BATTER UP: LOS ANGELES DODGERS

It's staying light longer, the Leafs are all-but-eliminated ... that can mean only one thing: We'll soon see the first halter dress of the season! OK, two things: It's time for baseball, the timeless game that involves committing to a team for six months after reading all winter about why they won't win jack squat. Here's a "starting nine" for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

1. It's nice to see John Ferguson Jr. is doing consulting work: Dodgers GM Ned Colletti has a fetish for burdening his ballclub with veterans who, if not over the hill, have at least crested. See: Nomar Garciaparra -- he's likely to start the season on the disabled list; you don't say -- Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones and Luis Gonzalez (now playing for Florida at age 40). Hey, in 2001, that would have been one hell of a core group.
   
   In fairness, Jones isn't that bad.
   
   Now, here's where the Leafs analogy kind of dies. The Dodgers' young guys who have been blocked -- Matt Kemp, James Loney and Andre Ethier (pictured) -- are actually talented.
2. Joe Torre works Blue: Ya, it's going to take some getting used to after his 12 seasons in the Yankees dugout, where he mastered the art of appearing to be deep in thought when he was really just staring straight ahead in David Puddy fashion.
   
   The Dodgers moving their spring training home to Arizona, that's an adjustment as well. The upshot is that Torre probably won't burn out star catcher Russell Martin (he's Canadian!) the way that then-manager Grady Little did last summer. Martin crashed in the second half; Torre might have a better concept of "rest."
   
   (Remember, Little is the same manager who couldn't figure out that Pedro Martinez was knackered in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, even when it was obvious to people in parts on the world where they actually use the word "knackered.")
3. Nine out 10 baseball geeks agree... That they would want to date 20-year-old lefty Clayton Kershaw if they were a woman or gay. Failing that, they'll just draft him in their keeper leagues this season. He's 6-foot-3, 210 lbs., has electric stuff and a smooth motion and averaged 12 strikeouts per nine innings in his first full pro season. He's got it all, except for a tougher-sounding first name.
4. That's why Donnie Baseball left the Yankees: New hitting coach Don Mattingly's son, Preston Mattingly, is a 20-year-old infielder in the Dodgers system. He has potential, but he also hit .210 with no power or walks in Single-A last season and couldn't handle shortstop. It can't hurt to have his dad working for the club, eh?
5. I don't know... third base? The Dodgers have had a hole at third base since Ron Cey retired his home-run waddle more than 20 years ago. L.A.'s third sadsackers had a gadawful .713 OPS in 2007. Naturally, Ned Colletti looked long and hard at the problem, and did nothing.
6. Wouldn't that be rich: Second baseman Jeff Kent could make it to the Hall of Fame before archnemesis Barry Bonds does. The 40-year-old Kent's comparables are a Who's Who of Hall of Famers and near-misses and he hit (875 OPS) in 2007, so he's not slowing down.
7. So much depends on: Well, the Dodgers can't have their 40-year-old second baseman be the team's best everyday hitter again. Jones is still only 31 years old; he should recover from his 2007 season that killed a thousand fantasy teams. Torre is probably smart enough to realize Rafael Furcal and Juan Pierre should only bat 1-2 on '80s Night, when the clock gets turned back to a time when most teams put a couple speedy slap hitters with no power or no plate discipline at the top of the lineup.
   
   (Pierre is actually decent when he leads off an inning; the rest of the time, he's "astonishingly awful," to quote Bill James.)

8. Can't make too much of this: It's an election year in the States, which means superfan-sportswear mogul Alyssa Milano, who's been known to date a Dodger in her day, might end up spending more time campaigning for the Democratic nominee than hanging out at Dodger Stadium and being romantically linked to half the roster, including a few of the more mature-looking batboys.
   
