The Dodgers: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

• Magic Johnson group buys the Dodgers.
• Don Mattingly's son gets cut.
• Tommy Lasorda firmly believes, without a doubt, Ontario International Airport should be under local control.

Catching up with old friends.

• Ken Davidoff moves to the New York Post, where his articles can be viewed for free.
• Jon Heyman holds a baseball bat.
  

Mike Lupica doesn't like Alex Rodriguez very much.

Joba only makes about $1 million per year, so he can't really be considered much of a bust. He pitched 20 amazing innings 5 years ago and then he hurt his shoulder. Since his injury, there has been a disconnect between his baseball ability and his popularity.

I find it somewhat amusing that Mike Lupica makes it sound as if Joba was the first overhyped pro athlete in New York City history:

"Before there was Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow, there were those first loud moments when the bullpen doors would open at the old Stadium and Joba Chamberlain, a kid with a colorful name and backstory and fastball, would come through them, and the place would go mad with excitement."

When I reminisce about Joba's 2007 regular season, I think it was exactly what it was like in February with Jeremy Lin, what it will be like now that the Jets have decided to upgrade the position of quarterback with the football equivalent of bringing in a member of the Kardashian family or maybe the entire extended Kardashian family with Tebow.

"It doesn’t mean it was exactly what it was like in February with Jeremy Lin, what it will be like now that the Jets have decided to upgrade the position of quarterback with the football equivalent of bringing in a member of the Kardashian family or maybe the entire extended Kardashian family with Tebow."

Oh.

Thanks for setting me straight about Joba Chamberlain and whether or not his 2007 regular season was exactly what it was like in February with Jeremy Lin, what it will be like now that the Jets have decided to upgrade the position of quarterback with the football equivalent of bringing in a member of the Kardashian family or maybe the entire extended Kardashian family with Tebow.


Speaking of completely unrelated things:

"But is [Carmelo Anthony] a franchise player?

Or is he really the A-Rod of professional basketball, a guy with a world of talent who needs somebody else to be The Man."

I don't think that's an accurate description of either Carmelo Anthony or Alex Rodriguez.

I also think it's a bit of a false equivalence. ARod is one of the top ten baseball players of all time (ignoring possible steroid bloat). Carmelo is maybe one of the top 30 current basketball players.

Perhaps a better analogy would be to compare Carmelo to a member of the Kardashian family or maybe the entire extended Kardashian family.

Number Two Starter Battling for Rotation Spot.

"Yankees pitcher Ivan Nova raised his right hand and pinched his fingers against his thumb. He opened and closed them like a moving mouth. He needed to talk to his catcher, right away.

Moments earlier, the Orioles’ Adam Jones bounced one of Nova’s offerings off the batter’s eye above the 400-foot sign at Ed Smith Stadium. The three-run homer came off a curveball, a pitch that Gustavo Molina insisted upon, one that Nova didn’t want to throw. For Nova, who is entering a critical stretch in his bid for a rotation spot, it was a bad time for miscommunication.

...

Before the game, manager Joe Girardi said that he’d be watching his starters closely from here until the end of camp. Starts such as the one Nova made last night would figure 'a lot more' in terms of evaluation, Girardi said."

Gimme a break. He's your #2.

Joe Girardi loves to laugh.

"Honestly, I was never a huge rules guy," Girardi insists. "I expect guys to be on time and play hard. Bottom line. Take care of yourself. If you have an issue, come to me and we’ll take care of the issue. I don’t want to enforce rules, I want to grow players. For example, I don’t care about music in the clubhouse like some managers do. I actually encourage them to play it loud. I encourage guys to have fun. I think because of the way I look, with the flat top, people think I’m against fun. That’s not the case. I love to laugh."

I just flew in from Tampa and that explains why my arms are tired.

Speaking of airlines El Al and Alitalia merged and created a new airline called Well I'll Tell Ya.

Airline food is subpar and I think we can all affirm the veracity of this observation.

A horse sat down at a bar and the bartender asked the horse why the long face.

Women enjoy shopping and you can not stop a woman from shopping.

David Brooks writes about baseball.

Mets players must be thrilled to hear that a New York Times columnist is rooting for them.

For the rest of us, it's just yet another topic for David Brooks to mangle incoherently:

"In 2005, I wrote a column saying that maybe it was time to abandon the New York Mets and become a fan of the Washington Nationals. My reasoning was sound. We were raising our kids in Washington. We had Nats season tickets. We were acquiring Nats paraphernalia. It would be so easy to join the fold."

