Giants need to get A-Rod next year...the young starting pitching will be there. Go get a closer and the 30 million per year man to bat 4th.

Unfortunately for the Dodgers, it's not just starting pitching that is on the ropes. The bullpen has really been hurting as well. Saito has been having problems with old nerve damage from earlier in his career, Broxton has not had the same juice on his fastball recently, and past those two the Dodger bullpen is a mish-mash of veterans getting past their prime (Saenez, Roberto Hernandez) and young, unproven guys such as D.J. Houlton and Eric Stultz. Guys pulled out of the bullpen, such as Mark Hendrickson and Brett Tomko just don't have the tools to be starting pitchers. This seems to be the Dodger curse over the last few years: they can't get the hitting and the pitching whole, healthy, and performing at the same time.

I had an uncle, multi-talented, a
technical-books editor for AT&T. We always got along really well.

I'm about forty, he's about sixty, I'm visiting from the Midwest, and he asks me to look at some short stories he's working on. The family loves his poetry (me included), likes his oils (me included), and he plays a fairly nice ragtime by ear.

Talents, I learn as I go along, are generally very narrowly granted, often more narrowly received and exercised. The genuinely talented poet, the fairly talented oilist, the good-beat ragtime guy, was clueless in prose. And that, I think, is kind. I tried to tell him, in terms as gentle I could find (I never ripped about a dozen genuine jerks on your site, some of whom I remember when I used to participate more fully (before your coward's turn on quotes) got on my case to a faretheewell, 'cause I assessed that ripping them would do more harm to them than good, and rippin' is no temptation in that case). Stick with the poetry, it's genuine and fine. Paint more. This is not your bailiwick. It probably isn't mine either, but I at least know who might travel well in it.

I did it because I liked and respected him, and wanted to save him further embarrassment - a kind not unlike the kind Paulie Z referred to in his Walsh column today.

Coupla hours, and, for him, a snootful later, he came alongside and tried to coldcock me. I put him on the floor as gently as possible, then left, and have never seen him again.

Turns out, at least in places, he had a very shallow soul. Sad to discover that, especially in one so genuinely blessed (nice wife, adoring kids).

Before I finish, let me share an aphorism: y'learn far more from your enemies than your friends. You have chosen me one.
And just as with my uncle, there is no joy in this (a little satisfaction you're finally unmasked, but nothing close to joy, or any good feeling, even closer to the truth, now),
but the hope you might embrace what has so far eluded you, because, like my uncle, you have some fine stuff.

You've grown up in a fairly shallow culture; it has marked you and most of the folks you speak with; you have immense difficulty getting past it. And that difficulty keeps you small and sad.

I don't think you'll want to respond. In any case, you lost that honor earlier. Mister Bojangles

Good thing there is comment moderation so nonsensical personal attacks are allowed.