   Hmmm, didn't the Dodgers' last division title came in 2004, which was also an election year? It did. Based on that alone, they're sure to win!
9. Need-to-know: The National League is such a slag heap that any team which comes close to breaking even can't be ruled out as a contender in the new season. L.A. (82-80 last season) is basically a poor man's version of the Blue Jays: Good if injury-prone pitching and a below-average lineup by the standards of the Quadruple-A league. A reprise of 2007 -- when they had the best record in the NL on July 19 and faded away -- seems likely.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

UP AT 6: NO AMOUNT OF JERKS WILL HURT THE JOHNSONS

I don't want to get into a semantic debate. I just want the protein.

• Remember the Boise State footballer who proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend after scoring the winning points in that timeless Fiesta Bowl vs. Oklahoma last January? Ian Johnson, who's African-American, is facing numerous racial threats over marrying Chrissy Popadics, who is white.
  
  No matter what, there's always going to be jerks to ruin a good sports story. (Deadspin now has a thread going.)
• Alyssa Milano might be past he-should-start-the-all-star-game phase with Canada's own Russ Martin, the L.A. Dodgers catcher.
• The Senators have signed goalie Ray Emery to a new contract. He'll make almost as much as his backup!
• There's absolutely no way Bob McCown will make a big deal out of this: An irate soccer mom went berserk at, wait for it, an under-8 game in Toronto last weekend and tried to go after a 14-year-old ref. The incident led to assault and resisting arrest charges. All together now: It's such a great game for kids, it's not overly intense, the focus is on fun.
• In these times of uncertainty, it's reassuring to know sportsnet.ca's Hockey Hearsay is still bent on being a forum for apparent plagiarism:
  
  

  "One selling point seems to be that Katz might invest some of his vast supply of dollars into a downtown arena. You know the story: provide more bells and whistles for the paying customer and simultaneously inject life into a neglected corner of our city."

  Now let's bring in John Short of Sun Media:
  
  

  "One selling point seems to be that Katz might invest some of his vast supply of dollars into a downtown arena. You know the story: provide more bells and whistles for the paying customer and simultaneously inject life into a neglected corner of our city."

  Is it that hard to type "Short writes" and use quotation marks?
• Moving around is the nature of the radio game, but still: For Kingston-area readers wondering where former K-Rock 105.7 morning man Shadoe Davis went, he's starting a new gig at 106.9 The Bear in Ottawa.
  
  Don't worry, though. After the way he campaigned for the downtown arena, surely Davis will opt for the 4 1/2-hour round trip to Kingston every time he wants to see a favourite band instead of just going to Scotiabank Place.
• It's never too early to start the Hec Crighton hype in the CIS: Chris Ciezki is returning to the UBC Thunderbirds after being cut by the CFL's Lions. How good was Ciezki last season? Throw out a farcical game when Ciezki was left in to run 30 times for 328 yards in a 67-13 rout of Simon Fraser (which went winless) and he still would have led the country in yards-per-carry.
  
  Ciezki and Windsor's Daryl Stephenson, the reigning Hec Crighton winner, give the CIS two returning 1,000-yard rushers. Now, here's where it would make sense to market the Hec Crighton race better. The archaic system where the Hec candidates only become known nationally after each conference picks its outstanding player near the end of the season might have worked in 1980, but not today.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

DODGERS-JAYS: KARMA, KARMA, KARMA, KARMA, KA-CASEY JANSSEN... IT COMES AND GOES

Thursday -- Dodgers 8, Jays 4: Try to keep some perspective and remember this was uncharacteristic for Casey Janssen and the bullpen — but the hitting was back to soiling the good linen like it has all season.

The game was left out there for the taking vs. L.A.'s lesser lights, fill-in starter Chad Billingsley and Mark Hendrickson, which created bad karma for the late innings. It dumped all over poor Janssen, whose ERA ballooned like Rich Garces, going from 0.95 to 2.37 after his ignominious line 0 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 1 BB, 0 SO.

(Hat tip to The Tao of Stieb for pointing this out prior to the game: The Jays are now 0-4 the game after they score 10 runs. Feel free to add that to the people's case vs. John Gibbons and Mickey Brantley.

Vernon Wells, by the way, was 0-for-14 in this series. Just sayin'.)

