In case you didn’t know by now, the “East Coast bias” is real. There are very few outliers. The general rule of thumb is the further west you travel, the more you have to do to get noticed. Our fine city of Los Angeles has done its fair share to be noticed, usually stealing things from cities east of them.
The Lakers? Enjoy the Timberwolves, Minnesota (They didn’t name it for us. I mean, you can count the number of lakes in LA with a severely disfigured hand). We stole the Dodgers from Brooklyn. We stole the Clippers too, but I am pretty sure no one would mind if we re-gifted them back to San Diego. Thanks for the memories, Michael Olowakandi.
For any loyal Dodger fan, it’s painfully clear that we’re an easy lot to be ignored. Sure, Doyer nation is easy to spot around the city from the iconic LA hats to the dreadful advertising they plaster on billboards. But the truth is, the Dodgers were rarely making national news anymore. Even when Joe Torre came out to run the show, it was still about leaving New York, not arriving here. It was like he was cast into the badlands (like the guy who stood up for Sylvester Stallone in Judge Dredd).
Then they traded for Manny Ramirez last summer. All the sudden, the Dodgers are getting ESPN slots left and right. The overpaid analysts at the “four letter network” actually had to learn who Andre Ethier and Chad Billingsley were. We suffered as they stumbled through NL West broadcasts, completely unsure where Eric Karros and Mike Piazza vanished to. You could just taste Peter Gammons’ anger at having to come west for a broadcast. He was reporting the facts, but in his head you knew he was wondering “where the hell do you get a reasonable bagel in this cow town?”
The Dodger’s four-month courtship with Manny this offseason probably got more coverage than anything that had happened to the organization in the last five years prior to Manny showing up. The proof was in the pudding yesterday.
Manny’s press conference was all over Sportscenter. There were even clips of him arriving at the Dodgers’ new Arizona spring training home of Camelback Ranch in Glendale. Today at work they were interviewing Andre Ethier on ESPN simply because he gets to hit in front of Manny. The interview was accompanied with endless video clips of Manny stretching and such. Awk-ward. I couldn’t hear the interview, but I imagine Andre got some really hardball questions asked to him like, “So what’s it like to have Manny as a teammate?”
Some of us aren’t used to seeing our team on television so much. No one is happier that Manny is here than I am. Literally. I almost drove to the airport to catch a glimpse of him the other night when I heard he was on a plane. That being said, the Dodgers are one sprained Manny-ankle from being a team no one back east gives a rat’s ass about again.
Sigh. At least they have A-Rod.
