Not so broke after all

I know I've used this before, but I love how delightfully awkward this picture looks.





Bunch of thieves.

I feel like it's a circle of crooks. Why, Dodgers, why!

For six years under the McCourts, they have stolen my money with $5 hot dogs, and $6 coke, pocketed $108 million in earnings without having to pay taxes, 45 million of which was stolen by the Manny Ramirez contract, which I help pay for when I overpay to watch him hit legendary pop flies that go straight into the left fielder's glove and buy the hot dogs and coke with money that the McCourts pocketed $108 million of... you get the idea.

Anyway, the L.A. Times reports that the McCourts pocketed $108 million from 2004 through 2009, according to documents Jamie McCourt recently filed in the couple's divorce case in Los Angeles County Superior Court. On that sum, they paid zero federal and state income tax.

"The court papers indicate that the McCourts deliberately structured their business at least partially to allow them to live tax-free," Michael Hiltzik of The Times reported.

It's nice to see sweet success stories where the rich get richer. Since you're keeping all that money, how bout... yeah, why not? The first top 5 of the semester hidden within this blog!


Since it seems you guys are keeping extra change how bout you:










5. Pay Manny Ramirez to leave town
That bum has already said he doesn't plan on staying, get rid of him early. I'm tired of paying for pop flies. I fell for the Mannywood hype too, but I'm tired of him and his ovulation periods. Buy out his contract, you should have enough money from what you're pocketing.




the representative of the Dodgers' 99 problems





4. If there's any money left over, get us a flippin' ACE!
Dodgers haven't had a true Ace since Kevin Brown? I know we haven't had the best of luck with the people like Jason Schmidt, but management needs to grow a pair and finally cough up the money for a big name, you should have enough from what you're pocketing.









3. Better giveaway days
Maybe I'm just jealous because I don't qualify for the 14 and under giveaways, but that's beside the point. Don't judge me, you pocketed my money! Anyway, maybe bat night won't go as smoothly at Dodger Stadium as it does at Angels Stadium, but be creative and give me something good. I'm paying $25 for nosebleeds and $20 for food that should cost about $7 at most. $15 for parking, you can't give me a nice Matt Kemp shirt instead of that cheap cloth I use to clean the table with now. Give us a real souvenir, you should have enough from what you're pocketing.









2. Lower parking
$15 for parking? Seriously? It shouldn't be more that $5. Sure that's an unreal price these days, but does parking really need to be that expensive? Don't call my suggestion stupid, you're stealing my money! You guys should be able to lower the price. You should have enough money from what you're pocketing.



$15 for an hour of traffic in and out of the lot






1. Let Joe Torre run the team
You guys are going through a divorce, you're in no shape to run a professional baseball team. Year after year we've been getting second rate everything. I want to see Torre take a shot at running this team. We have a good, young nucleus, let Torre fill in the rest of the holes. What? Bad idea? Unrealistic? Pay him a little extra to give us a championship, you should have enough from; that's right... the money you're pocketing.

Trying to fool us by running the team like you're broke? I really hope this isn't true because if it is, what a wasted decade.

Thank You, Baseball

My family and I bought tickets for a Dodgers playoff game but just found out about an hour ago what time the game will be played because we had to wait on the Yankees to decide whether the first round will be played within seven or eight games.

I don't know why the Yankees have this much power, but somehow their decision to play the first round within eight games trickled down to the Dodger game and now the Dodgers will be playing at 3 p.m. instead of the favorable 6:30 p.m.

Thank you again, east coast for making us adjust to your marvelous three-hour-ahead lifestyle.

Thank you, TBS for showing every single first-round game on your network and forcing the Dodger game to adjust to your T.V. availability.

Thank you, Yankees for deciding not to let the Twins have any day of rest for your personal advantage.

Thank you, MLB for having the west coast games be at an unreasonable hour and not letting us know until the day before so we don't have a chance to schedule school or work days around it.

This must be changed. Another stupid MLB rule.

This week in Twitter news: Hitting high schools

On the way to the Dodger game last night, I asked my nephew how school was going and Twitter came up.

Apparently one of his teachers makes her students get a Twitter account and she posts up the assignments on there.

She said she's too lazy to check emails and I guess she can't just give the assignments in class.



Hmm...

Waiting for 9/12

On September 11, I had no idea of the impact. I was about 13 and thought it was just another sad news story. I had no family in New York, so it didn't affect me directly.