Wednesday -- Jays 12, Dodgers 1 It seems like only people with no inner life would ever have Dodgers lefty Hong-Chih Kuo on their fantasy team. Live arm, no head — he's like a diamond version of Ryan Leaf, except left-handed and Taiwanese.

Frank Thomas managed to check his swing to save an at-bat right before he hit the grand slam that made it 8-0 in the second inning. He's started to make more solid contact, oh ye of perpetual inpatience. That was the game right there.

Meantime, it's strike two on J.P. Ricciardi's off-season reclamation projects — John Thomson was cut loose, joining Tomo Ohka on the scrap heap. Low-risk, low-yield, indeed.

Tuesday -- L.A. 10, T-Dot 1: For some reason, this was easier to digest than Sunday's somnabulation through a two-run loss to Washington.

It might be resignation to the inevitable, becoming desensitized to seeing Thomas hit weak pop flies like the 250-lb., de-Jheri-curled reincarnation of Manny (Manuel) Lee, or discovering that Showcase reruns Billable Hours on Tuesday nights. (We've been just a little bit infatuated with Jennifer Baxter since her turn on the short-lived Playmakers. She's rather good-looking for a 5-foot-11 blonde.)

Or it might just be that unlike 95% of the callers to the post-game show, we actually looked ahead at the schedule and saw that the Jays have their stopper (Roy Halladay) throwing Wednesday and that the Dodgers just lot Jason Schmidt and have pressed reliever Chad Billingsley into starting Thursday night's game.

Dustin McGowan should bounce back from getting jocked. On the bright side for Canadian baseball, Toronto-born Russ Martin, the future all-star starting catcher, homered in his first game on Canadian field turf.

Last word to Mike Wilner on the FAN 590 post-game show: "This is a frustrating team to watch."

(It just so happens that SI.com has a feature on Alyssa Milano's line of MLB women's apparel which appeared the same day your morning newspaper probably included some mention that Martin, helped by Ms. Milano's campaigning, has a 125,000-vote lead on his closest competitor in the National League all-star balloting. Never underestimate Alyssa Milano's influence, it's right up there with the nefarious Egg Council.)

Previous:
Alyssa Milano, Charmed By Russ Martin (May 29, 2007)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

ALYSSA MILANO, CHARMED BY RUSS MARTIN

Catching the fancy of actress Alyssa Milano might do more to get Canada's own Russell Martin into the All-Star Game than his actual catching.

Milano (pictured), a baseball nut, has started a campaign through her MLB blog to get the L.A. Dodgers' Montreal-raised catcher elected as the National League's starting catcher for the July 10 game in San Francisco.

Alyssa has long moved on from her Embrace Of The Vampire phase (you know what I'm talkin' about). She's staking out that Marie Osmond-Jaclyn Smith territory as an Oprahlyte (as in Oprah acolyte), the performer-turned-businesswoman who commands an army of women who will buy her products and agree with pretty much whatever she says.

One of Milano's current gigs is designing and promoting line of MLB apparel designed for women, who make up nearly half the crowd at most major-league games.

Having Alyssa's army behind him will go a long way toward getting Martin into the NL starting lineup. He's a reasonably good-looking guy, plays in the major media market of El Lay and leads all NL catchers in Win Shares. His competition in the Quadruple-A league is pretty weak -- there's two Molina brothers starting, enough said -- so it looks like the all-Canadian boy has a good shot at being elected an All-Star Game starter. Alyssa's help shouldn't hurt a bit.

(Thanks to Todd Devlin of The 500 Level for the heads-up.)

Related:
*touch* 'em all (Alyssa Milano's MLB blog)

BATTER UP: NEW YORK YANKEES

Counting down the seconds till Opening Day when life begins anew involves providing a "starting nine" for each major-league team, even Evil Empires. Presenting: The New York Yankees.

1. At first base, Josh Phelps: The guy whom the Jays ditched in 2004 is actually the Yankees' best bet at first base, since Doug Mientkiewicz can't hit and Andy Phillips is Andy Phillips. (The latter has been sent to Triple-A Scranton; it's rumoured that the Yankees got him to go by promising to fix him up with this sneaky-hot brunette named Pam who's a receptionist at a paper firm. Wait until he finds The Office is fictional and tapes in California.)
   
