...it's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there...
The Dodgers have the best record in baseball. They just finished a sweep of the San Francisco Giants, their great rivals. i caught two of the three games on TV. Each game was a one run victory. i don't think i've ever seen the Dodgers sweep a series with San Francisco, although i'm told they did it when Pac Bell opened.
Now my best friend Betty, who grew up here, is needling me to be a Dodger fan. i'm also feeling the pressure from Scof, way over there in Texas. But you know the Dodger-Giants rivalry is bigger than you or me or anyone. It's been going on for 100 years! It just might be the most heated rivalry in all of sports. It's certainly up there with the Yankees-Red Sox, the Raiders-Broncos, or even the Celtic-Rangers rivalries for longevity.
Still, i've never really been a big Giants fan. i always followed them, but i grew up in Oakland and i'm really an Athletics fan, if you wanna know the truth. i still remember vivdly one of the greatest, and most disappointing, events in all of sports history: Kirk Gibson's two strike, two out, pinch-hit walk-off homer, bottom of the ninth inning, game one of the 1988 World Series, off ace reliever Dennis Eckersley, to spur the Dodgers on to upset my A's for the World Championship.
Can i forgive them? Well, they're in different leagues, so i can conceivably root for both my A's and the Dodgers. i do like a team with history, and the Dodgers have that. So, now that i am a resident of Los Angeles, i will give it a try. And it helps, too, that i have Odalis Perez, Guillermo Mota, and Adrian Beltré on my fantasy team. Go Dodgers!
That said, there's no way they deserved to win today. How the hell do you pitch to Bonds with first base open, when he's doubled and homered already against the same pitcher? What kind of Jim Tracy brain fart was that? i could see if Gagne were on the mound, but Jeff Weaver? Come on! The Dodgers were lucky to escape with a one run win today.
Well, Annika, I'm an As guy, and I was at Cal when Kirk Gibson hit that damned home run and broke our collective green n' gold hearts.
But I have no particular brief for the Giants. I rooted for the A's in the quake series of 1989. And I have gradually come round to the Dodgers; it was Mike Piazza's rookie season in 1993 that did it for me. I don't care much for baseball, of course, so it's easy for me. It's not like I am being asked to switch from Cal to Stanford, or Celtic to Rangers, or the 49ers to the Rams, or Newcastle to Sunderland. Those would be hard. Blithely adopting Dodger Blue is easy.
Oh yeah, and Go Sharks GO!
Posted by: Hugo on Apr. 18, 2004The Dodgers? The team we love to hate; it seems we're getting to be a lot like the Cubs fans, doesn't it?
We all ridicule them, then go out and die with them. I've been ready to give up my primo four field box seats in aisle 6 for the last five years, but somehow when renewal comes around, my masochistic self won't let me just tear up the piece of paper.
Maybe next year? (Don't ever believe they can stay where they are now with the crap pitching they've got, especially Weaver)
Posted by: shelly s. on Apr. 19, 2004Isn't it amazing how much stock we put into what teams we root for? I caught myself trying to frame an argument for not rooting for the *spit* Dodgers. LOL
Raiders. Sharks. Giants. Yay!
Posted by: Ted on Apr. 19, 2004Oh happy day! go annika and go dodgers!
Posted by: Scof on Apr. 19, 2004Yes, Dodgers-Giants is definitely one of the great rivalries, but nothing else comes remotely close to the Sox and the Yankees: that's metaphysical, on a whole other plane. Unless you're a part of it--unless you've melted into the mob at Fenway or, um, that other place somewhere in the Bronx--you simply cannot understand. It is NOT pretty. It's really quite scary.
But that said, Dad's from Brooklyn, and though he never forgave them leaving, he still couldn't hate them for it. Go Dodgers! I'll take my Sox over them in the World Series if it comes to that (and my adopted state's Marlins in the NLCS), but for now I can have my cake and eat it too.
Posted by: Dave J on Apr. 19, 2004Go Dodgers!!
#$%@ the Giants.
The A's are a respectable team that you can be proud of, even though the pitchers don't hit.
Posted by: Steve S. on Apr. 19, 2004See what I mean annika? Dodger fans have no class. ;)
Posted by: Ted on Apr. 20, 2004My favorite artist is Renior,how about you?
