Ok, here goes. Hindsight fully in place. I am ready really to tell you who’s in the final four.  

AL EAST  

1. Tampa Bay
2. Boston
3. New York
4. Toronto
5. Baltimore

AL CENTRAL

1. Minnesota
2. Chicago
3. Detroit
4. Cleveland
5. Kansas City

AL WEST

1. Anaheim
2. Texas
3. Oakland
4. Seattle

NL EAST

1. New York
2. Florida
3. Philadelphia
4. Atlanta
5. Washington

NL CENTRAL

1. Chicago
2. Houston
3. Milwaukee
4. St Louis
5. Pittsburgh
6. Cincinnati

NL WEST

1. Arizona
2. LA Dodgers
3. Colorado
4. San Francisco
5. San Diego

And Fox Sports suffers mightily. But there are no snow-outs! 

Aug. 13, 1945: Branch Rickey buys Dodgers 

The Brooklyn Dodgers were born out of the genius of Branch Rickey, an Ohio native (b. Flat, OH) and a devout Christian who liked cigars, and who, on this date 63 years ago bought the Dodgers with two partners, including Walter O’Malley (who would later moved them to LA), for a reported $750,000. Rickey was a civil rights activist from his college days at Ohio Wesleyan which had collegiate athletics’ only black athletes at the turn of the century.

After the transaction, Rickey, owned 25 percent of the club, but, serving as his own general manager, one of his first decisions was to sign a certain Jackie Robinson, an infielder with the Negro league Kansas City Monarchs, to a contract. And the rest is. . .

have not given up on the season.

Even if the newspapers and tv-radio pundits have. This is the Central Division, boys.

I just watched them sweep the Mets, coming from behind late in the game like they did in 2004, 2005, and 2006 (when they almost won the wild card Central on the last day of the season). As I write they are 7 back of the Brewers, and have just come back from 6-1 to take the lead 7-6 in the 7th inning against the mighty-darling-of-the-media Cubs.

This is baseball, as much heart as talent, as much vision as payroll. While the Indians flounder, the Astros blossom with veterans (Carlos Lee is not mailing it in) and retreads (like Brian Moehler–whom no one told was not supposed to throw shout outs and Chris Sampson who used to be a shortstop).

No ties in baseball. And no ties in Heaven.

To make your own, go to http://www.wordle.net.

Happy Birthday, America!I know you have been waiting to hear my thoughts about freedom, the pursuit of happiness, laws and lawgivers, and baseball. So here goes my July 4th homily. I’ve got to get this done in hurry so we can get our Christmas in July tree decorated so those boys down the road can blow it up with their unsafe and illegal fireworks. (That’s freedom, and The Man is not going to tell them what to do!)

Baseball or Freedom? There is no choice.

- Dad

Let’s start with baseball–and if I end up running out of time before I get to those other Very Important Topics, I apologize. But what would you rather hear about? My love of baseball, or my deep, moving reflections on “the American experiment”? I thought as much.

All you need to know is that baseball exemplifies all the best traits of American life, American dreams, American hospitality. Everyone is welcome to the Baseball Table–color, nationality, ethnicity, height, width, accent, language–and everywhere baseball is played professionally, there is prosperity and a solid middle-class. Look at any major league team: all sorts of folks, speaking all sorts of tongues, and all for one cause: to thrill me. That’s America.

Take last night’s D-backs game. Ninth inning, down 5 runs to the Brewers. Ladies and Gentlemen–-Chad Tracy. Game over, and. . . well, it’s the American dream–underdog, nowhere, hero, you get the plot.

Why is America great? Because it fought off the British in 1776 and 1812? Because it survived a civil war in 1865? Because it gave women the vote in 1920? Because we landed several men on the moon over several years with great technology, and had some really good programming about it on HBO produced by Tom Hanks, of Big fame, and Steven Spielberg, who is doing the new Indy movie? No, no, and no. And no. Because of Baseball. Beisbol, man, Baseball. And DirecTV. Baseball helped create the civil rights movement and introduced us to Jackie Robinson. Tell me the last time the NFL liberated a whole country!

So as you reflect on the relative merits of freedom, civilization, and eating more hot dogs than anyone should, think not about abstract concepts like “democracy” or “habeas corpus,” but about the concrete, unassailable reality of Baseball, how it warms the heart, how it cures the soul and the soil, how it saves the day.

Happy 4th o’ July, Family, Friends, and Total Strangers. Go Astros! and Go Indians. Spread baseball to the other continents and galaxies. They need hope too!

Weaver managed the Baltimore Orioles in their glory days with Brooks and Frank Robinson. Here are some of his choice quotations, which suggest why he probably couldn’t manage today. 

“You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You’ve got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.”

A disturbing look at new trends in suburban living, reflected in these two flattering self-portraits.

When I posted my Top Ten Baseball Movies, I had not yet seen The Final Season. Let’s say, in view of that list, this one should be batting ninth.

This is a quiet, little prize of a small-town baseball movie “like they used to make.” It has no tricks up its sleeve, tells its story straightforwardly with almost no suspense, and yet succeeds because it has no pretensions about being anything except a celebration of what baseball “means” (or used to) in nonsuburban America. It is set in the non-mythical town of Norway, Iowa, which had won 12 straight baseball championships in the smallest division (19 in all).

Like Hoosiers, a superior film to this one, it focuses on all the reasons we want to believe a small town and a small school is better for raising a family. Sean Astin (who executive produces) plays the second-hand coach who steps in when the legendary coach steps aside because of a school board dispute that will merge little Norway with the larger Madison school district, effectively ending Norway High’s identity as a baseball team. The compromise is one, last season; the movie implies Astin’s character is hired because it is presumed his team will lose—and that will make the merger easier to swallow. His team will have a say about that.

Not surprisingly, it had almost no theatrical release and I knew of it primarily because last summer it showed up featured as a click-per-view ad on ESPN’s MLB site. It finally showed up as a download for my AppleTV and I had an enjoyable evening absorbing its anti-ironic narrative unfold, with its angry town meetings, its skeptical barber shop conversations, its dad-who-is-too-sick-to-be-at-the-big-game-but-comes-anyway, and its gentle way of reminding that baseball is not a sport for giants, and even a diminutive kid can get the big hit. It’s from the director of another nice baseball movie, The Sandlot. And both could be rented in one evening for quite a double bill. You don’t have to love baseball to enjoy these films, but it helps.