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Greetings from Sacramento!
On Monday I drove up the California coast, stopping in LA for an appointment.
The appointment:
On Saturday, I listened to the radio broadcast of Game 7 at home with Todd Taylor, who was in town so we could interview a legendary San Diego punk rocker on Sunday. (Check out issue #150 of Razorcake in January) The game had so many improbable twists and turns that when it was finally over it took a moment for it to sink in: the Dodgers won the World Series—again.
This postseason delivered like no other. There were so many incredible performances by Dodgers starting pitchers, Shohei Ohtani’s epic night on the mound and at the plate that I witnessed, the 18-inning Game 3 marathon, the Game 6 nailbiter that ended in a double play, and the come-from-behind victory in Game 7 that also ended in a double play and had Yamamoto pitching on back-to-back days.
So when my brother-in-law invited me to the rally at Dodger Stadium on Monday to celebrate the victory, I jumped at the opportunity, even though it meant getting up before dawn and arriving at the stadium three hours early. I knew I’d made the right move when I bumped into this guy.
That’s Steven Nelson, the Dodgers radio broadcaster. Along with Rick Monday he’s been keeping me company since the season started. I’ve been listening to the Dodgers on the radio since I moved to LA in the 90s, but this season was particularly meaningful. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that 2025 was a destabilizing year. The president’s relentless corruption, the criminalization of undocumented Americans, the way corporations are ramming harmful technology down our throats, makes it feel like we’re living in a society that’s rigged in favor of the mega rich. Some days it feels like we’ve been bought and sold, and for what? I don’t want to live in a society built by and for billionaires.
On those days, listening to baseball on the radio was calming and restorative. Here was a game with rules, tradition, and decorum that both sides respected. The outcome wasn’t determined in advance; rather, it was achieved with talent, skill, hustle, and dumb luck. Sometimes the better team lost. Sometimes the team that had been knocked down got up and won. Sometimes no one could hit a pitch. Sometimes they hit all the pitches. Whatever the result of the game might be, you couldn’t say for certain what would happen at the onset. What happened on the field for two-and-a-half hours determined the outcome and everything mattered. On some days, that meant everything.
When I saw Steven I told him I was a regular listener and I was going to miss him.
The rally was a blast. I ate a Dodger dog for breakfast. I watched adorable elderly Japanese ladies in Ohtani jerseys pose for photos. The stadium was a sea of blue and white. Manny Mota sat two rows in front of us. I cracked up when Ice Cube drove his lowrider into the stadium and one of Clayton Kershaw’s kids went tearing after it, only to be chased down by his mom, panicked that her son was going to get mowed down by Ice Cubs in front 46,000 people. (The job of being a mom never stops.) I got emotional when Yamamoto addressed the crowd without his interpreter. His first words? “Buenas tardes.”
I also loved that Dodger fans booed the owner. Yes, the owner that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars signing and developing elite players. My brother-in-law couldn’t believe it. “They’re booing him? Why?” I broke it down for him.
Billionaire businessman Mark Walter owns the Dodgers, and recently acquired a majority stake of the Los Angeles Lakers. Walter also serves as CEO of Guggenheim Partners — a financial firm that shares a 0.38% stake in the GEO Group — a private prison corporation operating ICE detention centers.
LA Taco, the independent news outlet, has been covering this story all year. Yesterday, the day after the rally, ICE reportedly used parking lots adjacent to the Dodger Stadium as a staging ground. That is unacceptable. The Dodger organization has to do better. They need to stop acting like a subsidiary of Guggenheim Partners and more like community partners.
Still, it was a great day to be a fan and I’m glad I went to celebrate. Now I’m going to have to listen to something else in the evening. Anyone have any ideas?
I didn’t plan on spending Election Day in the state capital but I’m glad it worked out that way. I spent the day walking the leaf-spackled streets in the city where my daughter Annie is putting down roots. We went to a great used bookstore in Midtown called Time-Tested Books, which has been open since 1981, and got lost in the stacks for an hour or so. We ate our weight in sushi at a place that was shockingly good.
When I got to my motel last night (ask me how I scored a motel room with free parking and breakfast for $11.50) I saw all the good news about the elections. It’s raining this morning and it feels like a new season of hope. But isn’t that the most enduring lesson of baseball?
Punk Rock Roundtable at Stories Books & Cafe on Sun. 11/9 at 5pm.
I’m going to host an event in LA on Sunday to celebrate two books: Hell on Wheels by Greg Jacobs and Punk and Other 4 Letter Words by Linda Aronow. We will be joined by Nick Adams, John Ross Bowie, Pleasant Gehman, Dan O’Mahony and Jaime Pina. There will be no tables and if there were they wouldn’t be round, but you get the idea. If you’re in LA on this Sunday, you don’t want to miss this one…
On Fire and Under Water at Artifact Books on Sat. 11/15 at 3pm
The following weekend, I’ll be at Artifact Books in Encinitas to chop it up with Curtis Ippolito about the crime fiction and climate change anthology he edited On Fire and Under Water. See you there!
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Die hard Brewers fan here, but man, Ohtani is fun to watch!
Greatest World Series I ever saw. For the record, I’m a Tigers fan.