What’s your own blog for if not to unload your feelings after your team is eliminated from the playoffs?
So this will be me mostly just talking to myself.
I shall do that with cards from an envelope I received recently from fellow Dodger fan gcrl of
cards as I see them. He’s probably in a similar state of mourning. The first card I’m showing is a Leaf “Baseball Nation” Steve Garvey card. It’s mini in size. It’s also not that colorful in person, in fact it’s rather plain.
Jim made sure to send me the “1975” serial-numbered copy.
So, the Dodgers didn’t get a 3-peat. I didn’t expect them to. I don’t know what all the chortling was about — I knew when the playoffs began that the last team the Dodgers needed to see if they wanted to win another World Series was the Brewers. The sweep was a bit unexpected but I knew they’d lose to the Brewers — the Dodgers lost the season series to them and did not look good in a couple of those games.
This is why I don’t watch pregame shows, especially Fox’s pregame show. They clearly didn’t do their research when it came to predictions. In fact, I barely watched the NLCS, thanks to my work schedule. I saw the first game and that was it. I guess that was a good thing.
But it’s OK. I’ve mentioned here and to people I know that I was satisfied with back-to-back World Series wins — a first in my lifetime as a fan. I didn’t need a third and that led to a sense of calm when watching the postseason. The most irritating part was the social media rooting against the Dodgers. The Brewers fans, I completely get it. Everyone else — congratulations, your 14th-favorite team won.
The Dodgers extended their hitting issues, which made up most of the second half of the season, into the postseason. Against the Brewers, only Kyle Tucker, of all people, had success. That might tell you it was more the Dodgers’ inability to hit than the Brewers’ pitching (But I don’t know if that’s fully true).
The Dodgers looked old when I watched the highlights. Teoscar Hernandez is 34. Max Muncy is 36. Mookie Betts is 34. Freddie Freeman is 37. Kiké Hernandez is 35. I think playing an extra month of the season for the last two seasons — MLB really makes teams go through a postseason gauntlet now and the Dodgers are basically the first team to experience all those rounds to the end in back-to-back years — finally had its effect. Even the bye didn’t seem to help.
The pitching might puzzle me more than the hitting. The Dodgers send prospects to the Tigers for Tarik Skubal and he paid off mostly but he’s just one guy and he’s probably gone after this season.
The Dodgers have so many established, high-priced pitchers that don’t give me confidence. Not Blake Snell, certainly not Tyler Glasnow. And the bullpen is not even close to the Brewers’ bullpen.
I’d prefer that the Dodgers dispense with some of those big names and give the other guys — Sasaki, Sheehan, Wrobleski, Stone, etc. — time to develop as major league starters, like they once did.
The Dodgers do have homegrown players, I wish they’d use them more. When I watch baseball games from the ’70s and ’80s it seems like teams gave players more time, more games to succeed and wouldn’t hold every failure against them. MLB teams’ first move today seems to be panic, and quickly replace a player with someone else.
I don’t know if this is an end of an era for the Dodgers. It kind of feels like it is. But I’m not lamenting anything. I remember all the Dodgers’ World Series losses going back to the ’70s and many more NLCS or NLDS losses. I’m very grateful and I’ve felt that way the whole time.
It could be worse. It could be the 1990s when the Dodgers barely could get past the first round of the playoffs, if they got there.
Or I could be a Yankees fan.
The Dodgers still made it farther than all but three other teams. And I have never experienced a 100-loss season as a fan.
As for the rest of the postseason, it’s cool that someone is going to win who has never won before or hasn’t won in a very long time. I do like that this punches a hole in the owners’ competition argument. If the Guardians advance, I’ll probably root for them (an old AL East World Series!). The Brewers, as much as I like the old late ’70s/early ’80s Brew Crew, have a little too much past baggage, thanks to Selig, Braun, etc.
But if it’s a Rays/Brewers series I’m not sure where I’ll land. Now that my team is out of it for the first time since 2023, I’ll be just another fan, simply rooting for a good game. When your team is in the World Series, there is so much more on the line than just that.
