Daily Distractions: Fans’ outrage toward Dodgers, Time Warner now includes an online petition.

Vin Scully
A fan petition calling on the Dodgers and Time Warner cable to “broker a deal” with local cable providers and “stop the defacto blackout” of the club on local television has 491 signatures on the website FansRising.com.

The campaign is planning additional action to raise attention to the issue, according to a press release from Fans Rising. Comments left by fans reveal that multiple petition signers are elderly fans no longer able to attend games who can’t watch on television.

“I saw my first Dodger game at Ebbets Field in 1938 and have been a faithful fan ever since,” wrote Doris Schalk. “I am now 84 and unable to drive, so don’t get to many games anymore, but being able to watch them all these years has been a god-send. The radio guys are very good – BUT I miss my Vin AND my Dodgers.”

Some bullet points for a Hump Day:

Kenley Jansen on beginning the regular season in Australia: “It’s not worth it at all. It’s kind of scary, when you go through something like that with Kershaw. We might think we’re ready, but our body’s not there yet. Only 15 games into spring training and then go play regular season, that’s not smart at all. It went wrong for both of us, for us and Arizona, I feel like.”

• Not surprisingly, Dee Gordon ranks second in the major leagues in batting average on “soft-hit balls.” Guess which Dodgers hitter ranks 10th on the list.

• MLB reversed its Mother’s Day pink bat policy. Also, MLB had a Mother’s Day pink bat policy.

• What Chad Billingsley was doing this morning:

SportsOnEarth.com asks: What is the most exciting play in baseball?

• How can an 86 to 90-mph fastball be more effective than a 94+ mph fastball to the same spot? There’s a chart for that.

• What would a “Mad Men” company softball team look like?

• Happy birthday to James Loney (30). Dick Williams was born 85 years ago today.

• The roots-rock genre that proliferated in the 1970s completely withered on an electric vine in the 1980s. This was always source of childhood regret since I never really appreciated 1980s music in its time. Now, thankfully, we have Jonathan Wilson and groups like Dawes to make up for lost time. If you snuck “From a Window Seat” into the Forrest Gump soundtrack, after he gets back from Vietnam but before he starts running, it would not seem out of place.