Thank you, Tony

Hey all,

I’ve been reading through all your comments in the last few hours. I’m sure Tony has as well. A sincere thanks to Dodgers veep Josh Rawitch for his kind words and Dodger Thoughts’ Jon Weisman for his thoughts.

Tony was about as old-school as they come. He always, always beat you to the ballpark. Even on his days off he was there, just to be around the team and the game. I personally learned a lot from the guy, and loved talking baseball with him.

This blog will continue forward, though there will be a host of voices contributing to it now.

For now though, let’s have this post serve as a shout out Tony…

Why all the sportswriters are rooting for Will Ohman

Lefty-relief specialist Will Ohman is already giving Manny Ramirez a run for his money in the best one-liner category.

After he gave up a home run to Chad Tracy in his Dodgers debut earlier this week, Ohman joked, “Obviously, signing so late, I wanted to bring as much attention to myself as possible.”

Thursday night he struck out the only batter he faced against the Angels. I came up to him and asked if he had another funny one-liner to sum up his performance.

“That was just rapid improvement on my part,” he joked. “I got all those firsts out of the way and went back to being me, which is just unbelievably dominant.”

Ohman’s supposed to start the year in Triple-A but is expected to be called up as soon as he gets his rhythm down. Normally we don’t root for those sort of things, but when a guy goes 2-for-2 in funny quote opportunities, it’s hard not to.

What should we call this thing?

OK, you’ve got one hour to be creative. Since this is just a one-game deal, it feels a little weird to call this a Freeway Series between the Dodgers and Angels. But what should we call this thing instead?

I have to file the gamer by 9:30 so you’ve got until then to come up with something good. Right now I’m thinking about the Freeway interchange, but that kind of stinks…

Final cuts….

It’s that time of year. Final cuts. And in this case, they are the deepest.

It sounded like Joe Torre and the front office intend to take as much time as they can to make them.

“We’ve still got some discussing to do,” Torre said. “There may be something that makes up my mind. You’re sitting here with decisions to be made and the each make sense, but you can’t make all of them.”

The most pressing decisions the Dodgers must make involve pairing down the four utility infielders — Juan Castro, Doug Mietkiewicz, Blake DeWitt and Chin-lung Hu — to two roster spots, and choosing between righties Ramon Troncoso and Tanyon Sturtze for the last bullpen job.

That said, Torre left room to revisit whatever decision the club makes this weekend later in the year.

“You make decisions at the time you have to make them but it doesn’t mean you don’t do something different down the road,” he said.

You know he can ride, but let’s see his arm

Two-time defending Eclipse Award winning jockey and long-time Dodgers fan Garrett Gomez will throw out Friday’s first pitch at Dodger Stadium before their exhibition game against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Gomez rides Kentucky Derby hopeful Pioneerof the Nile on Saturday, April 4 in the Santa Anita Derby. Pioneerof the Nile’s morning line odds are set at 2-1, and he faces stiff competition against The Pamplemousse and Chocolate Candy.

First post at Santa Anita on Saturday is noon with the Santa Anita Derby
going off as the 6th race at 2:30 p.m.