Edward hopper paintings
Mary Cassatt paintings
gustav klimt paintings
oil painting reproduction
Oil Painting
handmade Oil Painting
mark rothko paintings
Old Master Oil Paintings
Nude Oil Paintings
dropship oil paintings
Mediterranean paintings
Oil Painting Gallery
Alfred Gockel paintings
Alexei Alexeivich Harlamoff paintings
Aubrey Beardsley paintings
Andrea del Sarto paintings
Alexandre Cabanel paintings
Anders Zorn paintings
Anne-Francois-Louis Janmot paintings
Allan R.Banks paintings
Andrea Mantegna paintings
Arthur Hughes paintings
Albert Bierstadt paintings
Andreas Achenbach paintings
Alphonse Maria Mucha paintings
Benjamin Williams Leader paintings
Bartolome Esteban Murillo paintings
Berthe Morisot paintings
Cheri Blum paintings
Camille Pissarro paintings
Carl Fredrik Aagard paintings
Caravaggio paintings
Claude Lorrain paintings
Claude Monet paintings
Charles Chaplin paintings
Diane Romanello paintings
Diego Rivera paintings
Don Li-Leger paintings
David Hardy paintings
Dirck Bouts paintings
Dante Gabriel Rossetti paintings
Daniel Ridgway Knight paintings
Edmund Blair Leighton paintings
Eugene de Blaas paintings
Eduard Manet paintings
Edwin Austin Abbey paintings
Edward Hopper paintings
Edgar Degas paintings
Emile Munier paintings
Edwin Lord Weeks paintings
Fabian Perez paintings
Francois Boucher paintings
Frank Dicksee paintings
Ford Madox Brown paintings
Federico Andreotti paintings
Fra Angelico paintings
Frederic Edwin Church paintings
Frederic Remington paintings
Francisco de Goya paintings
Filippino Lippi paintings
Francisco de Zurbaran paintings
Gustav Klimt paintings
Georgia O'Keeffe paintings
Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger paintings
Guillaume Seignac paintings
George Owen Wynne Apperley paintings
Gustave Courbet paintings
Guido Reni paintings
George Inness paintings
George Frederick Watts paintings
Guercino paintings
Howard Behrens paintings
Henri Fantin-Latour paintings
Horace Vernet paintings
Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky paintings
Il'ya Repin paintings
Igor V.Babailov paintings
Juarez Machado paintings
Joan Miro paintings
Jean-Honore Fragonard paintings
Jehan Georges Vibert paintings
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot paintings
James Childs paintings
John Singleton Copley paintings
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida paintings
Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida paintings
Joseph Mallord William Turner paintings
Julien Dupre paintings
Julius LeBlanc Stewart paintings
Jeffrey T.Larson paintings
Jean-Paul Laurens paintings
Jules Breton paintings
Johannes Vermeer paintings
Jacques-Louis David paintings
John Everett Millais paintings
James Jacques Joseph Tissot paintings
Jules Joseph Lefebvre paintings
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres paintings
John William Godward paintings
John William Waterhouse paintings
John Singer Sargent paintings
Jean-Leon Gerome paintings
Lorenzo Lotto paintings
Louis Aston Knight paintings
Leon Bazile Perrault paintings
Leon-Augustin L'hermitte paintings
Lady Laura Teresa Alma-Tadema paintings
Louise Abbema paintings
Leonardo da Vinci paintings
Lord Frederick Leighton paintings
Mark Rothko paintings
Montague Dawson paintings
Mary Cassatt paintings
Maxfield Parrish paintings
Martin Johnson Heade paintings
Nancy O'Toole paintings
Philip Craig paintings
Paul McCormack paintings
Patrick Devonas paintings
Peder Mork Monsted paintings
Pierre Auguste Renoir paintings
Peder Severin Kroyer paintings
Pieter de Hooch paintings
Pietro Perugino paintings
Peter Paul Rubens paintings
Rudolf Ernst paintings
Robert Campin paintings
Rembrandt paintings
Raphael paintings
Salvador Dali paintings
Stephen Gjertson paintings
Sir Henry Raeburn paintings
Thomas Cole paintings
Theodore Robinson paintings
Titian paintings
Theodore Chasseriau paintings
Ted Seth Jacobs paintings
Vincent van Gogh paintings
Vittore Carpaccio paintings
Warren Kimble paintings
Wassily Kandinsky paintings
William Etty paintings
William Merritt Chase paintings
William Blake paintings
Winslow Homer paintings
William Bouguereau paintings