Dodgers drive Chryslers out of Florida

Spring training is in the air and I'm gettin excited....bro.

And a new chapter for the Dodgers was written during this off season. The most painful chapter in Dodger history occurred in 1957 when an entire city was devastated by a simple departure of one of it's residences. People and families move on and friends and family learn to deal with it.....things happen in people's life's that create a need to relocate.....and usually communication continues by letter or phone call.

The city of Brooklyn was unable to continue any form of communication with their relocated resident because......their hearts had been ripped from the very core and smashed against some tenement wall....

The Brooklyn Dodgers were the heart and soul of that city at a time in American sports when a team really met something.

It was a time before MONEY had entered the American sports motif.....it was a time when the players lived in the neighborhood and actually stayed with a team as long as possible.

It was a time when no baseball player in the Major Leagues even knew what a Mercedes Benz was......they drove Fords and Chevy's and Oldsmobile's and sometimes if very lucky....a Cadillac.

It was a time when owners really owned a player....lock, stock and bat.

It was a time when Elvis was blowing teenage minds across the land....and parents were screaming to stop the beginning of Rock and Roll.

It was a pretty fun time in American history.....and then one day the Bums were gone and an entire city lost it's heart and soul.

Now in small town in Florida the same exact team will be duplicating the same exact type of departure starting in 2009. The difference is this time the people left in Vero Beach have an average age of 98 so when they learn of the departure they will simply be happy to learn that they can still hear.

The Dodgers are moving to Glendale, Arizona for Spring training in 2009...and they will sharing a complex with the Chicago White Sox.......which automatically intensifies the Cub/Dodger rivalry....

As a parting gift for the city of Vero Beach the Dodgers have agreed to give a Mercedes Benz to every resident who can still drive. Of course that's only 12 people and one of those people was contacted this morning and made the following comment.....

"Do you know the difference from a Mercedes Benz and a hemorrhoid?" The reporter said that no he didn't. The old man from Vero looked like he was trying to remember what they hell he was talking about and then said...

"There isn't any.....eventually every asshole gets one."

The city of Vero Beach will recover....because some other team will probably move into the complex....but of course the street names will have to be changed and Dodgertown will be renamed Senatortown.....and of course we know that all the Senators drive Mercedes, so all will be fine.

The fact that Dieter Zetsche of Daimler Chrysler wants to shorten the name to Daimler shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.....I'm just surprised he doesn't change the name to "Dieter".

Those Germans......can't live with em.....can't live without em....

On second thought....

This morning in the LA Times they have a picture of the 1959 Dodger pitching staff....and the first player shown on the left is Don Drysdale.....who Ron Fairly says "is one of the greatest athletes who ever lived."

I can't begin to put him into that type of category but I will say....as far as Major League Pitchers are concerned.....he most definitely has a special niche. One only has to ask Hall of Famers like Willie Mays and Willie McCovey what they thought about Drysdale.

One only has to ask his teammates to relay stories about Don to really get the bigger picture of what a larger than life figure he was.......and nobody has ever duplicated his unique pitching delivery.....NO ONE. His pitching motion is one of the most beautiful visual memories that I cherish when it comes to remembering Major League baseball and the players...and the fact that no one has come along and duplicated the motion, really proves how unique he was.

And Don Drysdale played major league baseball at a time when party was a good word among players.

Today when one associates the word party with a player then that player doesn't have a very bright future.....and arrests and scandal are probably just around the corner.

In Don's day the party happened at his Bar....which he owned in the San Fernando Valley.....

and apparently the party didn't end at the bar.

Please keep one important thing in mind. Most forms of partying in those days took place with legal stimulation better known as.....booze. There might have been the occasional upper but the phrase human growth hormone hadn't been invented and a steroid was disguised as a Cortisone shot.

Of course it was also a time when Chrysler stood alone as the number 3 car marker in the world.

To be truthful I know as much about cars as I do about what makes women tick....so I'm not sure of the last statement but they were highly ranked at one time in the automotive world.

Now it looks like they are being released from the German connection.....which can't really be a bad thing....because the Germans always seem to go flipping nuts.

Maybe Chrysler should buy a ball club and take over Vero Beach. Create a special car just for baseball fans....keeping in mind that 260 million people went through Major League turnstile's last year.

Things change in life and people move on and teams move on and electric cars will never be an issue as long as oil companies can find oil. When the oil dries up, the oil companies will move to another venue because by then they will actually control all the money in the universe.

And I realize that last statement has nothing to do with the above article but I'm still pissed over Prop 87 and how freakin stupid the voters were.......

Proposition 87 GOT KILLED....IT WASN'T EVEN CLOSE.

THAT'S SCARY

The Dodger's moving to Arizona is way down the list of scary things....and Dietier dumping Chrylser is only scary for the 13,000 people who are losing their jobs....of which I can guarentee you....not one of them lives in Vero Beach because it's very hard to get 97 year old people showing up for work every day.

Pitchers and cathers report in as few days.....to Dodgertown in Vero Beach Florida. I wonder how the residents will treat them over the next two years.

Oh well....things change.

Michael Timothy McAlevey