Letters to the Editor: Dodgers lost? Fake news. Just declare them the winners.
July 15, 2017, 4:17 p.m.
I have worked in sports and entertainment for 37 years and can confidently say this “fake news” stuff is a total fraud that should be exposed as such.
And that’s despite the fact I have been writing about the Dodgers in many of my columns for well over a decade.
I have watched and supported them over the years with pride and respect, and it is to that legacy that I write of this unfortunate recent run of misery that they have encountered during this second year under new ownership.
My first baseball memories were from my father, who took the family to his first Dodgers game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, a day that left a lasting impression as he walked up to the first base dugout where his father was working as a ticket seller and told him “Daddy, there’s a bunch of f****** idiots up there, and they are cheering against you.”
As an 18-year-old freshman at Yale in 1980, I went to the New York Times Forum with my father, two college buddies and my roommate to witness the Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 12-2 in a divisional playoff game, and they did so by going 3-for-8 at the plate. That game was a good, long look at a team that might have had a chance to contend for a World Series trophy later in the decade.
Two years later I was a student working for the Times, and my first assignment was to cover the 1982 World Series when the Dodgers fell in the 7th inning of Game Five. I was part of the Times’ team of reporters which covered the game until the very end, because it was the last game of a six-game series where the Dodgers actually took the lead for at least one game.
But I had been doing a lot of coverage of Dodgers in my college years, and I took a chance by attending the game with my co-worker, my editor and fellow student. He and my boss brought me up to the press box where I stood at the right field fence and witnessed a very strange sight as the fans began chanting “Fire” with fervor and passion. I left the game not knowing what to make of the chanting; my boss was going on the radio, and this was the second
