Reds and the Indians over the Braves, and your baseball writers ranked the pitching of Cleveland and Atlanta as “even.” Do you ever analyze why you make mistakes?

ROGER BOESCHE

Los Angeles

*

Like many other baseball fans, I did not attend a major league game this past year. I did watch some of the World Series, but had a tough time deciding who to root for. One team has Albert Belle and Eddie Murray and the other Ted Turner and Jane Fonda. Both had big union activists in Orel Hershiser and Tom Glavine.

It just seemed a fitting finish to the year, not caring who won or lost.

CHUCK HILL

Van Nuys

*

So, there were no post-October Series games this year, but make the initial playoff round best-of-seven, grant a few more concessions to TV’s scheduling demands, and by 2001, a new baseball hero can be crowned:

Mr. November!

CHARLES ZETTERBERG

Claremont