If there’s one Dodgers game that I would personally like to be at, it’s tonight’s game.  Not because it’s against the hated San Francisco Giants or because of anything happening during the game, but because the Dodgers will be honoring team photographer Jon SooHoo for his incredible 25 years of service with the club covering both home and road games.

Jon will be throwing out the first pitch tonight, and his family and photographer colleagues will be on hand for the celebration.  The Dodgers will also show an in-game video tribute to SooHoo’s 25 years with the team, and some of Jon’s favorite photos are featured in the 2010 Dodgers Yearbook, the 2010 Alumni Newsletter and this month’s edition of Dodgers Magazine.  Needless to say, SooHoo is the longest-tenured photographer in Dodger franchise history.

Faithful readers of this blog will know that Alex and I are huge fans of Jon’s work, and had the opportunity to interview and shadow him during a Spring Training game earlier this year.  Both articles provide an inside look at Jon’s career, what inspires him and what how he keeps churning out fantastic images, night after night.

I’m also happy to report that Jon’s an even better person than he is a photographer.  Even now, months later, whenever Jon sees me at the ballpark covering a game, he makes a point to come over, say hello and catch up.  It’s those personal bonds that build the trust he has with the Dodger players and coaches.  As a result, he’s granted fantastic clubhouse access, allowing him to catch the highs and lows, both during the downtime, as well as during the game.

And knowing Jon, I’m sure he hates all the attention coming his way, but like Vin Scully and Nancy Bea Hefley, Jon provides a critical connection between the action on the field and the fans following the game.

Congratulations buddy…you deserve it!

Oh, and if you’re into the hour by hour minutia of the trial, you can also follow Josh on Twitter as he tweets from inside the courtroom.  Another expert on the McCourt divorce is Molly Knight from ESPN The Magazine, and she’s also on the scene in downtown LA so follow her on Twitter as well for another perspective.  You’ve got to love technology!

And with a whimper, the Manny Ramirez Era came to a close at Dodger Stadium last week as Manny was thrown out while arguing a first pitch strike with the bases loaded, unleashing a long frustrated sigh from Dodger fans everywhere.

Ramirez was subsequently waived on Wednesday and claimed on Friday by the White Sox.  Mysteriously, he hardly played during the critical weekend series.  I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories (although my recent favorite rumor is that the Dodgers planned all along to waive Manny, as they knew he would be claimed and the money they would receive in return for the aging slugger would equal a good chunk of what they promised to first round draft pick Zach Lee).

But I do think that Torre’s decision to play Ramirez so sparingly over the weekend had everything to do with making sure Manny was healthy enough to complete the transaction.  Remember, Manny does have a recent track record of quirky injuries that send him to the DL, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Colletti had the same conversation with Torre after putting Ramirez on waivers.  Just my opinion, so take that for what it’s worth.

Per the Dodgers official press release:

Ramirez was originally acquired on July 31, 2008 from the Boston Red Sox in a trade deadline move and then re-signed the following March. Over parts of three seasons with the Dodgers, Ramirez hit .322 with 44 homers, 156 RBI and a .580 slugging percentage in 223 games.

But as noted earlier, Manny Ramirez brought an electricity and excitement to Dodger Stadium that can’t be measured simply in numbers.  I’m going to miss the guy, and hope Colletti & Co. can bring that level of buzz back to Chavez Ravine, very, very soon.

Photo Credit: Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2010

The move is the equivalent of the Dodgers waiving the white flag in the 2010 season (something that one could argue has been over for weeks), and allows the Dodgers to recoup the remainder of his salary for the year.

If Manny does clear waivers, the Dodgers are free to trade him to any team of their choosing.  However, Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal tweeted this morning that the White Sox plan to claim Ramirez.  But before that could happen we have to get through the entirety of the secretive waivers process and another team may end up the winner.  As Dylan Hernandez notes, National League teams have the first priority, then American League teams.  If there are multiple claims from the same league, the team that has the worst record gets priority and wins the claim.

