Thank the lord! I knew Ned Coletti was smarter than he looked. Finally, after months of enduring shittyness, the Dodgers traded Jae Seo away to the Devil Rays today along with the rotting AAA catcher Dioner Navarro for Mark Hendrickson and Toby Hall. Now that the Dodgers have no Korean pitchers on the roster, they can concentrate on winning some games here and there. Mark Hendrickson's mediocre at best, but he can't be any worse than Jae Seo was. And the addition of Toby Hall means the Dodgers will now be carrying three catchers which .... well.... doesn't make much sense, but at least we took the kimchi out of the jar!

And hopefully those two guys can contribute as soon as possible. The Dodgers got creamed again today by Fransisco Liriano and the Twins. Joe Mauer is absolutely beating the stuffing out of Dodger pitching and we can't seem to get anything going offensively against these primo Latin pitchers. Today's pounding was especially difficult to take. After seeing the Derek Lowe face in just the second inning, it was over. I turned off the TV and found out later that in fact, nothing much happened after that. The umpires should just make the Derek Lowe face the final scorecard in the game. Just spare us all the pain of finishing the game and send everyone home. Oh, and we get to face Johan Santana tomorrow! Whoopee!

Wow, it's been a while. School's out and I've been moving into my new place this week. I got pretty much everything set up now. Without internet and TV the last couple days I've been in a daze; a complete information deprivation daze. Makes you wonder what people did back in 1910 like going outside and shooting at rats.

Anyway, while I was technipacitated, the Dodgers sucked it up against Seattle, with Adrian Beltre returning and sticking his bat up Frank McCourt's ass. Things were not looking good at all going into the last game of the series, but D-Lowe gave us probably his best start of the year so far, going all the way and holding the M's to 2 runs. Then we came back and swept the Pirates. Thank God, for if we lost even once to the Bucs, who just got swept by the Royals btw, we would have officially been in the shithole. Remember we inexcusably split a 4 game series with them earlier in the season. Poor Jim Tracy. He leaves the mess that was the Dodgers a year ago and jumps into the steaming mound of turd that is the Pittsburgh Pirates. What a string of bad luck. He better have plenty of answers for all those questions he asks himself.

We lost tonight too, to the Twins, with the rookie Billingsley stinking up the joint. Baseball is a simple game. When you have good starting pitching, you win. When you don't, well.... The Dodger's starters have been wayyyy too spotty past Penny and Lowe this year and we can't have this continue if we want to win the division. We really needed today's win too, cuz the next two days we got Liriano and Santana, and its gonna be tough pickin's against them two.

Ahhhhh, It's good to be done with school. Finals are over, finally. Now I get a week to sit on my ass at home and relax a bit. Its unbelievably relaxing, although uncomfortably hot, here at home. I was sweating bullets yesterday afternoon as I sat in my backyard naked reading a book. But I'm glad I'm at least able to do that.

So I had a couple buddies come over last night and hang out. When they got here, the Dodger game was in the 10th inning. The plan was to finish watching the game and then go bowling, but the game never finished, and we never bowled. After 17 innings of hard fought baseball, the Dodgers fell to the Oakland A's 5-4. The loss echoed the endless pain of what it is to be a true Dodger fan. I should have been proud of my guys that had just poured their blood, sweat and tears on to the field for over five hours, but I was not. The reason? It's especially disheartening when you know the outcome of a game like this before it's actually decided. And I don't mean make a prediction you're not sure about coming true. I knew what would happen at the end of this game with certainty.

With the rest of the National League West losing tonight, the Dodgers had a golden opportunity to go up at least two games on the rest of the division. Derek Lowe pitched a great game until the 8th, when it began to unravel. He gave up a run on two walks, a double and a single. He was clearly tired and done for the night. Grady Little, however, left him in too long as always. Flashes of Pedro in 2003 ran through the minds of all Dodger fans. "TAKE HIM OUT!" we all shouted, but alas, Grady did not heed our advice. Bobby Crosby then proceeded to whack a two-run double that gave the A's the lead. Woe is me. Luckily, the Dodgers tied it off Huston Street in the 9th.

Throughout extra innings, the Dodgers emptied out their bullpen, having everyone pitch great shutout ball. As I saw the Dodgers trot out all our relievers, Baez, Broxton, Saito, Beimel, all going at least two innings each, a familiar fear swept through my insides like a week old pizza. I turned to my friends on the couch next to me and said, "They better end this game quick before they run out of pitchers and have to bring Jae Seo in, because at that point, it's over." I could sense a feeling in my friends faces that they thought I was joking. But I was dead serious. I'd seen too many Jae Seo eggs layed already this season, and too many games blown by Korean pitchers in the past (check archives for more on this). The Dodgers have lost the last 7 games in which Seo has made an appearance. 7!!! In a row!!! So what does Jae Seo do in his first inning of relief? He proceeds to load the bases. At which point I turned to my friends again and proclaimed, "Dammit, it's over. He's gonna walk in the winning run. Just watch." Again, thinking I wasn't serious, they laughed it off. What does Jae Seo do next? He walks Bobby Crosby. Make it 8 in a row. Game over. A's win.

