Extra, extra, read all about it

One last note about Turn Back the Clock Night at the Trop, where they turned it back to 1955 in every way imaginable, including a postgame concert by the visibly aging Sha-Na-Na. As we were waiting to enter the clubhouse after the game, A Martinez, the Dodgers' postgame host for KFWB, voiced his disappointment to me at the fact that the beat writers hadn't chosen to join in. He pointed out that we all should have been using manual typewriters, chomping on cigars and wearing houndstooth fedoras with our press passes stuffed into the bands. Sometimes, I wish I had been around in that era, when covering baseball was the plum beat of every sports department of every newspaper in the country and the job was FUN all the time. Mostly, though, I'm glad to be covering it now, when all the ballparks (at least in the National League), the press boxes are more comfortable, and the travel is (mostly) easier. Plus, I never could have worked in the days when the writers wore suits to the ballpark. Of course, THEY didn't have to go to PHX, where the forecast highs for this week's four-gamer are 109, 110, 111 and 110.