If Manny is claimed, the Dodgers would most likely would only receive about $4 million (the remainder due on his $20 million salary), instead of maybe cash and a marginal prospect or two.  But in the end does it really matter?  The season is over and Manny is one of the few chips the Dodgers have to deal, given his upcoming free agent status.  I have no doubt that Manny will also waive his no-trade clause so that he can once again insert himself on the national stage as he makes a run at a new contract in 2011 (presumably in the American League as a designated hitter).

Interestingly, if the White Sox were successful in claiming Ramirez, that could create an outfield of former Dodgers’ including Manny Ramirez, Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre.  How crazy would that be?

While the second half of Manny’s tenure with the Dodgers left a lot to be desired, the electricity ”Mannywood” brought with his arrival in LA (both on and off the field) was something rarely seen in Chavez Ravine in recent years, and something the fans will not soon forget.  If this is goodbye, then good luck, Manny.  It was fun while it lasted.

It’s now official – Vin Scully has announced that he will return to the Dodgers to broadcast their 2011 season. Scully has been signing one-year deals the past few years in order to give him flexibility in his retirement plans.

“I’m just honored and humbled to continue my association with the Dodgers, which has been a major part of my life,” said Scully. “I’m as thrilled as our fans that Vin will be returning,” said Dodger Owner Frank McCourt. “He is not only the greatest broadcaster of all time, but also a wonderful friend.”

Steve Dilbeck had a great write-up on the L.A. Times Dodgers blog that I’ve included in its entirety below. It brought a smile to my face and I wanted to share it with our readers.

Home is wherever Vin Scully is on the air; a scary moment turns celebratory as he announces his return
August 22, 2010 | 12:28 pm
And then, a giant sigh of relief.

A day that had seemed so ominous suddenly filled with an explosion of happiness.

Vin Scully is coming back.

Back to fill our summer evenings, to anchor a troubled franchise, to give us that one familiar, warm verbal embrace.

I have never been so happy to be so wrong about a gut feeling in my professional career.

Vin said Sunday he was embarrassed for any anguish he had caused with fans over the past day because he had left his decision oddly hanging for a night. I don’t understand the mechanics of it — if it was just going to be announced in a morning press release, why not just announce it Saturday and avoid all the Southland hand-wringing? — but right now it doesn’t matter.

What’s matters most is, Los Angeles’ greatest living treasure will return for at least one more season.

“I found in the deep recesses of my mind that I did not want to sever the relationship,” Scully said.

That’s a relationship with the team that goes back 61 years, and every season since the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958. That’s a 52-year relationship with Los Angeles. That’s iconic.

It has to be hard to walk away from. Maybe Vin was going to, too, and then at the eleventh hour changed his mind. Selfishly, you want him to be with the Dodgers forever. But he’s 82 and long ago earned the right to do whatever it is that makes him happy.

And happily for Dodgers fans, this still makes him very happy.

“I just love it so much,” he said. “It’s like a very good marriage. I found when push came to shove, I just did not want to leave. My wife understood it, God bless her. She said, ‘If you love it, do it.’ So I love it and I’m going to do it.”

So the Dodgers win. Their fans win. Baseball wins. All of Los Angeles wins.

And, for at least one more season, we can all exhale.

– Steve Dilbeck

Time to rest easy Dodger fans!

The Signing of Zach Lee

I’ve got to give credit to Ned Colletti and team for this one.  A GREAT signing and a real feather in the cap of Assistant GM Logan White.  Here’s a nice recap of Lee’s potential (as well as the other draft signings) from Tony Jackson.  The Dodgers really did a nice job (and spent quite a bit of money for once) in getting this done.  A potential 2012 lineup of Billingsley, Kershaw and Lee is pretty damn exciting.

There’s also a great video on the Dodger Media Network showing that Zach Lee was Logan White’s great white whale of the draft.  It’s a well done piece, and a nice look behind the scenes.

Criticizing Kemp

Steve Dilbeck wrote an interesting column today about fans’ perceptions about the performance of Matt Kemp and how any writer who criticizes Kemp is immediately jumped on by rabid fans.  I don’t remember this happening when Chad Billingsley stumbled down the stretch last season.

