Letters: Clayton Kershaw is a winner

Memo to The Times: Clayton Kershaw gets it. Dodgers’ fans get it. The entire Los Angeles Basin gets it. Yes, the Dodgers were eliminated in the playoffs. So what a shame it is that you essentially spoil what should be uplifting stories about Kershaw winning the Cy Young and MVP awards by peppering them with references to the Dodgers losing in the playoffs.

Chris Boyd

Redondo Beach

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Like Peyton Manning in football, Clayton Kershaw can now claim to be the best regular-season pitcher in baseball.

Sincerely,

Rodney K. Boswell

Thousand Oaks

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MVP is a great and well-deserved honor for Mike Trout. Can anyone imagine how valuable he could be without wasting 180 trips to the plate without putting the ball in play?

Mike Belson

Studio City

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You seem to have missed the asterisk next to Roger Clemens’ seven Cy Young Awards.

Jim B. Parsons

Canyon Lake

No. 24 and his gang

I missed that career stat on Kobe. Was it the most missed field goals or the most missed assist opportunities?

Andrew Sacks

Riverside

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So Kobe’s jealous the Spurs have stayed intact? Wow, shocking.

The same guy who has driven away so many stars, from Shaq to Howard? The same guy who took $24 million a year and crippled their ability to sign anybody of value? The same guy who, let’s face it, nobody wants to play with?

Ain’t that rich!

Mike McNif

Costa Mesa

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Kobe holding the record for most missed shots in a career is about as significant as Babe Ruth holding the record for most strikeouts in a career. As usual, statistics tell you very little.

Ralph S. Brax

Lancaster

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Thanks, Jim and Jeanie. The team is doing great. Just one thing: When is it appropriate to wear our paper bags over our heads at Staples?

Firman Lee

Monterey Park

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Nice of Steve Nash to explain to us the details of his many injuries and the difference between pro basketball and hitting a golf ball. I think we already understood that. What we don’t understand is why he doesn’t get his highly paid butt down to the Lakers’ training facility every day the team is in town. He could teach, mentor, advise the young players and really contribute to the team. Be a real professional and stop whining.

Coach Scott doesn’t have the guts to cross him (or anyone) and the Lakers brass just sit back. Want a real legacy? Earn it.

J.J. Falk

Manhattan Beach

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I see there is a new film about the 1971-72 Lakers and their 33-game win streak. The current Lakers will be lucky to win 33 games over the next two seasons.

Vaughn Hardenberg

Westwood

New Clippers?

I agree with Bill Plaschke that the Clippers are a much different team this year than last year. The numbers prove it. Unfortunately, they are the same team in one important respect. They still don’t have a closer. Despite what Doc Rivers thinks about learning how to play well in crunch time, closers are born, not made.

Kenneth Spencer

Pacific Palisades

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I’d like to thank Steve Ballmer for the new slogan he has given the Clippers. In the past, when they were awful, they were just the awful Clippers. They are now the “relentlessly” awful Clippers.

Chris Pisano

Rancho Palos Verdes

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The Clippers might start playing to their potential if Steve Ballmer threatened to sell them back to the Donald Sterling.

Loren Coleman

West Hollywood

Playoff payoff

Chris Dufresne doesn’t make sense. He has been pushing for a college playoff for years because that’s what the fans want. Now he complains that the conference schedules are unfair, favoring those teams that schedule weak nonconference opponents to pump up their records for a possible playoff selection. So, instead of scheduling Notre Dame, a fan favorite and a football tradition, Chris suggests that USC, Stanford and other Pac-12 teams stop the “madness” and schedule patsies instead.

Perhaps, as Dufresne says, the BCS was unequivocally broken. However, right now, to me, the BCS system, seems so much simpler: one and done and get ready for next year. That way I happily still get to have my Rose Bowl tradition of the Pac-12 vs. the Big Ten on New Year’s Day and competitive, interesting games during the fall. Now, that’s a treat.

Paul L. Hovsepian

Sierra Madre

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Personally, if I were on the selection committee, I’d give considerably more weight to a game between Notre Dame and Arizona State than one involving Tennessee Martin or Presbyterian.

John Snyder

Newbury Park

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With college football’s playoff selection committee’s first final four just weeks away, and with it the inevitable uproar from fans of all the “bubble” teams that will unjustly be excluded from participation, I thought I’d get a jump on the debate over how to improve what is clearly a flawed first attempt at a playoff system. All in just two easy steps:

1. Return to the pre-BCS traditional bowl selection and matchups with all games to be played no later than Jan. 1.

2. Once all invitations have been accepted, the committee picks four bowl games from which the winners will then represent the semifinalists.

The Pros:

Returns the bowl season to its 100-plus years of tradition, glory and excitement.

Essentially increases the playoff field to a much-needed (and inevitable) eight teams.

Rewards conference champions (presumes old/current bowl affiliations and commitments remain intact).

Removes as much subjectivity as possible (without expanding the playoffs to 32 teams).

The Cons:

Adds one week to the season.

This is a simple, effective and meaningful solution to what will be a very rough time for the selection committee come the aftermath of their first final four.

Dan Weiss

Agoura Hills

Ed and Josh

It appears Bill Plaschke has officially become a one-man USC PR rehabilitation team.

He just climbed out of the bayou after doing a glowing profile of the remorseful Ed Orgeron, and now does a PR piece for Josh Shaw? What’s title of his next story gonna be — “The O.J. Redemption”?

Charles Bouquet

Manhattan Beach

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Bill Plaschke’s fawning piece on Ed Orgeron conveniently omits a long history of bad behavior on the part of the former USC coach. While an assistant at Miami, Orgeron was the subject of a restraining order for domestic violence and was arrested for head-butting a bar manager. Then, days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Tulane’s coach complained to the NCAA that Orgeron, then Mississippi’s head coach, tried to induce Green Wave players to transfer to Ole Miss even though the Tulane program was still active. And after leaving Tennessee and retuning to USC as an assistant in 2010, Orgeron tried to recruit already-enrolled Volunteers players, a violation of NCAA rules.

Orgeron may be a skilled chef, but he has cooked up a lot of trouble for himself.

Robert Stock

Calabasas

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Plaschke reports Ed Orgeron, whose lifelong dream is to be the USC head coach, would come back as an assistant. Now there’s an athletic director and head coach’s dream, to have an assistant at the end of the bench ready to incite a “WE WANT ED” chant from the crowd at the drop of a pass.

Bert Bergen

La Cañada

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Beautiful feel-good story about Ed Orgeron. He is quoted as saying, “I left, but I will never leave.” What kind of double-talk is that? He quit on the kids he supposedly loved when he didn’t get the job based on two losses he recognizes were critical. The fact he loves his children and cooks good gumbo doesn’t alter the fundamental fact: He’s a quitter.

Konrad Moore

Bakersfield

Back to Blue

Poor Dodgers, all this high-priced talent they have to pay! What a shame. Too many great players costing them a lot of money. Bummer. Maybe the team management can invest in a private investigator to find out how such an unfortunate situation occurred.

Oh wait, it just came to me: Wasn’t it the Dodgers’ management who signed these contracts!

Chris Fleck

Edmonds, Wash.

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