If we ask nicely, can we get the breakdown on Juan Pierre? I'm not surprised that he ranks near the bottom on the agreement scale.

According to Wikipedia, the first Defenestration of Prague occurred in 1419. The second and more common usage of the term "Defenestration of Prague" refers to the 1618 event that began (or helped begin) the Thirty Years War.

I would lock the windows if I were visiting Prague.

Hey, looky there! A Toaster FAQ, right next to "Post a comment." Looks good.

Ooh--it's a shape shifter. It was "Questions?" a second ago. Now it's "Help."

Yes, but it doesn't explain who Lucile II is.

Next thing you'll be popping up as Bokonon42.

Boston fans really hate Eric Gagne:

http://tinyurl.com/yrvetb

Speaking of ballots the TrueBlue best Dodger Moment of 2007 has closed. The winner is
http://www.truebluela.com/story/2007/10/15/163540/09

8 Wow. That's a lot of concentrated hate.

Someone should start a group called "Defenestrate Eric Gagne."

Just think of what would have happened to Ralph Branca if he pitched in 2007 instead of 1951.

Even Scott Norwood got less hatred.

8 I like "Eric Gagne is the worst reliever ever."

I'll give them Hendrickson for Gagne.

To say Red Sox Nation is being unfair to Gagne is saying you can get wet by jumping into the ocean.

---

I like that Best Dodger Moment Poll, TC. Kuo's bat flip was awesome, and the three home runs that preceded it weren't bad either :)

I guess even the Sox can have their own Tomko, muahaha.

Go Tribe!

Brett Tomko still managed to ruin TWO team's seasons. That takes skill.

The Rockies should vote him a World Series share.

Gurnick says KABC will have a Dodger Talk show -- on Sunday nights.

Unclear if that means games will end and go immediately to political talk. "Covering the Bases" was extremely bad, but the post-game call-in on KFWB evolved into a pretty good indicator of fans' shifting views regarding PVLs, prospects and Little/Colletti.

Is it possible the Dodgers doesn't want anything like that, despite the promotional value? The owner sent one of his minions on a futile mission to impose "balance" on KFWB's post-game chat.

Maybe Comrade McCourt has decided to defenestrate post-game callers.

Well, post-game Dodger Talk has been, for about 90% of its existence, pretty pointless. More-so now that there are so many more and better outlets to discuss the Dodgers. Nevertheless, I think having a call-in show is pretty much standard procedure for sports teams. If the Dodgers are revisiting that assumption in the bigger picture, great. If they are just reacting to their problems from last year, that's lame, and not entirely surprising, given who we're dealing with. No matter how silly Dodger Talk can get, going directly into standard KABC programming would be worse.

While Dodger Talk really only serves to make me upset at whatever absurd views Dodger fans have, it's always been a post game ritual of mine to throw it on for the drive home, so I'm sad to see it go.

17 You're right, it's not scintillating programming. The information here and elsewhere is much richer.

But there's another side to being a fan, the sense of celebration of a great win, or an individual player's accomplishment, or the kvetching over a loss, or speculation about an upcoming personnel change. You don't necessarily learn anything, but it's kind of cathartic, especially if you're driving home from being at the game. I like hearing what "average fans" have to say.

Most sports talk radio is a)syndicated, so it's disconnected from local fans; b) schtick-ridden, with hosts getting off on themselves; or c)if local, dominated by discussion of the Lakers, which to me is more soap opera than sports.

One hour a night during the season where fans only talk about the local baseball team...is such a bad thing to want?

18 I think it has more to with sponsors and what KABC feels is in their best interests.

Post game shows are usually just opportunities to vent so probably they felt a weekly show that can be sold to sponsors is better than some random show that goes on for some unknown amount of time after each game.

I just hope they have some Dodger trivia on Sundays.

19 Also, and I don't think you can discount this, places like DT and other blogs have taken over whatever purpose talkradio had.

8 Bullpen arsonists arouse the pitchfork-waving tendencies in baseball fans like nothing else. Here's a sample of just the ones that are safe for Rule 1:

- Americans for Deporting Eric Gagne
- Eric Gagne is the worst pitcher EVER!!!
- Eric Gagne is the worst thing to happen to the Sox this year
- Gagne Should NEVER Touch A Baseball Ever Again!
- Killing Eric Gagne is justifiable homicide
- Eric Gagne Should Consider Suicide

I really can't stand Red Sox fans.

Bush Derangement Syndrome has seemingly been replaced by Gagne Derangement syndrome, at least in the Northeast.