I remember my fourth period teacher in jr. high tell the class, "This is going to be talked about for years to come. It's not going to go away any time soon. We're living through history right now."

All I had seen were a couple clips in the morning before I headed off to school, so I really had no idea of the impact or how severe it was.

I've always sort of lived in my own little world; my own sports world. When I got home and found out my Dodger game was postponed due to the attacks, it was starting to hit me that it was something big.

I remember games were postponed for almost 2 weeks, and without sports to watch, all there was, was non-sports news.

I watched as new develpments kept coming in and different theories amassed.

For the first time I learned the significance of the World Trade Center.

I learned of the tragic stories of the New York locals. I could feel the sadness through the light coming off the screen.

For once in my life, I couldn't hide behind my security blanket. I couldn't escape from the real world and just watch my baseball games. It was real life, and not even sports could provide an escape.

Luckily, after things had settled down a bit, and we knew as a country what we were facing, not only did I welcome back my security blanket, but the entire country saw hope in sports.

I remember when baseball came back the following week, there was a feeling that even though we just suffered tragedy, we will not let our lives stop.

The national anthem meant so much more after 9/11 and you could feel the energy every time it was sung.

The Dodgers were scheduled to host the San Diego Padres for a 3-game series starting September 11, and it didn't happen.

I lived by that season schedule. I planned around that schedule. To me 9/11 lasted for a week that there were no sports for me to follow. It felt like time did not move.

When baseball started again and life started to move again, time started to move again.

So the sports world paused on 9/11 and to me, not until the week later did I see 9/12 because that's what was on pace in my schedule.

My schedule was thrown off for a little while, but once we faced the Padres like planned, 9/11 was finally over and I was ready to face 9/12.

Raiders of the lost Arco

I had the strangest trip to the gas station I might ever have. As I was pulling into my local Arco and slowly made my way to pump number 6, the lips of an angry man at the pump next to me blessed my cracked open windowsill.

Scared me a little bit. He had a really aggressive tone, but within all his yelling I happened to catch him say the word "Raiders" and I said to myself, "Oh. Makes sense," and parked my car.

What I had originally thought was a gas station, was apparently a mirage that tricked me and sucked me into the Black Hole. All of a sudden, I was in the middle of 3-way holy war between the angry gentleman next to me, a Green Bay Packers fan, and a man who didn't seem to say much. He was kind of just there, laughing and making quick remarks that seemed to anger the Raider fan.

So I got out of my car, stretched, dropped my keys and tried to listen in on the argument.

Unfortunately I have no idea how it started, but the enraged Raider fan next to me started taking indirect shots at Brett Favre, saying, "Packers haven't had a real quarterback since Bart Starr!"

Ouch.

Didn't hear what the guy across the station was saying because the steam coming out of the Raider fan's ears was impairing my already fickle hearing.

As I walked away to pay inside, I heard screams from the Raider fan, "1967 was the only true championship!" That told me he was an old school guy. In other words, I better pump my gas and get the hell out before he blows up the gas station like Robocop.

I came back out, and all three were still there.

This time the Raider fan threw out a, "At least we had Bo Jackson! Man could that guy run. He was the greatest player the league has ever seen!"

At that point I'm laughing inside. He didn't even know what to argue. It was sad. It's like San Francisco Giants fans try to argue, "Remember Bobby Thompson's home run against the Dodgers in 1951!" Umm, that's cool.

Or when they say, "At least we had Barry Bonds!" Congratulations! Good luck with that argument. (I love when "big headed" Barry Bonds fans "take shots" at Dodger fans and try to "inject" us with stupid arguments and "cheat" us out of intelligent thought) ;)
The last thing I heard the Raider fan say was, "Al Davis needs to die!"
Double Ouch.
80-year-old Al Davis, the Raider owner with Freddy Krueger-like features. I know he hasn't done that great of a job with the organization, but goodness, death?
The PACKER FAN then said, "Oh come on man, he don't have to die."
And to remove any chance of confusion, the Raider fan said, "No! He needs to die, die, die!"
This man had so much anger inside him that he started taking shots at his own team.

Anyway, I filled up half of my tank (Dam gas prices. The worth of a 20 dollar bill nowadays) and was ready to go.

The Packer fan and random instigator guy left.

As I drove away, from the corner of my eye I saw the Raider fan start talking to a lady with aggressive hand gestures. Guess he had more to say.

Hope that lady knew him.