It’s that time of year again. Actually, one of the best times of the year. It’s a great time of the year because you can hear it coming.

You say you don’t know what I’m talking about?

Let me help you.

First, tomorrow is opening day for the Dodgers. Keep that in mind.

Now, close your eyes. Picture a grayed red hed behind a microphone with a tie and a classic suit. Now can you hear it?

Yep – the best words around.

“It’s Time for Dodger Baseball!”

Go Blue.

Vin Scully - 9/13/09

Went to the game and saw the Dodgers get their little behinds beat….bad. At one point I said to my wife, “wow, what an exiting game…” not.  It was fun being there…but not so fun being killed.

Let’s just say Chad Billingsley is not ready for the playoffs.  I talked to another fan who felt that he hasn’t been the same since the All-Star game.  I would agree.  Something is off.  The thing I noticed today wasn’t that he was wild – it was that they were crushing his pitches.  I don’t know if it was his velocity down, or that they knew what was coming, but those balls were just flying off the bats.  Jon Weisman thinks he’s been worked to hard this year (click here).

Weaver and Belisario didn’t seem much better.  Weaver got hit from the first pitch and Belisario just kept bringing them in.

Here were the real highlights of the day, since the Dodgers didn’t bring too many.

• Even in the parking lot at the train station I had a fan stop, roll down his window and “boo” at me in my Dodger gear.  Got to love living up here.
• We had really nice seats in the club level and still had a lot of Dodger fans around.  There were over 40k people at the game, but the blue was out.  As you can see in the above picture, we were really close to Vin Scully too, which was very fun.
• Russell Martin has figured something out.  He hit 2 homeruns over the weekend, and even when he got out today, he was hitting the ball well.  Not sure what happened, but here’s hoping he has a good September.  He seems to have gotten his grove back.
• There was a pretty funny situation near the end of the game.  They put up the Padres/Rockies score and that the Padres had won.  It was funny because both sets of fans started cheering.  Both the Dodgers and Giants want to see the Rockies lose, so it was funny to finally have something that both sides could cheer about.
• Special thanks to Dave and Kevin on the train ride home.  You guys are the epitome of good Giants fans.  You were great to talk to, up on your sports, and had lots of good things to say about the Dodgers, with just enough taunting too.  If we’re ever at a game again together, I’ll gladly buy you both a beer.

Well – there goes the series.  Time to play the Pirates briefly, then more Giants.  I’m glad we took 2 of 3, I just wish we could have finished strong today.

Funny Scoreboard

Finally, here’s a fun game to end the post.  Can you find what’s wrong with the picture here?  Let’s just say the scoreboard was having some technical difficulties at one point in the game.  It’s a little small, but hopefully you can see what happened.  Post your thoughts below.

Chad Billingsley - Gina Ferazzi/L.A. Times

10-0 at home to start the season.  What a way to start.  I love the fact that I was at the 1st game of this streak that was a Giants romp.  To win today with out Ramirez, Blake, Martin and Furcal makes it all the sweeter.  The Dodgers have depth and they can score runs.  It was good to see Pierre having fun out there again today too.

I said it earlier, Billingsley may be in the Cy Young voting this year.  If he is, the Dodgers will be in the playoffs.  He was the question mark ace this year, but there’s no questions now.

I’ve realized one of the things I miss most about not being in L.A. is not hearing Vin Scully call the game just by turning on the radio.  I could get satalite radio, but I don’t know that’s worth it just for that.  I did however get the MLB package where I can watch every game on the computer.  I even upgraded this year so I can plug it in to my big screen and watch it in HD.

I got to hear Vin today and he had a story that cracked me up.  If you heard the game, you may have heard it, but it was classic Vin.  He was talking about how the players years ago fought and fought to avoid wearing helmets when on the base paths.  Apparently they would wear it when batting, but put their soft cap in their back pocket and take the helmet off when they reached first base.  He was commenting how things have changed now and that guys have now swung the other way.  They keep their helmet on, and when the ball is coming towards them, they usually cover the ear that isn’t protected.  He even had a case in point when Ethier was on base.

What was funny though was when he shifted the story.  He made the point that as slow as it was for players it was even slower for coaches at 1st and 3rd base.  He commented that even now they wear a helmet, but it doesn’t cover their ears.  I couldn’t write it all down, but he made a comment something to the effect that, “now if a ball comes straight down on their head, they are protected, but if it comes from the side, that helmet is worthless…” 

It was just a classic Vin telling a story, but leaking a little bias as only he can.  He was dripping the sarcasm pretty thick because the balls coming straight down are the easy ones to dodge, but the coaches are always dodging ones to the side, but have no protection.  Who knew he had an opinion on coaches helmets, but obviously so.  He finished by saying that at some point the light will finally come in, as if to say that some year those coaches will finally figure it out and protect their ears.

In his 60th year, I don’t know that we’ll have too many more of him at the microphone, but he sure is fun to listen to.  I bet for him seeing the Dodgers go 10-0 at home is a treat because even that hasn’t happened in 60 years.