18
Can you flip me an email I can contact you with?

This shall pass.

This is my favorite one:
Hang Gagne (Description: If this group reaches 1,000,000 people the red sox have agreed to hang Eric Gagne. Also, if this group reaches 10, JD Drew will be shot.)

No Dodger Talk is bad on every level. First, it breaks with tradition and makes for a boring ride home.
Second, its really censorship or whatever you want to call it but the show was taken off the air because it was critical of the organization.
Third, it can only mean more Charlie, Rick and God forbid, A. Martinez.
Fourth, the Sunday show will rarely be directly after a game (most Sundays are day games) so the callers will not be worked up making for a boring show.

Sox fans don't really need to worry about Gagne, anymore, do they? I highly doubt he'll be in any more high leverage situations this postseason, and I doubt even more that he'll be back next year. Plus, their pen is plenty deep enough that using him in mop up roles only will barely hurt them, if at all.

They won the division. At most his impact on the ALCS will be 2 base runners in Game 2. What, exactly, are they trying to blame him for?

It has been years since I've listened to Dodger Talk, I don't see it as a bad thing.
The rating are low, the Dodger ratings are low, why should KABC be forced to carry programming at a loss?

24 andrew.n.grant at aero dot org

My fave: "Eric Gagne is The Lost Hanson Brother!"

Wow, that's some serious hate for Gagne.
Hard to believe it was only three years ago that the entire stadium rocked and roared at the opening of the pen gate. TV stations forewent commercial time to watch him jog in and take warm-up pitches. Today, fans slump in disappointment when he is handed the ball.

I feel a little sorry for him but not much. I appreciate the electricity he gave us. It was second to none. But his decision to follow the money notwithstanding his professed loyalty to LA only served to remind me that its a business. So I simply view his decision to go to Boston as a poor business decision.

32
Except he chose to go to Texas and ended up in Boston. At the end of the year you have love what Texas did in flipping Tex and Gagne.

FYI, 2008 ZIPS projections are coming out over at the BTF. They haven't released projections for the Dodgers yet, but the hitting projections for the Giants sure look terrible. vr, Xei

29. If KABC elected not to carry the programming for independent business reasons, I have no problem with that. But if it was the result of influence by the Dodger organization because they didn't like what people had to say last year than I disagree with that approach.

Not to mention do we really need another hour of political talk radio. As if the host will come up with an original thought during that hour that has not been discussed at nauseam all day on twenty other stations.

33. Did'nt he have a no trade clause in Texas. I don't know but I assumed he had to sign-off on the trade to Boston.

33

That reminds me, TC, do you think the Texiera trade had anything to do with Scheurholz stepping down (or up I guess, to the Presidency)?

I'm eager to see if this trade of massive talent to the Rangers won't come back to bite Atlanta someday.

I think Gagne is getting an unfair amount of blame for the Game 2 loss the other night. Sure, he didn't pitch great, but he got a strike out, gave up a single and had a walk, not exactly terrible, and not exactly Papelbon either. :) There were a few other Red Sox pitchers that need to share in the blame for the Game 2 loss. If you look at the win probability added (WPA) for the Red Sox pitchers, Gagne was far from being the worst.

Lopez -0.390
Schilling -0.355
Delcarmen -0.150
Gagne -0.080
Lester -.029

and Lester's WPA is not that bad because the game was pretty much out of reach before he emptied his gas can.

vr, Xei

34. I have no problem with any version of Dodger Talk. It may not be that great of a show, but atleast they are talking about the Dodgers. To me, it is much better than the garbage that is on day time sports talk radio. They hardly ever talk about the Dodgers, or even sports in general. They spend most of their program talking about stupid soap opera stuff, or have people calling in reading faxes, or making fun of Miss South Carolina, when US Americans is a valid term.
vr, Xei

37 I think it was a brilliant move on his part. He realized he had nothing left in the pipeline so he stepped down before his legacy could be tarnished.

Unless one of the guys he moved becomes a superstar, no one will remember that he traded the guy.

These "scouting" reports, coupled with watching the Rockies, just reminds me of what I truly miss in the Dodgers -- decent defense. How much better would the pitching have appeared if there were some range at secondbase and more than one arm in the outfield? Bring on the years of Abreu, Kemp, and Ethier!

I have no problem with only having the call-in show once a week. The nightly show was redundant with each caller saying the same thing. I hope there's something good for the drive home, though, some reasonable post-game show, as opposed to what we've had. Alas, can we please bring back Ross Porter?

35 - Why would the Dodgers push to throw out a show that encourages interest in their team based on one bad and incredibly overblown experience with a host employed by a radio station they no longer have a contract with?

