Happy B-day son of Jon.

I hope we all have as nice a weekend as Jon and Son.

292. Jon Weisman
Chad pitched great. Offense will rally. ... Birthday party tomorrow.

The happiest moment of my life was when I saw the kid I own (my much younger brother, not my son) play center field. He dove to make a catch when his team was down 14-1, slammed into the ground, and broke his nose. The team was awful, the game was out of reach, but he worked as hard as he could and was going all out for as long as he could. I was honestly crying as I held a towel to his bloody face walking him off the field. It wasn't about sports, it was about effort, and about never giving up. My lessons had found a home.

That was just my brother. I can't possibly imagine the love anyone could feel for a child for which they're fully responsible.

So for that, Congratulations to Father of Dodger Thoughts. I'm sure you're that proud every single day.

I remember Don't Drop the Boy. Brings a smile to any parent/Dodger/baseball fan.

Bigger kids. Bigger worries. Bigger rewards. Happy Birthday to the younger Weisman.

But I avoided eye contact.

Paintball is an extremely expensive sport. And as soon as kids turn into teenagers, they become annoying.

And, I've been told, remain so until they move out.

Need soup.

Bob, I have a library question for you. Do you folks have age/grade appropriate reading lists on hand or in a database? If so, are they graded by their difficulty?

Thanks.

Or:
http://www.lapl.org/kidspath/books/grade/index.html

Dbax are trending an amazing 9 games ahead of their actual W/L.

bhsportsguy: "One reason the kids are not hitting, good curve balls, face it they can hit any fastball but off-speed and curve balls are what separates the kids from the majors."

Completely false.

The curveball is always cited by rote as the reason whenever a young player struggles at the plate, regardless of whether it has any basis in fact and even when it completely flies in the face of reality -- as is the case here.

Kemp and Loney, especially the latter, have shown a surprisingly outstanding ability to hit breaking pitches this year. Loney at the plate seems almost to be waiting for the pitcher to throw a curveball so he can slap it into left field. Almost all of the pitches he has swung and missed on this year have been fastballs, usually up.

Kemp, who has long had the reputation of being unable to hit the curveball (even though there has never really been any evidence that this is true), has hit at least half of his home runs this year on breaking pitches. Both of his long triples in the series at San Francisco came on curveballs. The breaking pitches he can't hit are the ones that are off the outer half of the plate and near the dirt, but -- news flash here -- those are the same breaking balls that Jeff Kent misses, and that Luis Gonzalez misses, and that Albert Pujols misses. Nobody hits that low, outside breaking ball. Nobody.

Kemp's big problem, to the extent that a .338 hitter can be said to have a big problem, is learning to lay off those pitches. That is a problem of pitch recognition, not of being able to hit the curveball. The one has nothing to do with the other. The curveballs that are physically hittable, Kemp hits. Hard.

Sometimes I feel like we're all a bunch of rumormongering kids in a school cafeteria, each whispering in the next kid's ear, "psst... Kemp can't hit the curveball!" Pretty soon everybody has heard the news and everybody accepts it as true. Except it's not.

This post operates under the assumption that Kemp and Loney are the slumping young players you were talking about, because they and Ethier are the only ones playing regularly, and Ethier's not slumping. If you were talking about someone other than Kemp and Ethier, well, I guess, ignore this post.

Sorry for the ranting at length about Kemp and curveballs. It really has little to do with bh's post, it's just that I get tired of reading everywhere that Kemp can't hit the curveball. It's something that's been a pet peeve of mine for a while now -- I hate to see such an obvious falsehood start becoming accepted as conventional wisdom. I guess I've reached my Peter Finch moment where I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

The numbers are AVG, AVG vs RHP, AVG vs LHP

Fastballs .343 .340 .350
Curves .158 .214 .000
Sliders .200 .212 --
Change Ups .346 .600 .286

There was yet another heated exchange of words in the dugout involving pitching coach Jim Colborn, this between him and Snell…

I know hee's had a crappy second half but I still want him.
Penny
Lowe
Snell
Billingsley

drool

Nomar has a NTC.

it's amazing that it's been three years. i think i started coming here around the time he was just born.

Happy Birthday to The Boy.

i did up the ante a little bit with the planes, though. jon better take the little tyke on some trips if he's gonna be able be able to play in the big leagues with me.

It was a very good time.

"And speaking of Grady, didn't he used to love the double-switch like Olmedo loves double-cheeseburgers? If you don't double-switch in the 8th with Broxton, then when would you? There were two outs in the inning already, and the pitcher's spot was due up 3rd. So you have Broxton warm up and bring him in for all of 5 or 6 pitches? That made no sense to me."

Am I reaching here or what? This incident combined with the unbalanced line-up that left no right-handed batters in the dugout and his insistence on throwing Martin out there everyday regardless of the season long repercussions is starting to worry me a bit.

I don't think I ever blamed myself.

http://tinyurl.com/3yeac8

Or struck out on one.

Mine are 11 and 13. Here's the future:

Barbie turns into American Girl which turns in to Star Girls which turns into Sims.

Gap turns into Limited Too which turns into Hollister which turns into Abercrombie which turns into something else I don't want to think about.

Crayons turn into pens which turn into cell phones which turn into Sidekicks and Envys.

Telling their parents everything turns into telling their parents nothing.

Sweet little girls who would never say a cross word to their mother turn into, well let's leave that one alone.

But the rewards a Dad gets never change. A daughter loves her Dad their whole life and while sometimes I lament I don't have a boy to play catch with or laugh at fart jokes with, having daughters is great.