DAMMITTOHELLWHATTHEFUCKWHYDOESTHISALWAYSHAPPENTOTHEFUCKING
DODGERSITSNOTFAIRDAMMITIHATELIFECHICKENTASTESGOODDAMNYOUGRADY
LITTLEFORNOTTAKINGDEREKLOWEOUTSOONERANDBLOWINGTHELEADINTHE
FIRSTPLACEYOUASSHOLEDAMNYOUALLTOHELLIHATETHISSHITWHYCANTYOU
JUSTWINAFUCKINGGAMEYOUDAMNASSHOLESYOUCANALLGOTOHELL

I will now shove a spear through my brain. Happy Father's Day everyone!

Achtung! Achtung! People, Germany is back. Pushed down and weakened after WWII, the Berlin Wall has been down long enough now for the country to regain some of the strength it once possessed. It started this past February, when Germany won the medal count in the Torino Winter Olympics. Next Vee Dub started representin' Deustchland on da engineering tip. Then, Dirk plowed his way through the NBA playoffs, currently putting his foot up the Heat's ass in the finals. Now, with Germany hosting the World Cup, it seems all eyes are focused on this country. Germany hasn't had this quality of athletic competition since the 1930's when Jessie Owens and co. layed the smack down on Hitler's Aryan athletes. And with a Knight Rider movie just recently announced, it seems like the German rush wont slow down any time soon. My question: Is this a good thing?

Leading up to the World Cup, countless reports of racism surfaced, leading to many nervous black people playing in and watching the event. FIFA and the German government have supposedly cracked down on this, issuing penalties to teams whose players, coaches or fans exhibit open acts of racism and removing numerous swastika-laden flags around the nation. This is strangely reminiscent of how Hitler cleaned up Germany for world viewing prior to the 1936 Olympics, and then proceeded to try to take over the world. Has this country, still filled with Neo-Nazi parties, learned from its past mistakes? The world thought Germany had after WW I, but then WW II happened. If we think they've learned now, will they start WW III?

If Dallas wins the NBA championship, which is likely to happen now with them up 2-0, Dirk will become the premier player in the league. If Germany wins the World Cup, the country's confidence will rise faster than a bottle rocket. And if Hasselhoff's Knight Rider movie is a hit, dammit, the country might explode! With Germany once again fully confident of its place in the world, what's to stop them from trying to take over the Earth for a third time? Just be aware people. It's not so farfetched. Remember where you heard it first. I'm talkin' to you Poland. You know you're conquer zone #1.

So what are we to do? I don't know if there's anything we can do. Dirk's gonna lock down the title, there's nothing we can do about that, or about the startling presence of racism. Lord knows I can't stay away from anything with David Hasselhoff, that's totally out of the question. But if you don't see Knight Rider, I wouldn't blame you. We all just have to hope Brazil can win the cup again. Then, hopefully Germans wont be in enough of a confidence stupor to invade their neighbors. We must all pray for this.

VEEEEEE DUUUUUUUUUB

Finals are coming up Monday, Thursday, Friday. Being an engineer sucks ass. You always get stuck with the Friday finals. But after that, it's summer tiiiime! Gives me more time to talk about how Brett Tomko sucks butthole. If you missed it today, he went 3.2 innings and gave up 7, bringing his ERA to a whopping 5.20. I can remember not too long ago, it was under 3, but then Tomko decided he was becoming too likeable and started stinking up the stadium. We scored 9 runs today, but lost. We should NEVER lose when we score 9 runs. That's unacceptable. To the bloody Rockies too. Penny, Lowe, and Sele are the only guys pitching well right now, but you can't feel good about this. Penny's been fighting nagging injuries all season and they could become more severe at any minute. With Lowe, we're just one bad start away from the return of The Derek Lowe Face. And you can't really expect Sele to keep going like this considering his age and the fact that he sucks. The rotation looks bad. And with Gagne probably going back on the DL, the bullpen looks bad too. We're fucked.