Photo Credit: Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2010

After watching the play at the plate during the second inning of Tuesday night’s game when Russell Martin injured himself, I wasn’t that concerned.  It just didn’t look that bad.  And in talking to Russell after the game, he also didn’t seem that concerned about the play or the injury.

“[The play] looked like it was going to be bang, bang,” said Martin. ”I was indecisive on whether to hit him…I don’t want to hit the catcher when he doesn’t have the ball in his hand.  It was so bang, bang that it caught me in-between.”

Martin went on to talk about how his hip was feeling after the game.  “I still have some mobility, but obviously I don’t have all of it.  We’ll get the MRI tomorrow and we’ll see what happens.  I know I can play with this, it’s just whether or not, if I play with it, is it going to get worse?  Those are the types of things that I’m worried about.”

Unfortunately, the MRI results showed a torn labrum in his hip, and Martin is off to the disabled list.  But the long-term impact could be even more devastating for the Dodgers this season.

Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts spoke with injury expert Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus who noted that Martin is likely done for the season and could need surgery with a three to four-month recovery time.  That would leave the Dodgers with the offensively underwhelming catching duo of Brad Ausmus and A.J. Ellis.  It also makes Ned Colletti’s decision on what to do with Martin in 2011 that much more difficult.

—

In other news, Randy Rosetta of The Advocate newspaper of Baton Rouge, LA notes that first round draft pick Zach Lee remains unsigned by the Dodgers and is currently on campus as a member of the LSU football team, where he is projected to be a future quarterback.  From the article:

“‘I think his want to be a college student and to play both championship football and baseball is still (at the) forefront there,’ [LSU head football coach Les] Miles said after he dramatically leaned over and knocked on the nearest wood he could find.”

Now the Dodgers have yet to make an official offer, but they have until August 16th to sign Lee.  The newspaper notes that Lee could theoretically sign with the Dodgers and still play football, but definitely not baseball.  I just don’t see Ned going down that route, given how expensive it’s going to be for the Dodgers to sign the kid.  And given the radio silence from all parties on contract negotiations, I don’t have much faith this deal is going to get done by the deadline (cue the conspiracy theorists who claim the Dodgers only drafted Lee because they knew he was unsignable…something GM Ned Colletti adamantly denies).

Now we wait…

Photo Credit: JonSooHoo/LA Dodgers 2010

Hopefully the security team for the Dodgers will run interference just to make triple sure Loney doesn’t sprain his hand or anything during a handshake with an overly enthusiastic fan.  Afterall, he’s got a game against the Nationals that night at the Ravine!

Photo Credit: Jon SooHoo/LA Dodgers 2010

From Joe Torre:

On Lilly’s performance:

“Lilly made it look easy.  This kid is really calm.  He’s got a lot of passion inside, but he’s very calm.  Certainly when you go to a new club, it’s nice to be able to pay dividends right away.  Oswalt struggled somewhat in his first outing… I think Haren struggled a little bit.  It was nice to see him give us that game.  And we needed every bit of it.  He gave up two hits, the home run and the base hit in the first inning.  He made it look easy.  Russell was like sitting in a rocking chair.”

On taking Lilly out after the 7^th inning, despite retiring 20 batters in a row:

“If I don’t have Kuo to go to, we may have to rethink it.  Kuo has been pretty much lights out.”

On Broxton:

“Brox, we need to get him back, because he certainly is too important for us to not have him.  This is going to be good for his confidence.  He went after the middle of the lineup and it was a good outing for him.”

On the possibility of using Kuo in the ninth inning:

“No, you can’t do that. Half the battle in this game is showing confidence in somebody.  I’d rather pay the price then not do that.”

On Martin:

“He’s going to have an MRI and we’ll hold our breath and see what we have.  He just felt a little click in the right hip.  It didn’t happen, I don’t think, in the contact at the plate.  It happened when he went by into the grass.  Maybe he stopped himself or stepped wrong or whatever it was.”

On winning the game:

“We beat one of the better pitchers, and we have to come out here tomorrow and hopefully we can build on this.”

