Fewer road games for Vinnie next year

Arrgh! Say it ain’t so!

But it is so.

Scully said he has decided to skip road games, at least early in the season. In addition to the Dodgers’ home games, the 86-year-old Scully currently travels with the team to Anaheim, Arizona, San Diego and San Francisco.

“I’m going to go to Anaheim for sure,” Scully said Tuesday night. “But I’m going to try to cut back on nights on the road. I really want to spend more time at home.”

Enjoy him while we’ve got him, folks.

28 thoughts on “Fewer road games for Vinnie next year

  1. I wish I could enjoy Vinnie while we have him. But DirecTV won’t let me. I get the first 3 innings on the radio, which is nice, but it ain’t enough.

  2. Time to think outside the box . . . at least the one the Dodgers always seem to find themselves in:

    In lieu of a catcher that can hit (status quo), what about a position player who is adequate as catcher, then pull the goalie/go for the 2-point conversion at the end of game and GO FOR IT at the plate?

    • Even if there were somebody capable of doing this, that would be an off-season and spring training project. Impossible at this juncture.

      • They can have Tippy Martinez and Lenn Sakata come to Camelback and show them how it is done.

        • The idea is probably really absurd but, purely speculatively, SVS could be an interesting candidate.

          • Of course, it’s all a moot point if the offensive replacement delivers and they score.

          • Atlanta’s Gaddis is a catcher with defensive shortcomings but excellent offensive capabilities, and it is rumored he will be available, if you’d care to go that route…

          • Big boy at 6’5″, but Werth of similiar height was drafted as a catcher by the O’s, who now have 6’5″ Wieters beyond the plate when healthy.

          • We hear much more frequently of catchers moved to other positions (such as Kenley, for example) than other position players moved to catcher (can’t think of any).

          • Martin was an SS, no? No examples come to mind, wouldn’t being catcher be the last refuge of poor hitting 3rd basemen trying to get to the Bigs? The other way around, Carlos Santana is an example of a good hitting catcher that they try to stick in the field.

          • Wikipedia: ” Martin was originally a third baseman before switching to catcher after a scout saw him playing for the Gulf Coast Dodgers in Rookie Ball and thought he showed more promise in that position.”[3]

  3. I can sympathize with Vin’s desire for a reduced work schedule, but I will cringe every time I hear Steiner’s voice from Phoenix, SD and SF.

  4. Another “ex-purt” opinion on “what’s wrong with the Dodgers…” I think we, the club, the manager and the other players depend on Hanley too much. He can be such a force that even the other star players tend to wait for him to carry the club. When he doesn’t, instead of saying, “It’s up to me now”, they are self conditioned to wait for his next at bat. I really gave up on him some time ago, because of injuries and attitude. I secretly hoped the Dodgers would make a good waiver deal involving him for I can’t believe even they are dumb enough to sign him to an extension. When he is gone I think some of the other players will get off their butts and start earning their paychecks.

    • Hanley will get a qualifying from the Dodgers, who would be happy to have him back for another year. He is likely to sign with an AL team, which will let him DH more frequently, but that will give the Dodgers a higher draft pick.

  5. I didn’t want to put all this in one post, but I did want to reflect/vent.

    I admire Donnie for finding the positive in that thing that happened yesterday. There ARE positives, as Bob H. pointed out yesterday. That seems to be Donnie’s style, vs. ranting and throwing people under the bus. I’m not sure if Lasorda did the latter, but he did a heckova lot of the former — and his teams won.

    I don’t know . . . these guys are professionals, you would think they don’t need to be told they screwed up or they’re underperforming (again, I would love to see performance-based contracts be the norm, perhaps with a sliding scale of base salary based on previous performance).

    Torre won with such a style . . . how does the present LA talent stack up vs. the ’90s NYY?

    • I was just thinking of making a very similar post, so I’ll just heartily endorse yours. Baseball players, for all their talent, have the same failings as the rest of us, we need a nagging wife or a demanding boss to get the best out of us. The Dodgers greatest glory has come when they had a manager who didn’t hesitate to yell at them or even bench them when they deserved it. I’m talking about Alston, LaSorda and Torre. I imagine Curt Gibson is that way but the club has to give the manager some talent to work with. I think the Dodgers own more than enough talented players to win their division if only they put out every day. When a player makes a dumb mistake, the right kind of manager tells him about it when he gets back to the bench, “Nice try” is for Little League managers and kids. The Dodgers won last year because of their overall talent and that 42 and 8 hot streak. The Dodgers should have dumped him last year when he gave them that golden opportunity. A manager can’t be any player’s friend, he needs to always be the manager, with that overall responsibility to win that trumps any player’s tender feelings.

    • I’m tempted to say Mattingly should throw himself under the bus for inept strategic thinking – he apparently was the only person around to whom it did not occur that Matt Williams would walk Kemp after Joc’s sac bunt to face Butera.

      Torre is a bad example, and his legacy is part of the problem.

  6. Like RBI, I was waiting to see what Jon thought about yesterday’s fiasco.

    He didn’t talk about the game as a whole, but here are some thoughts about the bases-loaded disasters: http://dodgers.mlblogs.com/

    I really cannot believe the Dodgers are #1 hitting with RISP — it sure doesn’t feel that way. Of course, they load up in AZ and CO . . . I wonder what happens when those games are taken out of the equation.

    And their luck/baserunning doesn’t always equate a hit with RISP with a run.

  7. “Enjoy him while we’ve got him, folks.”

    I’ve enjoyed a lot of what you’ve written, Link, but perhaps that, most of all!