The Fall of the Dodgers…

One of the saddest stories in sports today is the fall of the Los Angeles Dodgers as a franchise.  The Dodgers have long been one of the top organizations in Baseball, just below the New York Yankees, and on par with the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, and Boston Red Sox.  Yet this season, the Dodgers have been a running joke, starting from the top of the franchise, the McCourts, whose divorce proceedings have exposed the fact that Frank McCourt is a bankrupt clown and that his best chance of holding onto the Dodgers is suing MLB if they attempt to do the right thing and rip the franchise away from the deadbeat.  An opposing fan has been hospitalized since opening day when he was beaten unconscious by a thug dressed in Dodger gear while his children watched in horror.

You want to find out how bad it’s gotten?  Check out the recent column by Bill Plaschke of the LA Times:  http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0622-plaschke-20110622,0,1723241.column.  It’s not just bad, it’s 1980’s Fulton-County Stadium attendance bad.  You remember Braves games at Fulton-County Stadium back in the mid-to-late 1980s.  On a regular summer night, my dad and I would sit in the upper deck behind home plate and, for the most part had maybe 400 to 500 people in the upper deck with us for Braves games.  Even with the lower deck, attendance on many nights was about 6000 to 9000 until the Braves got good in 1991.  The Dodger attendance on some games have not been much better.

And the team is struggling very badly too.  Now stuck in 4th place in the National League West, the team appears to have no future and may not meet even payroll this week.  It may have to be seized by MLB.  And instead of trying to negotiate an out clause with Bud Selig and leave Baseball, Frank McCourt is trying to lawyer up and squeeze as much money out of the Dodgers’ franchise for himself as he can.  It seems that he learned some tricks from fellow Los Angeles owner Donald Sterling.

As a Braves’ fan, I should be happy that the one-time Atlanta nemesis is hurting.  But then I remember that then-Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda sort of encouraged Braves fans to come out when the Braves were good.  Tommy represented the best of Baseball, and the Dodgers franchise he has always supported deserves ownership that will at least be better than the current owner.  But short of Frank McCourt’s heart growing 3 sizes or him departing the scene in a physical sense, the Dodgers will be held hostage.

My experience at the U.S. Open Championship…

Yesterday, I crossed another item off my life goal’s list as I had the chance to attend the U.S. Open Golf Championship at Congressional Country Club near D.C.  What made this day even more special is that my father joined me on this Father’s Day Weekend excursion.

Because we wanted to get to the course when it opened for play, we left for Congressional early (well before 5 am) and arrived a half-hour before the first tee time.  We were able to walk up to the 10th green just in time for the first group to send their tee shots towards the hole.  After watching a couple of groups play through 10, we joined the third group, which featured Bo Van Pelt, Kyung-Tae Kim, and viral video sensation Ben Crane (if you haven’t seen the video, check out pgatour.com, then go to the players’ link, click on Ben Crane, then find videos, and click the Golf Boys “Oh oh oh” video… or you could go to my Facebook page, where I have a link).  It turned out be a terrific decision as only a handful of people followed the group around.

Some thoughts on the group my dad and I followed for 18 holes… Bo Van Pelt was clearly the best player of the group yesterday.  Not only did he shoot 67, he hit 16 of 18 greens in regulation, stayed mostly on the fairway, had 4 birdies & no bogeys, and was the longest hitter of the three.  His only hiccups occurred on the par 5’s, particularly #6 and #9, where he reached both greens in 2, only to 3-putt both times.  Still, he stands at +1 and played his way into the weekend.

Kyung-Tae Kim was among the round 1 leaders when he teed off.  He showed spectacular play on the more difficult holes.  He was the first player to birdie 10 on the round, then birdied 2, 3, and 4, which were 3 of the most brutal holes on the course.  But Kim was erratic all day, being forced to make incredible saves on 11 and 14 on his first 9.  He double-bogeyed two of the shorter par-4s (17 and 8), then failed to get out of the trees at the par-5 6th.  He finished with a 72, but only 26 putts on the day.  Currently at –1, Kim could end with a top-10 finish.

Ben Crane had an unspectacular day when he needed to make a move. He did have an early birdie at 11, but scrambled on a couple of holes to save par.  His chances of making the weekend disappeared when he put his 2nd shot at #6 into the pond.  A 71 combined with a first-round 77, left Crane at +6, 2 shots short of the cut line.