Eric Gagne is back, biatch! In his first save since last year, he struck out Carlos Delgado and David Wright like the badass Canadian he is, freezing them with sick curves and even sicker changes. His fastball never topped 92, but that's good enough when your curve's going at 66. Hopefully no more blown saves now. Broxton almost blew it in the 7th before Saito came in and saved his ass. Saito is great. I love that guy. We're setting up to have Broxton, Saito, Gagne in that order late in games. It's gonna be tough to beat us when we got those 3 guys goin. We might even throw Danys Baez in there but he's shitty these days after being demoted from closer to setup man to middle reliever. Next demotion: ballboy. I wish we could demote him to bullpen car driver but those things don't exist anymore. I'm a little sad that they don't. I loved bullpen cars. There's nothing better than seeing a reliever getting driven out to the mound in a little golf cart with a large team hat as the roof. Classic.

The Dodgers are now 1.5 games back of the confusing Diamondbacks. They're confusing because I don't know how these guys win. They totally shouldn't. They have one good starting pitcher (Brandon Webb). Their team is full of horse shitters who stunk it up on so many other teams that they ended up there, but they're all hot. They have Damian Easley absolutely raking lately, Eric Byrnes and Shawn Green (career, what, .270 hitters combined?) hitting .320 each. This can't last the whole season. There's absolutely no way. The law of averages will prevail and the D-Backs will fall back into mediocrity, leaving the Dodgers to snatch up first place like Brent Lennox snatched up Peyton Manning on waivers that one year in Fantasy Football.

Sidenote: I totally would have gotten Peyton that year, but Lennox had higher waiver priority than me. I don't remember who did it, but how can you drop Peyton Manning? How? You're an idiot, whoever you are.

Current State of the Dodgers:

Pitchers
Someone needs to tell Jae Seo that he’s not playing tennis. He doesn’t need to keep serving it up all the time. He gave up another two homers tonight, one to Chase Utley in the 1st, another to Ryan Howard in the 4th, stinking up Chavez Ravine in the process. I thought the Dodgers had already learned not to depend on Korean pitchers after the whole Chan Ho Park thing, but I guess not. Don’t they remember all the caca Park used to serve up on a silver platter? Barry Bonds’ 71st home run ball, Cal Ripken’s homer in the 2001 All-Star game, not to mention 2 grand slams IN THE SAME INNING to Fernando Tatis? What about all of Byung-Hyun Kim’s services throughout his career? What made the Dodgers think Seo was any different? ALL Korean pitchers give up big home runs. Maybe it’s the kimchi. From now on, if we need an Asian pitcher, make it a Japanese guy please.

So with Seo stinking it up and Tomko finally sucking like his old self again, the Dodgers have some rotation problems for the first time in about a month. Does this mean Odalis Perez and his Soul-Glo jherri curl could work his way back into the rotation? Maybe, but that’s a worst-case scenario. Hopefully those two at the back end can regroup and regain some decency. At least Lowe, Penny, and Sele are all pitching well.

Eric Gagne’s back as well, hopefully solidifying the bullpen back to its dominant status of a couple years ago. That is, if Danys Baez stops blowing like a USC sorority girl. Didn’t this guy save 41 games last year? What happened to him? Why does he keep surrendering the lead? Please stop, Danys. And don’t put an ‘s’ at the end of your name if it’s silent. You’re Cuban. It makes no sense.

Position Players
Rafael Furcal kicked another grounder today, making it 12 errors on the season already. He only made 15 all of last year, but he’s been looking like the Dodgers are playing a retarded kid at short all season. I almost feel sorry for him. Oh no wait, we gave him $39 million. Nevermind, I don’t. Make the damn plays! Rafael doesn’t have much time to start fielding well with the bling of Cesar Izturis’ Gold Glove in his rear view mirror. A position change for Furcal wouldn’t be the worst of ideas, especially with Jeff Kent on the DL.

Speaking of injuries, the Dodgers are pretty much fielding half their AAA team at this point with Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, Russel Martin, Joel Guzman, and Willy Aybar, all receiving significant playing time. The kids have played extremely well, but you can’t expect all of em to keep it up over the whole season. Nevertheless, they’re doing a wonderful job of holding the fort until Bill Mueller, Kent, Jason Repko, and Ricky Ledee come back from the DL. Dioner Navarro on the other hand will probably have lost his starting job by the time he gets back, which is fine by me. I never really liked the deal (we gave up Shawn Green) to get Navarro, and Russel Martin has done a better job.

I would like to see the Dodgers put Navarro and possibly Izturis on the block to try to get a power hitting outfielder. The Dodgers lead the National League in almost all the offensive categories, but if there’s one thing they’re sorely lacking is power. They don’t hit a lot of home runs. Maybe they can trade those guys and maybe a prospect and get a power bat like an Alfonso Soriano or Pat Burrell. But I’m probably just dreaming.