The first post was writ as humble as the pie the Dodgers have been eating for the past 14 1/2 years:

Sunday, July 21, 2002
This is where I will vent, and, if I can ever feel so comfortable, exult about the Dodgers and baseball in general.

The next day, 1.000 years ago, I wrote my inaugural "State of the Dodgers" address. Fascinatingly, the team has changed so little in the past year that I could pretty much rerun that column as fresh material today (which, essentially, is what I'm going to do).

Some excerpts from July 22, 2002:

So, with a Dodger team that overachieved in the first half of the season and has underachieved in the second half, what do you do?

Right now, the Dodgers are just playing poorly - making errors and bad pitches to match their poor hitting. The players on this team are good enough to win if theyÕre playing solidly, bad enough to lose if theyÕre playing poorly, and I donÕt see that any addition is going to change that in 2002.

Long before Fox made the absurd move of trading Piazza, reasonable minds would wonder what it would take for the Dodgers to elevate a perennial 90-game winning team into a team that could win a World Series. This legitimate approach has been erased by a philosophy of trying to build a team that can somehow sneak into the playoffs and maybe luck into a World Series, with the hope I guess that Kirk Gibson will limp to the plate at age 46 and homer. I have long advocated that the Dodgers go back to trying to build a legitimate World Series champion, through a solid farm system and solid trades, even if it means tearing the current team apart.

Think of it this way: The Dodgers price/earnings ratio is still inflated, and this is still a bear market. If any trades are being made in baseball over the next month, the Dodgers should be selling, not buying.

You kind of get the feeling that I might get a few more years out of those paragraphs. But in the midst of these eightysomething win seasons, there have been the emotional highs and lows that have made this site the therapeutic outlet I was looking for. I hope it's provided some enjoyment for the rest of you.

At the intersection of Memory Lane and Stadium Way, here are my favorite entries:

• Buttercup: The epic tale of Jody Reed and Pedro Martinez - the piece with the most research and the most references to The Princess Bride.

• The Meaning of the Game: The piece that best explains why I care.

• From Start to Finish, A Dodger Night (Groins Not Included): Just a lot of fun writing about one game.

I also can't express enough how much I've enjoyed the great letters I've received from readers of this site. This whole thing has just been a lot of fun. Thanks for indulging me.