   Too bad the Yankees couldn't have stuck with last year's first base rotation of Phillips and Craig Wilson. A Wilson/Phillips platoon would have been perfect for such a team which has consistently shown little sack in losing 10 of its past last 12 playoff games since the '04 collapse -- despite having a payroll that's three to four times that of everyone else who's not the Boston Red Sox.
   
   Typical Yankee fan response: "Oh, yeah? At least we've been in the playoffs." Ooh, you got us there. Do you also go to public parks and cheer for the guy driving the lawnmower to give hell to those smart-ass blades of grass?
2. Carl Pavano is starting Opening Day: Who starts the first game of the season, the second or third won't matter across the run of 162 games. Still, it's Carl Pavano, the more upscale version of Sidney Ponson -- the lardass whom the Yankees were desperate enough to run out for three starts last summer when he was in no conditionally to pitch, mentally or mechanically. Pavano, forever known for giving up Mark McGwire's record 70th home run in 1998 -- watch your head, since it's due to land any day now -- once dated actress Alyssa Milano, who summed up their relationship thusly in a now defunct lad mag: "... just because you're 6-foot-5 and 260 pounds, it doesn't mean you're big all over."*
3. Jeets doesn't get the right credit: Since we're held hostage every October by Joe Buck and Tim McCarver polishing Derek Jeter's, uh, Hall of Fame credentials, this might be the Stockholm Syndrome talking: The captain should have two MVP awards by now.
   
   The Win Shares indicate Jeter should have been the American League's most valuable player last year. The same goes for 1999 when he hit .349/.438/.552 and created 149 runs while playing shortstop, which are sick stats even in the context of late-'90s baseball.
   
   Besides, anyone who matures from the dweeby teenager who once tried the early-'90s compromise of having a good hair day into the dude in the second photo is obviously the balls. Plain and simple, Jeter should have a MVP award. Yours truly is running low on reasons to chant, "Eff you, Jeter," every time he appears on the TV screen. (That's right, eff you. Saying the actual word would give the bastards are reason to look down on us uncouth Canadians.)
4. They are who they are: The Yankees and most of their fans are the worst kind of elitists. Have you ever noticed that Yankees fans tend to follow two extremes -- rich A-holes and cop/firefighter/corrections worker types who inevitable wear NYFD hats?
   
   But that's OK. It affirms the natural order. Some people will always have three times as much despite doing about one-third the work. As well the people who get up at 7 a.m. -- as opposed to those among us who have figured out how to make a decent living and sleep till noon -- will always be the first to have their agenda catered to by our elected leaders. (Oddly enough, the only Jays fans who really seem to get worked up when the Yankees visit the Rogers Centre are under 25 and look every bit like the scions of the Forest Hill and Rosedale crowd. What say you to that, Dr. Freud?)
   
   Some Yankees fans, believe it or not, are even attuned to the reality that George Steinbrenner's chequebook will let them enjoy more pennants and playoff appearances than you could get in 1,000 baseball fan lifetimes. They can take the ribbing as well as they dish out, unlike those walking studies in sociological frailities who cheer for that sellout team in Boston.
5. Retro Yankee: All together now: "Mattingly! I told you to trim those sideburns! You're off the team!"
   
   "What a grump... still like him better than Steinbrenner."
   
   Amen, Donnie Baseball. Amen. Don Mattingly (first base, 1982-95) is also a hero in these parts since he was the last left-handed thrower to play third base. The fact he played 14 seasons in pinstripes and never got to a World Series also reminds us that it's possible for the Evil Empire to go in the tank every 20 years or so.
6. Requiem for A-Rod: When fans got on Ted Williams back in the day, he tried to foul pitches into the stands in hopes one of the loudmouths would get drilled right in the larnyx (and Williams hit .344 lifetime, so he could be that precise). When sportswriters insulted him, he told them off, often in most colourful language. When Alex Rodriguez gets booed or someone writes something mean about him, it's not hard to imagine that he goes back to his hotel room, takes the phone off the hook and crawls under the blankets with a box of tissues and some Haagen-Daaz to watch The Notebook for the 193rd time.
   