Aside from following the trio around, I had a couple of additional thoughts.  First, we saw the MetLife blimp for the first time at 17, which was quite interesting.  The pin placement at 18 was brutal, and you can ask Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy how bad the pin placement was (I watched Phil’s ball roll into the lake and heard the groans as Rory’s ball suffered the same fate).  I thought I might have been on TV when Kim teed off at 8, but it was not to be.  Also, on that same 8th hole, as we were waiting for our group to putt out, three tee shots zipped next to us, with two of the balls nearly hitting us and the ESPN HD cameraman.

After lunch, we sat at the 10th green and watched several of the afternoon groups start their rounds at 10.  Among the golfers we saw were Davis Love III and Jim Furyk.  The last man to win the U.S. Open at Congressional, Ernie Els, was a part of that group, but after a great tee shot, he 4-putted, and went on to miss the cut.  Also, we saw defending U.S. Open champion Grahame McDowell and reigning Open Champion Louis Oosthuizen tee off.  My dad and I left at 2:30, just before the rains came to suspend play.  On the way out, we saw Bob Costas’s golf cart, which is about the closest we came to seeing a media star on the course.

All in all, it was a special day with my dad.  I realized later just how precious that time was with my father.  My dad is 74, and I don’t know how much time I have left with him.  He now has a cane he occasionally uses for his back when he stands for long periods of time.  To see him now and remember how he once was has shown me that I should treasure my times with my dad.  The day will come in the near future when my dad be there only in spirit, so having the ability to enjoy the time he spends with Joshua is something I will remember as long as I live.  And yesterday was icing on the cake for me.

AIDS: 30 years later

Last Sunday marked a somber anniversary.  It was 30 years ago that a report in a weekly publication described cases of a rare form of pneumonia five young Los Angeles men, "all active homosexuals." The cases were noteworthy because the men had previously been healthy, and the pneumonia was only seen in older people with depressed immune systems.  A month later, another report listed 54 gay males with a rare form of cancer seen only in older people.  One summer later, the condition had a name:  AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome).  In 1983, HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) was identified as the virus which caused AIDS.

In those early years, understanding the disease was impossible.  Though it was clear the disease was spread by sexual contact, other methods caused a scare in people.  Blood transfusions, drug needles, and saliva were also initially ways to transmit the disease.  Remember when we thought licking stamps could increase the risk of AIDS?  Or how about the woman who caught the HIV virus in the dentist chair?  Remember when Hollywood stars and musicians started dying from the disease (Rock Hudson, Liberace, Freddy Mercury, etc.)?  Remember the AIDS quilt on the National Mall?  Remember when ACT UP and other AIDS activists groups blamed President Reagan for the disease (like he was out on DC streets at night selling dirty needles or condoms with holes in them)?

We thought awareness of the disease would provide a cure.  Yet, here we are 30 years after the awareness with 30 million worldwide dead from the disease (615,000 in the US over that period) and still no complete cure.  Oh sure, we have an assortment of drug cocktails that can keep the disease in check, but the drugs are expensive.  Africa, where the disease is widespread and is just as prevalent in women as in men, cannot afford the medications.  And here’s the worst part:  the rates of infection are not going down.  The younger people are not heeding the wisdom of their elders and are repeating the mistakes their elders made in the early days of the disease before they learned what steps could hinder the disease.

Like it or not, AIDS is our generation’s disease.  And until a cure is found, re-teaching the lessons learned the hard way will be one of the few chances to prevent the spread of the disease.  Yes, the disease in the US is more of a disease restricted to the same sex relationship community, particularly men.  But heterosexuals are also affected and the rates of infection aren’t going down there, either.  And in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, heterosexual couples dominate the infected group.  So, this is an everybody problem. 

Even after a cure is found, we will being with the effects of the disease long into the future.  Keep in mind, we haven’t found a cure yet for all the MD diseases, and the fight will go on post-Jerry Lewis there.  We haven’t cured cancer, either.  So an AIDS cure in our lifetime is not a sure thing.

In short, the AIDS epidemic is still there, though no longer on the front pages.  Please keep that in mind especially over the next 30 years or so.