FanHouse TJSimers

All is not well in Dodgerland right now. Sure, the McCourt family can be thankful that regardless of the country's economic turmoils, they will always and forever have millions of dollars -- a tough burden to bear for sure. And yes, T.J. Simers and Bill Plaschke should be thankful that they have jobs. Seriously, seriously thankful.

But a holiday doesn't give us a good reason to ignore the weird noise coming from Frank and Jamie re: how they want to use their money -- baseball or society. See, they recently came out and asked the good people of Los Angeles, "Do you want high priced, dreadlocked free agents ... or do you want youth baseball fields?"

"If you bring somebody in to play and pay them, pick a number, $30 million, does that seem a little weird to you?" Jamie McCourt asked in an interview at the Evergreen Recreation Center in East Los Angeles. "That's what we're trying to figure out. We're really trying to see it through the eyes of our fans. We're really trying to understand, would they rather have the 50 fields?"

Ahhh. The glorious nobility of , um, nobility. There's only one problem -- as the 'Courts discuss how to go about distributing what little baseball money they have, they're still, as Simers noted, easily lining their pockets with the hard earned cash of fans.

Ninety dollars a ticket sounds like a lot until you break it down. It's really only nine Anthony Davis autographs, or $410 less than what the Dodgers charged 250 fans each the other night to take batting practice at Dodger Stadium and pose for pictures with Russell Martin and Andre Ethier.

Figures that the most surly of columnists (it's all an act, I know), T.J. Simers, and the most surly of ballplayers (it's all an act, I know), Jeff Kent, get along with each other quite well. Maybe the two sit around sharing stories of what it's like to be disliked by everyone. Point is that the Dodgers second baseman told Simers in the LA Times that he's planning an early departure from the game:

"I know this," Kent said upon his arrival in the clubhouse, "I won't play beyond 40. That makes next year my last year. As for coming back next year, that will probably come down to how the team finishes this year."
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There's still a chance this might be Kent's final season, but the Dodgers probably will have to win the World Series. He admits, though, it's becoming increasingly difficult as a family man to dedicate himself solely to baseball as he did as a younger man.

So Jeff Kent is a family man. He wants to start spending time with his 11-year-old daughter, understandable. And Kent also says it will be easier for him to leave the game behind, unlike many other players who struggle with the transition to life after baseball. With the Dodgers playing well, he'll have a decent shot at walking away with a World Series ring, though it's unlikely. The good news is that we won't have to see Kent's skills diminish on the field, unlike certain other probable Hall of Fame second basemen.

Those poor UCLA Bruins. After five years in the shadows of cross-town rivals USC, the Sons of Westwood are barely an afterthought in Los Angeles' college football world. Just today, the Los Angeles Daily News declared the Bruins to be the "Middle of the Pac" noting that, "you'd have thought some idiot would have made them No. 25 just because they went 10-2 last year." Not even the idiot who casts that paper's AP ballot voted for the Bruins--and he put West Virginia at #1!

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times' irreverent TJ Simers tried to get UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell to give his reaction to the AP snub and gets an unapologetic, "Next question." When Simers got the Dorrell treatment from Dodgers' General Manager Grady Little, the following exchange took place:

"Have you been hanging around with Karl Dorrell?" I ask.

"Who?" Little says, and there you go.

"It's no wonder UCLA doesn't get a single vote in the AP poll," I tell Little.

"Here you are, the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, working in this city and you don't even know who the coach of the UCLA football team is these days."

"I know who the USC coach is," says Little with a grin.

Well, since the all-star break, the Dodgers have been on a winning streak worthy of accolades usually reserved in this town for Pete Carroll.