It wasn't 100 percent clear to me that postgame Dodger talk won't happen on KABC, but even if that's the case, it seems extremely unlikely that it was the Dodgers' idea to kill it.

41 Assuming Nomar goes ASAP next year, the Dodgers D should be pretty strong with Kent being the only hole out there.

43. If KABC put the knife in DodgerTalk that is their prerogative. Of course, causation remains an issue but given the controversy over last year's show and Josh's handling of it (even though I think he usually does an outstanding job and enjoy his enthusiasm for the team) it does not seem like a large leap to assume the Dodgers played a role in this decision. I freely acknowledge I am speculating but if the team did wield some influence in the decision not to continue with the show I would be disappointed.

As an aside, if KABC had something better to put in that time slot I imagine they would have. I guess they are hoping that fans who come for the game will stick around for the talk radio.

My impression of Ross on Dodgertalk;

"yep"
"uh-huh"
"mm-hmm"
"welp"

and

"Yeah... uh-huh... mm-hmm... welp ok, thanks for calling"

Just to touch back on our Eric Gagne/Boston fan discussion of a few days ago. This is from Bill Simmons column today. Histrionics perhaps?

F. Sometimes in sports, you just know. When Eric Gagne emerged from the bullpen before the 11th, he should have just been dressed like one of the killers in "Scream." You know somebody stinks when I'm getting e-mails before he has even thrown a single pitch with subject headings like "WHY?????????" and "KILL ME!!!!!!" These post-collapse e-mails summed it up:

Van A. in Mass: I realize that, given the pitchers who'd already been used, that Gagne was technically our best reliever yet. But the guy had two months to prove himself to be reliable in any fashion, and failed miserably in every test. Would I have been enthused if Javier Lopez had started off the inning for us? Of course not. But I wouldn't have been conceding defeat like everyone else who has even remotely followed this team since the trading deadline.

Bob in Boston: Is Eric Gag-me becoming Terry Francona's Rex Grossman? This guy has been terrible, but yet he keeps throwing him out there. "Eric is a valuable guy in our bullpen, and I will continue to throw him out there." Sounds A LOT like "Rex is our quarterback."

Melanie in Boston: My plan for the Red Sox to win the ALCS involves drugging Eric Gagne and putting him on a plane to some remote African jungle and stealing his passport so he can never come back.

Alex in West Virginia: Why is Eric Gagne even on the postseason roster? He's got the word GAG right in his FREAKING name!!!

Gene in Oregon: What was your level of concern when you saw Gagne coming in from the bullpen in the 11th? Would you relate it to getting pulled over by the cops with a bag of weed in the car or accidently killing a hooker?

Gene in Yakima, Wash.: When I heard Gagne was warming up in the bullpen in the bottom of the 10th, I figured it could only be a ploy for Francona to motivate Mike Lowell to get a hit. Lowell had to realize that if Gagne was up, it was now or never at the plate. When Gagne made his entrance, I knew my best option at that time was to just turn it off and go to bed. I'm not sure why but I forced myslef to watch yelling the whole time, "I knew it, I knew it."

Will N. in Brooklyn, N.Y.: I understand why Gagne chose number 83, but haven't we seen enough to realize there's some seriously bad karma going on with that non-baseball, spring training number? Can't they switch him to double zero? Can't you envision him being more menacing and effective spoting 00 on his back? Yes, I realize Gagne has officially made me lose my mind.

45 - I understand that you would be disappointed if the Dodgers used their influence to kill the show. But there's really no reason to think that they did. They had problems with the host, not the show. Fan criticism of the team was not invented in 2007 on DodgerTalk.

This Gagne-bashing nonsense from Boston is making me practically teary-eyed with rage and wistfulness (if you can experience those two things at the same time). Talk about scapegoating. Gosh. Yeah, as said above, all they need is a few months with Tomdrickson and Blowberto Hernandez to really get a reality check.

Gagne truly had one of the greatest - if not THE greatest - runs a relief pitcher's ever had not too long ago. But whatever, baseball's all about the here and now I guess.

49 yes, but it happened on the west coast, so it didn't really count. I'm really getting tired of reading things like this:

"Second, no game should start later than 6 p.m. ET. Baseball maintains this will hurt West Coast fans, but trust me: They'll find a way to watch in California, dude. My Eastern bias might be showing, but the remainder of the country is better served by earlier starts."

um, both of the NL teams are from the WEST, so we should hurt they're loyal fanbases so more people in Delaware can watch? sucks on that.

