Last night, I attended my first Dodger game of the year, with bloghomies Tony Pierce, Matt Welch, and the exceedingly generous Howard Owens. Great seats! The "other" player the Dodgers acquired in the Sheffield trade, Odalis Perez, pitched a gem, marred only by Jim Tracy's decision to yank him with two runners on and two outs in the top of the ninth. What earthly purpose was served by not allowing his starter the chance for a shut-out? There was no report of an injury to Perez; the tying run was on-deck, so even a home run would have been survivable. He had thrown 132 pitches, but struck out Thome and Lieberthal in the ninth. The cynic within me would say that Tracy brought in Gagne because it was a "save situation", and that mattered more than Perez getting a complete-game shutout.

[BTW, if you ever go somewhere without your wallet, these are the people to go with--most bloggers have PayPal on their sites, so you can pretty much borrow as much as you want, so long as you promise to contribute a like amount to their site. Being with a blogger is like having an extra low-interest VISA card and a fake I.D., unless I'm the blogger you're with, in which case it's like having the elderly Joe DiMaggio hanging out with you]