Saturday night at the Coliseum

Because I am lazy. Because I did not watch the game. I give you more words of others:

Surviving Grady:
Well, that was interesting. Possibly the most surreal game I've ever watched. The stadium looked unfinished with metal towers jutting up in unlikely spots. The home plate radar guy appeared at times to be sitting on the umpire's shoulders. People milled around foul territory and a peanut vendor made a few sales to bored infielders. That's spring training.

More surreal than the time Jose Canseco pitched? Let's not get crazy here.

Red Sox Monster:
It actually reminds me a great deal of the backyard whiffle ball field I played on as a kid, complete with the ridiculously cheap left field home runs, deep right field (had to hit it over the driveway at my house for a home run) and the tens of thousands of adoring fans (OK, so that was in my own 10-year-old mind).

The field I honed my skills on was very much like the Polo Grounds. Well, more like a bowling alley than the Polo Grounds, really. A bowling alley with trees scattered throughout. It was years before I realized that the reason I hit almost exclusively line drives up the middle in little league (not a bad approach, per se) was because I was trained at a young age to know that hitting it to either left or right would result in the ball being lost in a dense patch of poison ivy laden woods. It was years before I realized that my older brother made me retrieve the balls not because, as he said, I was "good at finding them," but because he enjoyed seeing me suffer with the poisonous ivies. And years more before I realized that the dense patch of poison ivy laden woods does not exist in most baseball diamonds. Except for Wrigley. As for the wiffle ball field of years later. Bryan can speak on that better than I. Jesus, we had ground rules arguments about once an inning. Except for when I was busy walking in runs. Then the ground rules didn't come into play so much.

MLB.com:
Perhaps Dr. Charles Steinberg, chief of marketing for the Dodgers, captured best the lure of "the opportunity to take people back to the time in their lives when they may have fallen in love with baseball."

Honestly, I'm kind happy he's gone. He did some nice things. The whole Ted Williams at the All Star Game thing was great. But on the whole he's one gimmicky sob.

Extra Bases:
Q: Did it feel gimmicky?
Tito: Yeah I mean in between every inning (there was ceremony), but everyone understood why and whoever was responsible did a good job. We knew what was going on and you just talk about before the game, the key to the night was being flexible.
It was OK.

Ah yes, that's the work of Dr. Steinberg. And you know what, it that does sound just like the time I may have fallen in love with baseball. Except for the whole ceremonies between every inning part.

Sh*********:
The Dodgers' Nomar Garciaparra addressed the crowd, then their manager, Joe Torre, took the mike and said, "There's not a better way to do this than against the Boston Red Sox . . . excuse me, the world champion Boston Red Sox. For some reason, it doesn't bother me to say that anymore."

I knew it! I knew he loves us.

Oh, Sox won 7-4. Wake was sharp. Kevin Ca$h hit a three-run dong. Papelbon gave up a home run.

The Grand Old Lady

Nope, I'm not talking about J.D. Drew (there is no update on his back). It is of the Los Angeles Coliseum that I speak. The Coliseum has been home to two Olympics, the Dodgers, Chargers, Raiders, Rams, O.J. Simpson: The College Years, and a whole gang of other stuff (New Frontier, anyone?) But not since the Los Angeles Xtreme of the XFL closed up shop has the Coliseum played host to wackiness like that which will ensue when the Red Sox play the Dodgers on Saturday in the fatuous confines of the Grand Old Lady.

The Los Angeles Coliseum sports a left field wall 201 feet from home plate with a 60-foot-high net. “We pulled the left-field netting as tight as possible so that balls will bounce off it kind of like the Green Monster,” says Lon Rosenberg, the Dodgers’ vice president for stadium operations. “But we didn’t want to pull it too tight and be like a vertical trampoline.”

A few things on the Green Monster comparison: The Green Monster is tall, yes, but it only stands 37-feet tall. The Green Monster is not very far from home plate, sure, but at its shallowest it resides 315 feet from home plate. 210 feet away! 60 feet high! Did I mention it's 440 feet to right?

The Gray Lady on the Grand Old Lady
Former Dodgers reflect on Coliseum
Comparing Dodger Stadium and the Coliseum
Record crowds expected at the Coliseum

Also: Today Josh Beckett threw 47 pitches in four innings of work. He struck out five New Britain Rock Cats. Bartolo Colon had a root canal, but is still expected to start tomorrow's game in Los Angeles.