Really?

That is very interesting.

In 2005, I wrote a column about Mike Lupica.


"Since then, the reasons to leave the Mets and follow the Nats have become even more compelling. The Mets have suffered a pair of bone-crushing late-season collapses that have changed the personality of the franchise. The team is mired in financial turmoil. It is expected to be mediocre for the next several seasons, at best."

So you're a fan of a baseball team and you remain a fan of the team even though they are not a good team.

Kind of like every fan of every team.


"The Nats, meanwhile, have a set of astoundingly talented young players and should be thrilling to watch for the next decade."

I doubt that very much.


"There’s a core American debate between 'On the Road' and 'It’s a Wonderful Life.' 'On the Road' suggests that happiness is to be found through freedom, wandering and autonomy. 'It’s a Wonderful Life' suggests that happiness is found in the lifelong attachments that precede choice. It suggests that restraints can actually be blessings because they lead to connections that are deeper than temporary self-interest."

A core American debate in your mind only which really has nothing to do with baseball.

Why don't you try to impress your readers by reference "The Republic" and "Infinite Jest" and explain how they are competing paradigms which can be viewed through the prism of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Because then the readers might think you are clever even though you are not clever.

Two little opinions jumping on a bed, one fell off and bumped his head, mama called the dr. and the dr. said, no more opinions jumping on the bed.

Johan throws 29 pitches in Spring Training.

The ever-effervescent Mike Lupica's glass is half-full:

"Thanks to Johan Santana's superb spring debut, the NY Mets have hope for 2012," reads the headline.

"Hope" to finish within 20 games of Philly? Perhaps. Lupica is kind of vague with the numbers, so it's hard to tell:

"If Santana can come all the way back and be the Mets’ Opening Day starter, be something close to what he was before he tore up his shoulder, then maybe the Mets can be a team to watch again. And maybe, with everything stacked against them the way it is, they can be a team in which Mets fans can invest not just their money, but the belief that maybe things can get better, after 5½ years of what feels like a Biblical plague since Molina hit that Game 7 home run and Carlos Beltran took a called strike three with the season on the bases at old Shea Stadium."

Look, man, Mets fans follow the Mets and Yankee fans follow the Yankees.

I don't know what Carlos Beltran has to do with anything in 2012 Mets Spring Training, but I can guarantee that I can find one million Lupica articles in the past 5 1/2 years where Lupica has implored the NY metro audience to ignore the Yankees and follow the Amazin's.

The whole time it was a Biblical plague. Rooting for the Fightin' Terrys of 2011 was analogous with the death of your firstborn son.

Was Lupica lying then or is Lupica lying now?


"So Rakoff basically says that he and the jury get to decide this thing now and, oh by the way, good luck to Picard. Only in the New York Times, of course, out of all the papers who gave Rakoff’s ruling big coverage, was this somehow viewed as a rousing triumph for the trustee, mostly because it fit the Picard-driven narrative of this story presented in that paper from the start.

So Rakoff and jury will decide, once and for all, if they believe Wilpon and Katz were 'willfully blind' to what Madoff was doing with their money and everybody else’s. Then once the trial is over, we finally begin to find out how — and if — the Mets move forward from every bad thing that has happened to them since Game 7 of 2006, and that includes Johan Santana’s left shoulder.

So Mike Lupica, Esquire, thinks a tort is a dessert you eat at Sunday brunch.

So Mike Lupica wants to give legal analysis. Based on Lupica's track record, this article is the one place on the entire planet where I can guarantee the information regarding the Madoff trial is incorrect and the conclusions are misguided.

So Mike Lupica.


"He came back and pitched two innings Tuesday. Twenty-nine pitches. Couple of sweet changeups, some fastballs he put where he wanted them. You can understand why it felt like more in Port St. Lucie."

No, I was hoping you could explain why these two Spring Training innings felt like more.

Then I read your article. However , you did not explain this in a way that I could understand. It just sounded like a weird Mets Fan Boy unwilling to admit the likelihood of his team's last-place finish in 2012.