49 True, but it's not like any other teams fans are immune from this sort of thing. How long did it take for us to throw similarly underperforming players under the bus? Heck, look at how many people have thrown LaRoche under the bus after a similar sample size. This isn't just a Boston phenomonon, it's something almost every single sports fan does.

50 Where's that quote from? I stopped reading the Gagne bashing thread after awhile because my nerves couldn't take it.

51 True, many sports fans are in the here and now/overreaction school. But still the blithe way they are completely ignoring any of Gagne's history, or even the facts, is grating on me. But yes, many fans in all sports tend to overreact with emotions.

I don't know that many Dodger fans who want to throw LaRoche under the bus - some are ready to give up on him, most are not though... (Not that this is exactly the same thing as the Gagne situation but I get your point.)

51 - Exactly. Gagne is their Baez/Carter/Hernandez/etc. It's not complicated. They don't care that he was great in Los Angeles - that he was much more than Baez/Carter/Hernandez/etc. in Los Angeles. If Mariano Rivera came to the Dodgers and imploded, most people in L.A. would be just as unhappy to see him in a game.

You know what else is good? Hazelnuts. I could go for some hazelnuts, right now.

50
There are people who live in Delaware?

50 Mike Freeman's sportsline.com column. Not a Gagne piece, rather a "my kids can't watch the late games" piece.

http://www.sportsline.com/columns/story/10410210

55 So I understand. I've never met any of them. I have a theory that Delaware is ccompletely made up for the purposes of tax breaks for corporations.

54
You can thank Oregon for hazelnuts (aka "filberts")

55 - Bob violates rules 3, 4, 7 and 8 in one bon vivant shot!

I had to look up the (regular season) stats to see how poorly Gagne has done in a Red Sox uniform. I see that in 18-2/3, he only gave up one home run, struck out 22 and allowed 9 walks. The home runs allowed has been good, the strike outs has been good, the walk rate is a little high. These are the fielding independent stats. What has killed him, is that he has allowed 25 non home-run hits (singles, doubles and triples). This has ballooned his ERA to 6.75 and WHIP to 1.88. Anyone care to do the math to find out what kind of BABIP he has given up in a BoSox uniform?
vr, Xei

I enjoy the Gagne bashing. It makes me laugh. I'm a bad person I guess.

(Sorry to bring up another classic Simpsons moment but couldn't resist...)

Homer: The Simpsons are going to Delaware!
Lisa: I want to see Wilmington!
Bart: I want to visit a screen door factory!

I may have to take a vacation to Delaware now just like the one I took to Oregon.

Not because I want to go there, but really just to keep people here from criticizing me.

So how many weeks do I need to see all of Delaware?

60 - I read somewhere his Beantown BABIP was over .400

63 - It's not just about the sights. It's also about basking in its luxury.

57
Deleware is also the only state in the union (I believe) that allows banks to double cycle their credit card interest calculations. If you ever get a card solicitation from Wilmington, DE, throw it away.

Gagne posted a .449 BABIP in Boston this year. The choker.

Here's KABC's version of the story:

http://tinyurl.com/create.php

It's ambiguous about post-game Dodger Talk. They talk about pre- and post-game shows, but perhaps that's just referring to Rick and Charlie's territory.

You can listen to KABC live from anywhere in the world, by the way. I wonder if MLB will force them to turn off the website feed during games.

67 What's an average BABIP?

68 Guaranteed that they will not be allowed to broadcast the games over the website. MLB has two other outlets for radio broadcasts, their own MLB.com site and XM satellite. It can be argued that straight over-the-air broadcasts are less valuable now then they were when the Dodgers signed their last deal.

53 - Gagne left any good karma behind by nodding his head to anything Boras told him and left the team that embraced him and was loyal through two years of injuries. Stick that in your glossy pages, Boras!!
On a lighter note, today was the grandest day in LA sports history, 19 years ago.
I remember my wife and I sitting in the 2nd row of the right field bleachers. It was my 2nd WS game and her first. She dropped her nachos on her way back to our seat as the anthem was starting (good omen):).
We saw Mickey Hatcher hit a 2 run home run in the first to take a 2-0 lead. Then we saw Conseco(original Juice boy) hit that laser off the CF camera for a grand salami to take a 4-2 lead. I remember seeing an obnoxious drunk LA fan start a fight with an A's fan in the top of the 8th of a 4-3 game and get taken to Dodger jail. I remember seeing fans leave after the bottom of the 8th was over. I said it's not over yet and one fan said "it sure is, Eckersley is pitching". I told my wife, I hope the Dodgers come back just to teach those fans a lesson." Cmon! Leave a WS game on a Staurday night down just 4-3. Y'all know the rest. We stayed and partied in the stadium and at the Dodger players parking gate until we were one of the last 5 cars in the parking lot. What a glorious night that I will treasure forever.

