Mama's House

Go Dodgers!

(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

For the first time in two decades, the Dodgers popped champagne corks in October.

Yup, two decades since their last postseason success and I've been a fan through all those years which seemingly makes this all the more special.

(AP Photo/Francis Specker)

On a night when the old stadium rocked like a giddy teen, the Dodgers shed the baggage of a 20-year postseason series drought by tossing the darling Chicago Cubs back into irrelevancy with a sweeping 3-1 victory.

Players threw their caps in the air and wrestled each other to the ground. Fans stayed in their seats rocking and waving.

In keeping with a new Dodgers victory tradition, Russell Martin later led the players back to the field to spray champagne on the fans, and why not?

Perhaps, the celebration was a little over the top for merely advancing in the playoffs but it has been 20 years since a playoff series victory and for a fan for all those years to finally see it again it was wonderful.

(AP Photo/Francis Specker)Russell Martin and Matt Kemp celebrating among the fans in the Left Field Pavilion, how cool is that?

Even for those who had been paying attention, who had understood how well the Dodgers had been playing the past month, the ease in which they dispatched the sad little Cubbies had to be astonishing.

Eight game losing streak, 4 1/2 games out of a playoff spot just a little over a month ago, and now this? Awesome.

If you're looking for that one moment the Dodgers turned their season around. That one trade, that one signing that one managerial decision that transformed this bunch from playoff outsiders to the first team to advance to the Championship Series you won't find it.

"Its right here, no question," says Don Mattingly grinning from ear to ear and bouncing up and down like a 47-year-old hitting coach trying to dance to hip-hop.... "It was this song. I don't know what it is, but I like it."

As Mattingly closed his eyes and bent his knees to the rhythm of M.I.A.'s Paper Planes, saying "Stay in the box baby, just stay in the box...."

Dodgers third baseman Casey Blake played the song prior to the team's 6-2 win over Arizona on Aug. 30 after the team was on an eight-game losing streak. The song was played from then on, before and after games, as the Dodgers went on an eight-game winning streak and won 22 of their last 30 games.

Not exactly sure how appropriate this song is but whatever works. I present to you the Dodgers' rallying song of '08:

The Cubs, whose 97 victories just sort of evaporated into thin air, never knew what hit them. The Phillies or Brewers stand warned. The Dodgers spent so much of the year limping or dragging through the schedule, right up until losing eight consecutive games -- with Manny -- in August.

But the longer this group plays together, the more special it looks.

(AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

Go Dodgers!

None of that today please.

As for why I love postseason baseball more than any other postseason,

Even if your team wins a baseball game 20-0, you'll suffer at least 24 mini-defeats before the game is over. That's the minimum number of things that can go wrong for a baseball team in an 8 1/2-inning victory. If you want to count each time your hitter gets a strike or your pitcher throws a ball, that bumps the total into the hundreds....

On a good day, baseball has one-tenth the amount of actual scoring that basketball has – but that doesn't tell the whole story. If baseball counted all its jump shots, hook shots, free throws, dunks and three-pointers in its point totals – not to mention how we hang on the outcome of every single pitch – you'd have a truer idea of just how crazy it is to pin your faith on such an uncontrollable affair.

I can't put it any better than that.

Go Dodgers!

Which can mean only one thing... the start of the WNBA Finals!

Oh, there's that other little matter too I suppose. Wish we had more secret sauce for today.

Go Dodgers!

And they are decidedly so. 9 out of 10 experts over at ESPN have the Cubs winning the series and Sportsline is giving the edge to the Cubbies as well. Time to prove the experts wrong I suppose.

Joni wants to go to the Sept. 25th game against the hated SF Giants. It's a Sunday 1:10pm game. It's also part of Fan Appreciation Week and she wants to sit in the all-you-can-eat seats in the right field pavilion for $25 which is $10 off the regular price.

So who's in?

Well if there ever were to be a time to disassociate myself from the Dodgers as a fan the discovery of this video would be that time.



I'm just happy to not have seen this before 1988 or I may never have become a lifelong Dodger fan.