No Respect: Dodgers On the Wrong Side of the Media

Everyone hates the Dodgers. They love St. Louis. St. Louis is the city that bleeds Cardinal Red. It lives and breathes baseball, and knows the true meaning of passion. Los Angeles is a brooding toilet, where the fans arrive in the third, leave in the seventh, and spend the fourth, fifth and sixth texting. St. Louis has the amazing, the astounding Albert Pujols, the greatest jewel in baseball’s post-steroid crown. LA has a scrappy bunch of over-achievers led by a rotten, no-good cheat named Manny Ramirez. St. Louis has Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright, a duo who could have two Cy Young awards between them by the offseason. Los Angeles has a bottom-of-the-pile lefty who somehow has pitched decently and a young kid who is the epitome of the Dodgers’ second-half struggles. Despite the Cardinals’ 2-8 regular season finish, there is no reason to think they cannot turn on the switch and play like champions. The Dodgers’ 4-6 record clearly indicates they are struggling, and could easily be eliminated despite holding the best record in the National League. In fact, the Dodgers do not deserve the title of the NL’s best. Who cares about records. The Cardinals are the clearly superior team. They’ve earned it, while the Dodgers have not.

Sound familiar? It should. This is the diatribe the media has been harping since the playoff matchups were set. FOX Sports ranks the Dodgers seventh of the eight teams in the playoffs, even behind the Colorado Rockies, the club they have beaten 14 of 18 times this season. Everyone says the rotation is in shambles. The bullpen is ignored for its incredible consistency (Tim Kurkjian of ESPN calls the Yankee ‘pen the best, citing how the relievers’ 40 wins is the most for a team in history). The offense is basically nonexistent, and that’s only based on the five-game losing streak. The media has never shown Los Angeles any love, going back to 1988 when the Dodgers were the team that couldn’t but did. As Tommy Lasorda said:

Nobody thought we could win the division! Nobody thought we could beat the mighty Mets! Nobody thought we could beat the team who won 104 games, but we believed it!

The media will never show the Dodgers any love, and until they can achieve the ultimate goal, they never will. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is if we believe. What matters is if we believe we can reach the end. What matters is if the Dodgers can go out onto that field and play like they are the better team, not just say they are. Because if they can do that, and if they can win that magic number of 11, then there will always be a reason to believe, even if no one else does.