   That's not A-Rod's fault. That's simply where society has gone in a half-century. Much like T-Emo, that weepy wideout, we shouldn't bemoan that the best ballplayer on earth is a drama queen -- we should embrace living in an age where a 6-foot-3, 210-lb. drama queen can also be automatic for 40 homers and 125 ribbies each season, even if he goes to pieces in the playoffs. A-Rod's problems are just a bunch of media bluster anyways, but it's fun to run with.
   
   (The Angels preview made reference to A-Rod having a thing for repeated viewings of The Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Those could be the only two DVDs he owns.*)
   
7. Hip hip Jorge: Seriously, get a Jorge Posada voodoo doll and start sticking pins in the areas of its rotator cuff and the sciatic nerve. Posada, who'll turn 36 before the leaves turn, has caught at least 130 games seven years in a row and his numbers rebounded last year after a so-so 2005, so he's apparently not wearing down. His backup, however, is 29-year-old rookie Wil Nieves, who's just happy to be there (and eager to thank God for everything.) If Posada could go down for an extended period, it would be so choice.
8. Need-to-know: The pitching isn't what it was a couple years ago, but the Yankees' balanced hitting up and down the lineup -- seriously, where's the weak spot? -- means everyone else in the AL East is casting their eyes on the wild card. Again. It's not right, it sucks, but hey, that's life.
9. One last thing: If there was any doubt that the Yankees are a bunch of jagovs , here's A-Rod and Mariano Rivera's idea of making time for their adoring public.
   
   

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

(* 1. Yes, that's totally out of context. But it's Carl Pavano.

2. Probably not.)

RAINY SATURDAY

• Be honest. How many of you noticed that Alyssa Milano is wearing a retainer is this picture? (From BlogNYC, via The Mighty MJD and Deadspin.)

• Here's the blow-by-blow of the Jays' nine-run ninth last night, in which it took three Devil Rays "relievers" 70 pitches to get through the inning -- two more than the since-demoted Josh Towers threw through first eight innings of the Jays' most recent game in Tampa Bay.
  
  Reed Johnson singled.
  Frank Catalanatto hit a RBI triple into the right-field corner: 5-3.
  Chad Harville relieved Shawn Camp and struck out Alex Rios.
  Troy Glaus pulled a double down the left-field line, scoring Cat: 6-3.
  Lyle Overbay walked on a full count.
  Shea Hillenbrand singled to load the bases.
  Harville walked Gregg Zaun to force in a run: 7-3.
  Aaron Hill greeted new pitcher Chad Orvella with two-run single, on an 0-2 pitch, no less: 9-3.
  Edgar Alfonzo singled in Zaun. That closed the books on Harville (1/3 IP, 2 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 1 SO) and raised Alfonzo's average from .080 to .095: 10-3.
  Johnson cleared the bases with a three-run homer, his second home run of the night -- and just his third on the year: 13-3.
  Catalanatto walked.
  Rios walked, thereby ensuring that every Jays hitter had reached base in the inning.
  Some 26 minutes after Johnson led the inning, Glaus popped out to strand two runners aboard. Booooooooooo!
  
• More people are coming around to the idea that the Detroit Tigers have fattened up on weak opponents. (As noted back on May 25.) Batter's Box has compared the top teams in the AL when you take out games against the Royals and Twins. Take away those games and Tigers not only go from 36-19 to 21-17, but they've been outscored on the season.
  
  Here, with a hat tip to Magpie, are the AL overall standings, Royals and Twins-free (x-division leader, y-wild card):
  
  x-Boston 32-20 .615 --
  y-N.Y. 26-18 .591 2
  x-Chisox 22-16 .579 3
  Toronto 28-22 .560 3
  x-Texas 28-23 .549 3 1/2
  Detroit 21-17 .553 4

That's all we have time for today. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.