Jeff Passan's glass of Santana is half-empty:

"There is quite literally a hidden beauty in baseball, one nobody has seen live or ever will because it takes place beneath the skin. The shoulder is a fascinating beast, untamed, undefeated. Players receive injections with stem cells made of their own fat and steal a tendon from their wrist to fix their elbow and still, no one has solved the shoulder, at least not with any level of certainty. It is baseball’s Moby Dick."

Moby Dick is a great white whale ... but I don't see why you had to bring Joba Chamberlain into it.

"At the moment, Johan Santana looks like little more than another iffy candidate. Tuesday in Port St. Lucie, Fla., he threw 29 pitches over two shutout innings against the St. Louis Cardinals in his first action against major-league hitters since Sept. 2, 2010. Less than two weeks after that start, Santana underwent surgery on his left shoulder for an anterior capsule tear. He tried returning in August 2011. After five Class A innings, his shoulder barked no.

That the New York Mets still have him penciled in for an opening-day start this season is either a reflexive response to the painful salaries they owe him for the next two years – $54.5 million, assuming they turn down a 2014 club option – or extreme faith in something with little history to warrant it. The list of pitchers who returned from capsule-tear surgery to anything near their previous level reads like this:

It killed Mark Prior’s career, slowed down Chien-Ming Wang’s, halted Pedro Feliciano’s and derailed dozens more before doctors could identify the exact problem. It’s why when pitchers go in for MRIs, they beg for the doctor to say: 'Elbow.' "

Dang, the Mets owe Santana $54.5 million over the next two years?

Just how many games is he going to win to give the Mets hope?

Pitchers can't hit.

"Major League Baseball has expanded its pool of postseason teams to 10 -- up from four just 19 years ago -- and next year will re-align into 15-team leagues that make for at least one interleague series all season long. But the biggest change of all may be around the next corner: the end of baseball as it was originally designed."

I think the introduction of mitts was the end of baseball as it was originally designed, but, whatever. Most things are inferior if they cling to how they were originally designed.


"Moreover, events of this winter spotlighted the negotiating advantage that AL teams have over NL teams with the use of the DH. Prince Fielder (nine-year contract) and Albert Pujols (10 years) jumped to AL clubs as free agents in part because AL teams can afford to offer longer contracts because a player can transition to the DH role as he ages. Eleven of the 13 richest contracts ever given to position players have been bankrolled by AL teams."

I think the lack of a DH hurts NL teams as described.


"There is no question that the style of NL baseball is more interesting and nuanced than AL baseball. Yes, it's a better game, the way chess is a better game than checkers. Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, just like Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, is one of the greatest games ever played because there was no DH. Texas manager Ron Washington used nine players in his number nine spot in his order. St. Louis manager Tony La Russa used pitchers in four of his nine spots and -- when down two runs in the 10th inning -- ran out of position players and had to use a pitcher to hit for a pitcher."

Hooray, everybody. He had to use a pitcher to hit for a pitcher.

Blech.

It's hardly like comparing chess to checkers. It's like comparing tic-tac-toe to tic-tac-toe.

I can easily make a counter-argument that Grady Little would have kept his job if he had the pinch-hitter option making his decision for him.

Besides, what do you remember about Game Six in 1975? You remember Fisk's homer. Another non-pitcher hitting another homerun.

Statistics.

"It isn't so long now since Ryan Braun won his appeal and got his 50-game suspension overturned and what he still hasn't explained - even as he apparently thinks his story should be the one in 'Les Miserables' — is how was enough of a scientific genius to do all that.

Spike two samples perfectly.

Fool the testers at the lab.

I mean, if Laurenzi can do all that, he's wasting his time on urine samples, the guy ought to be an art thief figuring out a way to rob the Met.

How did he do it?

And why did he do it?"

Braun indirectly attacked Laurenzi, this is true, but Braun has not charged Laurenzi with a crime.

False negatives are real things. Remember the NBA in the 1980s? When nobody failed a drug test? Instead of concluding the league is clean, one may conclude the test was flawed.

False positives are also real things (though they are "extremely unlikely" -- kind of like Braun's likelihood of overturning his drug test results, given MLB's previous overturn percentage of 0.00%) .

The testosterone levels of Braun's drug tests are something like this: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,1 , 20, 20, 1, 1, 1. Probably exaggerated for the sake of this illustration.

The highest previous reading in the history of testosterone is 10.

So would you conclude that Braun suddenly used twice as much testosterone as anyone in history? Or might you conclude that the test was mistaken somehow? A clerical error, a damaged sample, a faulty calibration, etc.

