The good news regarding the Dodgers’ inability to get better at the trade deadline is we fans won’t have to lay out thousands of dollars and suffer heartbreak during the playoffs. This is not a good team. The Dodgers’ problems run deep. They have the most irregular day-to-day lineup in baseball. They have the most top-heavy lineup and one of the worst bottom of the lineups in the history of baseball. They have a historically bad starting staff and just added a pitcher having a historically bad year. Their bullpen is a toss up game to game. Don’t be surprised if this team doesn’t even make the playoffs.
Geno Apicella
Placentia
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I can’t understand why Eduardo Rodriguez did not reconsider his no-trade decision to go to the Dodgers. He could opt out of his contract after this season, meaning it would only be for two months and he would have had an opportunity to possibly pitch in the World Series. Didn’t he discuss this with his agent and family as I’m sure they would have supported him? Maybe he felt he would never see the eighth inning with the Dodgers.
Jeff Hershow
Woodland Hills
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There is no joy in Dodgertown, Andrew Friedman has struck out.
Roy Reel
Culver City
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Dodgers got caught looking to end not just the inning but the season.
Jack Wishard
Los Angeles
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Enough about the Dodgers trade deadline debacle. Just play ball.
David Marshall
Santa Monica
The Dodgers knew they needed to make some moves to improve the roster, but with nearly all of their intended trade targets they encountered issues.
A caption in last Sunday’s paper read ”Kershaw throws to live hitters.” There must have been a specific plan by the Dodgers pitching coaches concerning Kershaw’s rehab, that called for him to pitch to live hitters rather than dead hitters.
Makes sense to me.
Michael Gesas
Beverly Hills
Pete Rose got a negative consequence for gambling in MLB. Let’s hope Arte Moreno gets a positive consequence for gambling on retaining Shohei Ohtani.
Mark Sherwin
Los Angeles
Arte Moreno and the Angels are destroying their chances of challenging for a title any time soon because they’ll probably lose Shohei Ohtani in free agency.
The Angels need to fire Phil Nevin. For most managers and players, bad umpire calls are part of the game and tend to even out over the season. Nevin obsesses about them to the point where he takes time after a game to yell at an umpire when he should have been figuring out why no one on his team could drive in a run with the bases loaded.
The Angels’ injuries have made the season difficult enough without a manager acting like a crybaby every time a call doesn’t go his way. The Angels need to bring in a manager who can focus on things he can control instead of crying about things he can’t.
Randy Gulbrandsen
Goleta
So Anthony Davis has a new multimillion dollar contract extension. Now he can buy more street clothes for when he’s missing games.
Russell Morgan
Carson
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Here I was, having read the headline and thinking, “Dang. The Lakers are finally going to dump Davis,” then after reading on and realizing that, no, they’re going to offer him a maximum contract. Even funnier, as I read on, I began to realize you were making a good argument for keeping him, fragility and all. One question. Is there any way to write his contract so he is compensated based on his availability?
John Snyder
Newbury Park
With conference realignment in a seismic state of flux why not merge the Pac-12 with the Big Ten and create two divisions. One could be called the Pac-12, the other called the Big Ten. Then, with national interest piqued, how cool would it be if the Pac-12 and Big Ten champs played every year on a neutral field in idyllic Pasadena among all the pomp and circumstance at a venerable stadium steeped in college football tradition?
With apologies to Shakespeare, a Rose Bowl by any other name would not smell as sweet.
Steve Ross
Carmel
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To the powers that be: Thank you for blowing up the Conference of Champions. I will never forgive you for this.
Joseph M. Guenley, UCLA ’78
Visalia
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UCLA, USC, Colorado and now Oregon, Washington and Arizona have left the Pac-12 for greener pastures.
May I present a toast: The Pac-12 is Toast.
Jack Wolf
Westwood
Heartwarming story on Brandon Staley. Unfortunately, he’s a horrible coach whose inexplicable decisions the last two years have cost the Chargers any chance of winning a championship. He should have been fired two years ago and certainly after last year. It’s unfathomable that he still has a job.
Alvin S. Michaelson
Marina Del Rey
Brandon Staley watched his parents battle cancer and then had his own bout, but the Chargers coach believes the experience can help him be a stronger coach.
It was not possible to read Ben Bolch’s piece about coach McGovern, his family and the USC/UCLA rivalry without the proverbial lump in the throat and experiencing real tears well up. Touching, moving, poignant. Whatever one’s adjective of choice, they all apply in describing his heartfelt and heartbreaking account of how and why these long standing rivals cast aside the trivial and the unimportant to focus on the decent and the meaningful. Bravo to him for reporting it and hurrah to those who were the subject of a story that deserved to be told.
Gary Miller
Encino
Fighting until the end after a kidney cancer diagnosis, UCLA defensive coordinator Bill McGovern and his family received some unexpected help along the way.
I see where the athletic department at UCLA wants to change the academic calendar from quarters to semesters to better match their Bug Ten counterparts. I say let’s stop nibbling around the edges. Move the entire university to Chicago. It can be the University of California, Chicago. It is time to recognize that college athletic departments have so corrupted the naive goal of a university to advance knowledge that it is hypocritical to pretend otherwise.
Peter Kinman
Laguna Beach
Bill Dwyre strikes again with an outstanding tribute/obit to Johnny Lujack. My earliest memory as a young sports fan in the 1940s was hearing my father and older brother regaling the exploits of Angelo Bertelli, so reading Lujack’s comment about him took me back to those days hearing names like Lujack, Blanchard and Davis to name just a few.
Once again, thank you Mr. Dwyre for another informative and entertaining article.
Paul Updegrove
Sherman Oaks
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