The Dodgers.
Their fans show up late. They leave early. We've all heard it because it's true.
Their new ownership group's strategy is to "use Magic Johnson's charm to distract everyone from the fact that we're just brutally outspending everyone else in the league à la the early-2000s Yankees."
Also, Los Angeles has such a glamorous reputation, but it's, like, 90% billboards and exhaust fumes. Taking a vacation there is like taking a vacation in a gas station.
And yet...
1. The Dodgers are perhaps the quintessential American baseball team.
2. Besides Jackie Robinson, the archetypal Dodger is Sandy Koufax, one of the greatest and most badass pitchers of all time.
3. The Dodgers' play-by-play announcer is Vin Scully, whose stature makes the phrase "greatest sports broadcaster ever" sound like silly faint praise.
He has announced Dodgers games for 64 years. Vin Scully has seen them come and watched them go for seven decades with the same quick-witted, inquisitive disposition. (Or so I assume. I wasn't around for most of it because he is OLDER THAN GOD.)
Vin Scully is the man.
(The Dodgers also, as it happens, helped launch the career of Ernie Harwell, another all-time great baseball man.)
4. The Dodgers play in a classic stadium that is scenically perfect.
5. They gave us one of the top two or three baseball moments ever.
6. And this Dodgers team is still at that up-and-coming stage where, after a big win, it's hard to tell who's more excited, the fans or the players.
7. Juan Uribe's no-doubt go-ahead homer to win the NLDS has been the highlight of the playoffs so far...
Uribe's hammer-jack turned Dodger Stadium into a rocketship of crowd noise. Flip that bat!
8. ...except perhaps for the celebratory explosion of lights, tinsel, fireworks, and blasting music that erupted when Kenley Jansen whiffed Justin Upton to seal the team's NLCS trip.
FIRE!
9. Actually, no, never mind: The highlight of the playoffs so far, and maybe the entire baseball season, is this picture from the locker room after the game.
So on the minus side: They're still a big-money team from Smogtown, USA.
But on the plus side: The iconic American history; the rocking stadium; and players who can run, hit, and throw the hell out of the ball.
I, for one, will take it. It's time to DODGER UP.
