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We have some personnel issues to resolve in Episode 5 of “The Drill.” It’s our first attempt to work around one of our key contributor’s schedule — we usually do this on a Monday but it was pushed back to Wednesday afternoon to accommodate producer Jon flying in late from Reno after doing an NBA G-League broadcast. But that also precluded Beto Duran from being available.
So, like good journalists, we adapted and this is how it came out.
With that, our cheat sheet reference guide to a 40-minute show:

* How does “Beto” translate from Spanish to English? One definition given is “lucky bastard.” Bueno.
* The Reno Bighorns vs. the South Bay Lakers game info from the Reno Gazette Journal (and nothing from any L.A. news outlet)
* Where is OB’s in Manhattan Beach? The locals know. For the rest of you ….
* The Galaxy/LAFC game story from last Saturday.
* The Angel City Brigade section: A real thing at Galaxy games in StubHub Center.
* Illustrator/contributor Jim Thompson has this take on the game:

* Another fine eating establishment recommendation: The Local Place on Western off the 405, next to the Kings Hawaiian factory… Because Kings Hawaiian supplies the grub in the Dodger Stadium left-field pavilion, including killer chicken wings not available at their restaurants.
* Are the Rams “Taking a Win-Now Experiment to Its Limit”? TheRinger.com asks, as do we.
* From “The Business” segment: The Facebook Mets-Phillies broadcast had left many flustered.
* Could this help Eric’s Tinder profile?

*More on the ESPN+ OTT service, and its new deal with the Ivy League. Smart move?
* Time Magazine has made note of the new NBA2K league. It’s about time …
* Look at the numbers once posted by Elgin Baylor, who gets a statue outside of Staples Center this weekend …  And for those who want to compare Baylor’s career to Michael Olowokandi, it is here.
* Video does exist of Ty Cobb hitting a baseball:

* We found the odds at 15/1 that Ohtani will hit more home runs than he allows. (And 3/2 odds reference that Mike Trout finishes second in the AL MVP balloting for the fourth time in his career)
* The HBO show from 1996-2002 that you should be glad you missed: “Arli$$”

So now, do us a small favor: Give us some feedback. What do you want to see more/less on this show? What’s missing (aside from some graphics). What’s worthy of subtracting (don’t say Beto) …

The book: “The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking”
The author: Russell A. Carleton
How to find it: Triumph Books, 368 pages, $19.95, released March 8.
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: Last May, former Dodger Gary Sheffield did a piece for The Players’ Tribune entitled “Commissioner for a Day,” in which he expounded on things he would do if he was in charge of the MLB.
On the topic of infield shifts, he went Stephen A. Smith and demanded they be banned.
“This whole thing with people playing out of position is all about the computer geeks. All this shifting comes from computer nerds who don’t play baseball. Teams have hired them because they think these guys understand the game, but they really don’t. They just go by the percentages. They have information on every at bat you’ve ever taken. Every one. Then they have these little printouts and they say, ‘Go stand over there.’
“That’s not baseball. That’s computer-geek ball. You have a position to play. So go play your position. You shouldn’t be allowed to play out of position. There is a reason why we have names for positions: third base, left field, shortstop, and so on. Those positions go way back. Those are real things that have been part of baseball forever.”

Fast forward to last Thursday’s Opening Day, as ESPN is televising the Astros-Rangers game from Arlington, Tex. In the bottom of the first with one out, the Astros defense goes into a version of a “Swan Lake” ballet, and when they’re done, they’ve created a four-man outfield and three-man right-side of the infield as the Rangers’ Joey Gallo comes to the plate (see above). He flies out on the first pitch. The official box score reads: “Gallo popped out to third.” Actually, third baseman Alex Bregman made the putout, playing left field.
“Why doesn’t Gallo bunt!” exclaims ESPN analyst and former Dodgers pitcher Rick Sutcliffe.
“Because he doesn’t bunt,” replies play-by-play partner Jon Sciambi. “It’s something he doesn’t do.”
“But he should!” Sutcliffe insists. “He has to!” Continue reading “Day 5 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: The ground is shifting under baseball’s way of doing things, and a guy with a Ph.D. in psychology talks us through it” →