On intentionally walking Gonzalez in the ninth inning:

“I was torn there, because Brox is like 1 for 11 with 5 strikeouts against him.  But the thing that bothered me more than anything is with a man on second base, we’re sort of compromising our defense, because we’re going to keep him close and we’ll keep the big hole on that left side.  He burned us a couple times in San Diego with groundball base hits to left.  So when I saw him take that swing on the second pitch, I said that was enough for me and just tried to play the percentages there.”

From Russell Martin:

On tweaking his right hip:

“I still have some mobility, but obviously I don’t have all of it.  We’ll get the MRI tomorrow and we’ll see what happens.  I know I can play with this, it’s just whether or not, if I play with it, is it going to get worse?  Those are the types of things that I’m worried about.”

On choosing not to slide on the play:

“[The play] looked like it was going to be bang, bang.  I was indecisive on whether to hit him…I don’t want to hit the catcher when he doesn’t have the ball in his hand.  It was so bang, bang that it caught me in-between.”

From Ted Lilly:

On his first game with the Dodgers:

“Coming up through the minor leagues, this was the goal, every day: to get a chance to pitch for the Dodgers.  This is a special night for me, no question about it.”

On coming out of the game after retiring 20 batters in a row:

“I felt good.  I’m not going to question Joe.  He’s been pretty successful and with the bullpen that we have, the bottom line is, do whatever it takes to win the game.  It’s not so much trying to concern yourself with what your individual numbers are.  It was nice to win the game tonight.”

On Rafael Furcal:

“Evidently last night when he made an awkward catch…he felt something in his back.  So he’s getting an MRI.  Hopefully the fact that it just happened and he felt it on that play, hopefully that indicates it’s something that’s not related [to previous back injuries], but we’re not going to know that until we get the results back.”

On Jeff Weaver’s left knee bothering him:

“I don’t necessarily need guys to tell me about all their aches and pains, but I think when it comes time to start to affect your performance, then you want to know.  A guy like Weav, who’s been around a little bit, sort of knows his body and thinks he can do things in spite of stuff.”

On Ramon Troncoso’s rehab in Albuquerque:

It’s ok. Ok. Inconsistent.  We’ll see. He gives us a guy who can throw a couple innings.  Maybe back here he can find that thing that he had earlier this year and last year too.”

On yesterday’s base running blunder in light of the team’s recent performance:

“It’s terrible.  It’s certainly something we always pay a lot of attention to in the Spring when we’re talking about base running drills.  A lot of it, on base running, a lot of it’s just common sense.  In Matt’s case, did he have to run full bore to get home? No, because he wasn’t going to throw him out.  But in light of James trying to go to third, which he shouldn’t do with two out, unless it’s just standing up, you just can’t take anything for granted.  In James’ case, once he made the commitment, and I talked to him a couple times during the game last night, he said ‘I made up my mind too soon.’  I said, that being the case, once you round the bag, you’ve got to see where the guy in front of you is.  You’re the one now, that can make sure he scores.  Even if you’re going to get tagged out, you’ve got to make sure it’s not until after he crossed the plate.  But he never looked.”

On Carlos Monasterios and the bullpen:

“He is the long guy.  Troncoso, I think he’ll probably take on a little more of a longer role.  With the addition of Dotel, I think we have some options for guys to get out of innings.”

On Manny Ramirez:

“Stan [Conte] went to Arizona to watch him work today, and Stan thinks it will be at least another week or so…before we make any plans for him to do some game stuff.  We had expected to see him this week, figuring he’s start to play in rehab, but that’s not the case.”

On what the team needs to do to turn things around:

“We just need to win a game to start building.  We know what we want to have happen.  We want what’s happened since the All-Star break to disappear, but that’s not going to happen.  We’re going to have to start stopping the negative by turning it into a positive, but you can only do that by winning a game and just building on that.  I just want us to play a clean game, be aggressive and pitch the way we’ve been pitching most of the time.  But we need to win a game.”

“It’s immaterial how far out we are, because it’s a matter of our winning games…we need to win.  Until we do that, I really don’t pay attention to the standings.”

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The media session concluded with the aforementioned banter between Torre and The Los Angeles Times’  T.J. Simers.  I’ll leave this for T.J.’s column, but needless to say, Torre knows Simers approach and had fun with him (for the most part).