A first for young Dodgers fans

In an editors' meeting this morning, there was talk of doing a story about signs of Dodgersmania, and some of us remarked that there's never been so much excitement about a team taking a lead in a playoff series ... a first-round series ... against the Cubs.

But the more I think about it, the more I get it. At lunch, I looked around at the mostly young faces eating at the local Chipotle, and I realized how few people in that restaurant were alive the last time the Dodgers accomplished even this much. If you're under, what, 26 years old, you can't remember the Dodgers' victory in the 1988 World Series, and Kirk Gibson is just a name your dad says a little too often.

One great thing for young Dodgers fans today is that they've grown up in a time when rooting for a screwed up baseball team is portrayed as a badge of honor. The team is a bunch of "lovable losers," the fans are long-suffering, their frustration given religious significance. So kids have had that going for them, and now they get to enjoy the possibility that their club is shedding its history of October bumbling, the only history they've ever really known.