I keep waiting for my 13 year old to tell me she would rather go to the mall than Dodger Stadium but as of tonight she still wants to go to the game. Its all good. (Now if only the Dodger offense would want to go to Dodger Stadium.)

Shot 1 314 yds to right rough, 167 yds to hole
Shot 2 64 yds to left fairway, 103 yds to hole
Shot 3 73 yds to front left green side bunker, 30 yds to hole
Shot 4 21 yds to left rough, 10 yds to hole
Shot 5 3 in. to left rough, 10 yds to hole
Shot 6 5 in. to left rough, 10 yds to hole
Shot 7 11 in. to left rough, 29 ft to hole
Shot 8 28 ft to green, 2 ft to hole
Shot 9 in the hole

Someday, this will all be yours.

Unless there's someone around here named "commenter".

The only thing that keeps me respecting you is your efforts at translating the bible back into Greek. What would have been awesome is if you translated it into Attic or Mycenaean rather than the original Koine.

By three, I had already committed violation #1, F-version, in front of my dad's entire side of the family after I spilled a glass of Coke.

One of my uncles was quoted: "I knew he knew how to say it, but I didn't know he knew when to say it."

Jon, you might want to submit that to the Guiness Book of Records. It may be a record and not just for a three year old.

Happy Birthday to Little Jon and Happy Day to all of you.

sport STACKING. yes.

Kids are people too!

>>Loney and Tony Abreu were named best defensive first and second basemen in the Pcific Coast League in the "Best Tools" edition of Baseball America. Double-A Jacksonville right-hander Jon Meloan was rated as the best reliever in the Southern League, where Chin-lung Hu took home best defensive shortstop honors and John Shoemaker was named the best managerial prospect. Class A Inland Empire skipper Dave Collins took home the same honors in the California League and right-hander James McDonald was rated as having the best breaking ball in the Cal League. Finally, left-hander Clayton Kershaw of the Class A Great Lakes Loons was named the best pitching prospect and owner of the best fastball in the Midwest League.<<

But there is one for Scott Brosius.

Betemit strikes out to end that inning.

And they just dropped 2 of 3 to the Royals of the NL.

Only once they hit a certain age. Up until then, they're closer to being pets - mostly non-verbal communication, unpredictable bathroom habits, uncontrollable drooling, eats from a bowl on the floor, sleeps outside at nights.

Hmm...perhaps I've said too much.

So are kids after the age of 80.

A "footnote"...?

I'm offering premiums.

If you start a $40 membership, you can get a Scott Proctor tote bag that comes with lighter fluid and matches, so you can reenact famous moments in Scott Proctor's career.

The Dodgers need to find someone on waivers, just to do what all the cool kids are doing. Any position players worth taking a chance on?

Anyway, enjoy the 'mit!

There, that's what I'm talking about (one batter, one hit off Farns).

Wow, Farns getting the sarcasm treatment.

Oh yeah, we know all about Farns here.

"HO! HA HA! GUARD! TURN! PARRY! DODGE! SPIN! HA! THRUST!"

WHACK

Gotta love the LA/Oak game. 9 walks, 2 strikeouts and the game is 1 - 1 in the 7th.

Off for my 2nd attempt to watch Justin Upton get his 1st hit on the way to 3000. Arizona just might have the best outfield to watch play in the league.

He did tweak a hamstring running to first earlier this year, didn't he...?

Andrew's.

You'd have to put a pretty decent package together to pry Betemit away from the Yankees.

And Pujols is out.

Should be a fun night in DC.

Joel Hanrahan about to make his sophomore start at RFK.

And no Pujols!

Without the amphetamines.

Cardinals offense has just left this year.
They've gotten nothing out of Edmonds/Rolen, Kennedy's been terrible, and Pujols hasnt been his normal self.

Juan Pierre is at 69. Eckstein is at 88.

>> The San Diego Padres were looking for a power-hitting left fielder. The greatest power-hitting left fielder in baseball history was looking for a team.

From the first day of the free-agent signing period last off-season, they were a fit. The Padres could not afford a long-term contract, but the player was not expecting one. The Padres could not get into a bidding war, but the player did not have many suitors.

For the Padres, there was only one catch: The player was Barry Bonds. <<

http://tinyurl.com/2qtbv3

"Neifi-like" would certainly have sufficed.

Furcal, SS
Pierre, CF
Martin, C
Gonzo, LF
Nomar, 3B
Loney, 1B
Martinez, 2B
Ethier, RF
Lowe, P

Look at all that speed at the top...! The 1-4 players are 80 for 98 in SBs this year. If that doesn't produce runs, I don't know what will.

150 Good hitting?

I will ask someone to tell me that they hate Juan Pierre so I don't feel left out.

Good pieces of hitting, that is...

Speaking of "don't bother": There's a song I've been hearing at the gym for over a year now that I can't stand. For one thing, I could never understand what the singer was saying, which always bugs me. I finally made out that she says "Don't bother, I'll be fine" at one point in the song. I just looked up those lyrics on The Google, and to my surprise found that the singer is "Shakira". I've heard of her, and hadn't to my knowledge heard any of her songs. I didn't think that that was what she sounded like.

He's going halfway to the season cycle!

Richie Sexson has batted cleanup most of the year for Seattle and he's rarely been above .200.

I hope the media glare isn't too bad for him.

He got a HUGE ovation from the crowd when he was pulled (in the sixth - he still throws a ton of pitches per inning). Must feel good.

(...or Tom Gordon should not be a setup man anymore...)

"Jackie Robinson".

Essentially, to her "Jackie Robinson", means daddy is watching the Dodger game, i.e. baseball.