I'm not saying this happened in this case for sure; I'm saying it happens for sure.

If your thermometer says it's 1,000 degrees outside, it's most likely a problem with your thermometer.

Why would Laurenzi do it? Maybe he's a Cardinals fan. Or maybe somebody at the lab is a Cardinals fan. Or maybe somebody at the lab is a trickster or an incompetent intern or maybe the lab thinks Six Sigma is a fraternity.

Which is one reason -- the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights being the primary reason -- pro baseball players shouldn't even give urine samples in the first place.

"If the Yankees are going to get under that $189 million threshold by 2014, they better hope that Curtis Granderson stops hitting all those home runs.

Seriously, how do you pay him, and Cano, and keep paying A-Rod and Sabathia and Teixeira?"

They won't lower their payroll all the way to $189 million. Shrug.

Hal (not Hank) Steinbrenner is actually somewhat intelligent. He is correctly asserting that the Yankees can produce similar results with young players, particularly young pitchers.

In other words: Fewer A.J. Burnetts, more Aldo Novas.

Apparently, ARod is all in.

I think ARod is going to have a good offensive year.

But, you know, this is about the 1,000th time ARod has supposedly crossed an imaginary Maturity Boundary and become a True Yankee:

"But on Friday morning, hours before they’d open their spring schedule against the University of South Florida and start all over again, sources said Rodriguez commanded the room for more than 10 minutes like he never had before."

A ten-minute Spring Training speech.

On Friday morning, at work, I spent more than ten minutes discussing the relative merits of pomegranate iced tea vs. lemon iced tea. There's one iced tea with black pepper and pomegranate and it didn't taste too good, but it tastes good without the black pepper.


" 'It was great,' said one witness. 'I’d never seen that out of him before. I didn’t know he had it in him.' "

One witness is quite a source.


"According to those in the clubhouse, however, Rodriguez talked about being 'all in.' He advised them that, on that subject, there was only black or white, 'no gray.' He said each of them – from the biggest superstar to the last guy on the 40-man – knew what 'all in' meant. They’d had to have been 'all in' just to sit in that room, to make it this far. And that every man knew exactly what his 'all in' amounted to, in work ethic and dedication and sacrifice. He asked them to find that within them, to bring it every day, all season long, for the good of the Yankees. For the good of themselves."

According to unnamed witnesses in the clubhouse.


" 'Amazing,' a witness said. 'The guys were drawn to him.' "

A witness.

This didn't really happen, did it?

I love (insert name of Boston manager) and (insert name of Boston GM).

I feel kind of bad for Treey Francona and Theo Epstein. They've lost their honored place in the chambers of Mike Lupica's heart, replaced suddenly by Bobby Valentine and What's-His-Name:

"Valentine brings life and fun and even some nonsense to the whole thing now, in the first real week of spring training, whether he is talking about Derek Jeter and a play he made more than 10 years ago, or Jason Varitek and Alex Rodriguez getting into it one Saturday at Fenway nearly eight years ago. Or turning around the next day and doing everything except sending Jeter a bottle of wine as a peace offering."

The first real week of spring training.

When all the action happens.

Like a gaggle of Yankee players pondering who is going to throw pies in players' faces.


"Who knows how long Valentine lasts in Boston, and who cares?"

I know, but I'm not telling.

Lots of people care, particularly Red Sox fans.


"And seemed happy that he could still make a back-page headline in New York this long after he used to make them when he managed the Mets. And then, just because Bobby V never seems to run out of saliva, he talked about how much he loves Jeter as a baseball player."

Mike Lupica just said that another man never seems to run out of saliva.


"He is exactly the change they needed at Fenway Park. You heard all these names, so many of them uninteresting, when it came time to replace Terry Francona. Then Larry Lucchino threw Bobby Valentine’s name into the mix the way he would a lit firecracker. Now here is Valentine, back in play, back in the middle of the action, with the best team he has ever managed in the big leagues, even after what happened to it last September."

Get serious, Lupica.

Would it really have mattered who the Red Sox hired to replace Francona? Or if the Red Sox had stuck with Francona?

The Red Sox manager is always going to be the exact thing they need because you hate the Yankees and love the Red Sox.

Valentine could get dressed in a clown suit and toss babies and you'd say it's just what the Red Sox needed.