Around .300. Gagne's career average BABIP is .288. His expected BABIP, given the line drive rate he surrendered in Boston was .366. So, he was getting hit hard, but he was also mighty unlucky.

72 To add on to that comment.

http://tinyurl.com/2todnm

If you take the train from DC to parts north (well, from Balt to Philly more narrowly put), you get to roll through Delaware. In Wilmington, I think, there's a nice mural of a humpback whale visible from where the train stops on the platform.

72 It should also be noted that there's no correlation (R = -.03) year to year for line drive rates for pitchers, which is probably why BABIP is so random.

71 - Let's not overstate the Dodgers' "loyalty" to Gagne. They were every bit as loyal as their contract required them to be and no more. They "embraced" him only as much as his performance made him imposssible not to embrace.

Gagne got hurt in the line of duty, didn't have any management with the sense to realize he shouldn't have been trying to get back to the mound so quickly, and was underpaid for his best seasons with the Dodgers. I'm not nominating Gagne for sainthood - he clearly followed the money - but it's not as if the Dodgers are victims.

I've taken that train. But I don't remember a whale.

Anyone know how to get right-click menus to put the underscore under one of the letters (e.g. underscore under the "w" in "New" if you right-click on the desktop)...? I'm using Windows Vista (for the first time).

78 Could you do that in other versions? In windows programming, you have to configure that in code so it's not user editable as far as I know.

79
I can't remember if it's something I've always told Windows 2000 and XP to do, or whether it was a default. I do know that it's apparently not a default in Vista.

76 - True. Point made! I was more referring to as how the fans embraced him here also. There was such an energy when he was coming to the mound.

71 "Gagne left any good karma behind by nodding his head to anything Boras told him and left the team that embraced him and was loyal through two years of injuries."

Roughly 100 percent of ballplayers would have done the same thing. You sign a contract for two years and the guy is injured for two years, that's the team's problem (usually offset by insurance). When Gagne was under contract, I never heard of him refusing to participate in appropriate therapy or drills to restore his ability to pitch. In that sense, he fulfilled his contract. His unavailability was aggravated by his insistence on pitching for the Dodgers before he was physically ready. The so-called hometeam discount some players pretend to offer isn't a nod to the fans or the team; it's generally because the player is getting some other benefit from staying in that market -- family, business, merchandizing, or whatever.

Also, if the medical report on Gagne last winter was "he won't be able to pitch again until September 2007, if then," do you honestly think the Dodgers would have sentimentally given him a contract anyway? Or, if the Dodgers didn't have Saito and Broxton or any other decent closer possibilities, don't you think the Dodgers might have been more likely to meet Gagne's price?

76 This is the nature of the game, especially with the way players are paid when they first come up, the advantage is entirely with the ball club and in Gagne's case, the Dodgers also had an arbitration hearing.

Unfortunately, when they were able to negotiate a contract, he got hurt. But that was the risk both sides took to have a cost certain until he became a free agent.

The only thing that I slightly disagree with Jon is that it was actually in both parties interest that Gagne try to pitch during his contract period. If he doesn't pitch, the Dodgers lose out entirely on their deal and for Gagne, he needs to show prospective teams that he can pitch.

Unless the player is young and you have him under contol or he is at the beginning of a multi-year contract, I think how you manage injuries is a case by case issue and that both parties will every reason to try and play through it.

That may not be wisest thing to do but I can certainly understand why that happens.

Marty -- scroll down to #44.

http://tinyurl.com/32q3ey

2-0 Tribe in the bottom of the third! K-Lo hits a home run off Dice-K. We could have kept him for 1 more year for a fraction of the price we paid for JP and could of waited for a real CF.

While the boos and jeers in Boston may be particularly vitriolic, don't cry for Eric Gagne. Sure we would cut him a lot more slack in LA but he would be mowing his lawn right now, not 7 games away from a WS ring. Assuming he gets one, six months from now he and the fans will remember the ring not the boos. I'm guessing he would still rather be in Boston for now. . . but let's check back in a week.

Hey, am I the last guy to find out that Dusty Baker signed with the Reds? Oh, happy day!

86
Jesse Orosco has a 1988 Dodgers World Series ring.

I don't think he's giving it back.

And in 1986, he was the Mets hero.