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For this year’s edition of a sports media-related Mother’s Day piece, we’ve focused on the work by Donna Moskal, a longtime stage manager on Kings and Clippers games for Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket who has also managed to raise four kids, all of whom have been, are currently in, or are headed for college.
The story on her is in the Southern California News Group Sunday editions is linked here.

Tom, Steve and Jon: Present.
Beto and Smedes: Absent.
They must not want to win. Time to call them out.
So, the 10th episode of The Drill becomes the three-man weave.

Here are the links that help put some of it into context:
= As for Zlatan calling out his Galaxy teammates story … Remember when Kirk Gibson screamed at his new Dodgers’ teammates in 1988 spring training — the last World Series title year? And Gibson’s regular-season MVP numbers were not all that impressive.
= How many teams has Ibra played for? Nine, by this count.
= Jim Thompson’s illustration that goes with LeBron James’ slicing and dicing of the Toronto Raptors, and will that success keep him in Cleveland or perhaps make it OK for him to join the Lakers/Clippers in L.A.?

= During the discussion on Mike Trout, we’ve got proof on how he resonates with today’s young players.

= At the 16-minute mark, up until the 31-minute mark: The sports media column that was the launching point — or follow up to a tweet — about objectivity lacking with a team-owned channel coverage.
= And finally … raccoons. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live with ’em.
Please … Like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/TheDrillSports
= Post script: If you care to listen to an hour long discussion of various aspects of the sports media that I tend to cover, please check out this (about an hour) podcast discussion with John Shrader, the one-time Long Beach State journalism professor now teaching and doing work at the University of Nebraska.

It all started with this:

And it didn’t end with this column in the Sunday editions of the Southern California News Group.
Because eventually there was this:

But circled around to this:

Got any sort of opinion about how the presentation of the Dodgers-Diamondbacks game Thursday exclusive to Facebook Watch?
Even as we went through the process of creating a Facebook account that we will now delete, we can report there was nothing as intrusive as buffering issues or pornbots.
We saw minimal damage to what otherwise would have been a SportsNet LA production here and Fox Sports Arizona locally. Rick Waltz’s pedestrian play-by-play work was best when turned over to Orel Hershiser or Eric Byrnes, but it was evident that Orel was the real true pro in the booth, and Alanna Rizzo did her typically fine work on the field getting to both dugouts on a “neutral” broadcast.
(Byrnes … Imagine him and Rex Hudler in a booth together. One would only need a potted plant — no pun intended — doing play-by-play to get that broadcast off track in a hurry. We didn’t realize Jeff Spicoli was going to be taking our time away from an otherwise midweek day game).
The Dodgers’ 5-2 win was augmented by some interesting viewer commentary along the way — some that we actually could read and capture before it sped by on the right side of the page and disappeared somewhere.

(By the way, to eliminate that feed, they kept telling us to “swipe right.” The assumption was we were on a smart phone. Those of us on a laptop had no clue why they kept saying that… and once we figured out how to get ride of the thing they called “noise,” we realized we missed the interaction).
It appears on Facebook MLB Live there were 188K total views (people who came in and out), with a high of about 38K at one point, and some 27K comments posted.
From what we could gather, here’s some stuff to consider about the broadcast team, the production and just getting used to this experience (creative typos belong to them):
Continue reading “Today’s Dodgers’ Facebook Watch party: Did it fulfill your wildest dreams and streams?” →

It’s bonus coverage for our weekly viewers and listeners of “The Drill” — a single-subject 10 minute discussion about the idea to bring a gondola linking Union Station to Dodger Stadium as a way to get fans to the park. Along with an exclusive Jim Thompson illustration.
We banged out a column about this after the news came out. Please read it here.
Here’s the reference to The Simpson’s episode with the “Escape Dodger Stadium” as a scary task:

Enjoy and let us know what you think….