The book: “Slide! The Baseball Tragicomedy That Defined Me, My Family, and the City of Philadelphia – And How It All Could Have Been Avoided Had Someone Just Listened to My Lesbian Great Aunt (1964 Phillies)”
The author: Carl Wolfson
How to find it: Mascot Books, 224 pages, $19.95, released December 5, 2017
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: Another pluck from the late ’17 releases, long after our list last year was assembled and released.
We won’t make a habit of this, but because of the subject matter, and the timing, this comes at an opportune moment.
Consider just the first few games that Gabe Kapler, rookie manager for the 2018 Philadelphia Phillies, the former Taft High of Woodland Hills kid, has already gone through.
Kapler is “Unlike Any Manager Phillies Fans Have Known (and Booed),” according to a New York Times headline over the weekend. And that’s before all the bizarre moves he has made with his bullpen that caused MLB to take notice.
That also led to a Deadspin.com post: “Gabe Kapler’s Cosmic Brain is Putting The Phillies In Some Tough Spots.”
“The label Philly fans get is that they’re tough,” Kapler says in the NYT story.  “Well, they just want you to play well, play with passion, sacrifice your body and never take a play off. Is that tough, or is it … normal? I see it as normal.”
Now, meet the Wolfsohn family (spelling later changed by the author to “Wolfson”). Party of five from Arlington, Va., who had to move back to Philly via Jersey, and became die-hard Phillies fans just in time for the darkest period of the franchise history.
A period still book-worthy because of the honest laughs it continues, in this instance, to generate.
If you’re already familiar with the premise of “The Goldbergs” or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” then it’s not much of a stretch to imagine how someone like Wolfson could still create his own sit-com treatment based on his journey of faith during the Phillies Great Collapse of ’64 – a point in time where Wolfson still has (and shows on the back cover) a pennant from that time proclaiming the Phillies as the 1964 National League Champions.
Not quite. Continue reading “Day 4 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: If you can reference a lesbian great aunt in a baseball book title about one of the great collapses in MLB history, we’re in” →

The book: “Brothers in Arms: Koufax, Kershaw and the Dodgers Extraordinary Pitching Tradition”
The author: Jon Weisman
How to find it: Triumph Books, 384 pages, $19.95, due out May 1, but copies are currently being shipped by Amazon.com.
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: In this case, it should be limited to 60-feet, 6 inches.
Connecting dots in a sports franchise’s history can turn up a lot of interesting coincidences, or reinforce a pattern of success.
The given narrative we hear so much – The Dodgers are all about a durable, dependable and distinguished pitching resume – is reinforced by many metrics.
* A record 12 Cy Young Awards won since the thing was invented some 60 years ago (the next closest franchise is seven by Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston).
* The first relief pitcher to be so dominant that he had to be given the first Cy Young, setting records still unmatched. The second reliever to win it in a Dodger uniform was also record-setting.
* The players listed 1 and 2 in MLB record books for consecutive scoreless innings pitched is the same in the Dodgers’ record book.
* The most important arm surgery in the history of sports happened to a Dodgers pitcher. And it worked to where it’s common (too common) in the game.
* The first major person to experience the freedom of free agency? An All-Star pitcher who left L.A. for Atlanta.
As the Dodgers send Clayton Kershaw to the mound for the second time this season, his career ERA already down to 2.36 in 1,941 IP, we are able to appreciate the beauty of this project by Weisman — a former L.A. Daily News sportswriter, author of two versions of “100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die,” and a former Dodgers’ front man for their digital and print content, including the work on the “Dodgers Insider” blog.
Many of these Dodgers are still around to put their time, and their accomplishments, into some context. Weisman is the best equipped journalist to do it.
Continue reading “Day 3 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: How the Dodgers’ pitching history has been a win-win-win-win-win arms race linked by greatness” →

The book: “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age”
The author: Sridhar Pappu
How to find it: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28, 400 pages, released Oct. 3, 2017
The links: At Amazon.com, at the publishers website.

A review in 90-feet or less: This, thankfully, got us through the long winter.
We admit, we don’t usually include books that came out in the fall of the previous year, but the importance of this project by this tenacious columnist was not just ahead of its time, but it jumped the others in getting out in front of a narrative about a) the 50^th anniversary of that 1968 pitching season for the ages, and b) focusing on a World Series highlighted by Bob Gibson and Denny McLain that somehow got many of us hooked on the game forever from our black-and-white TV sets.
From an L.A. perspective, Don Drysdale’s 1968 season could have been a story unto itself. He was carrying the team almost by himself two years removed after Sandy Koufax’s retirement and the maturation of Don Sutton, etc. Drysdale would only last one more season after this year of an 2.15 ERA, with eight shutouts and 12 complete games. And none of those stats led the NL in ’68.
The 58 2/3 inning scoreless streak, which came amidst the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in L.A., was a transformational moment. But in this book, it’s almost a sidenote, remarkably.
Drysdale finished that season 14-12. And the Dodgers would grind out a 76-86 record, 21 games behind the Cardinals in 10-team NL, posting an MLB low 470 runs (compared to the 671 by Detroit).
In this book, Drysdale’s achievements are mostly confined to Chapter 10, 12 total pages — and while that’s kind of disappointing, it’s somewhat understandable in the scope of this David Halberstam-type remembrance of a year unlike any other in the game’s history.
Gibson and McLain were the NL and AL MVP and Cy Young winners. A 1.12 ERA for one, a 31-victory season for the other. What makes no sense is how Gibson even lost nine games against 22 wins. Continue reading “Day 2 of 30 baseball book reviews for 2018: On Gibson, McLain … and, oh yeah, Drysdale, Marichal, Jenkins … with 50 years of perspective of a very volatile season” →