Ohtani in Dutch newspaper

On October 3rd Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant published a 2 page article about Shohei Ohtani. The article is written by Koen van der Velden, a sports journalist stationed in the USA, who regularly writes about US-sports.
Honestly, I was surprised by the two page spread with the title ‘he hits ánd steals’ which also had three pictures of Ohtani hitting, stealing and playing with Decoy.
The level of writing was good. Often non-american writers miss something but this was well written.

Ofcourse I have something to nag about, as always. Koen writes about the play-offs which in the MLB is the postseason and he mentions that the Triple Crown has not been given out since 1937, which is only parlty true. It was the last time an NL-player won is.

Other than that: great read! It mentions the big off season contract the Dodgers offered Ohtani. Although he was recovering from surgery. His pitching sabbatical and how he zoned in adding another weapon: stealing more bases.
It ends with a mention of the Dodgers going for their 8th World Series championship and that Ohtani might be the missing piece to reach it.
In short: I’m a happy camper with this kind of exposure of the Dodgers in a Dutch newspaper. 😊

Heads Up!

Ever since I became a fan of the Dodgers, I’ve been wearing fitted caps. The original one ‘the players wear’. I love the pantone 294 color and the iconic interlocking L and A. I dare to say it’s the most recognizable MLB logo after the Yankees one. I, of course, change it up a bit with postseason patches and the gold edition World Series 2020 cap but other than that, I stayed faithful to the original, but sometimes you need a change of color, style or want to wear a bit more ‘out of the box’.

3 caps, 3 opinions
This year was extravagant for me. I really liked some caps that came out and bought the lot. First up is the Seoul Series cap with patch and the Dodgers name in hangul. I didn’t see our boys play in Seoul but visited Korea a month later which gave me a lot of time to wear it throughout the country.

The city connect jerseys are bland and plain but the cap… I like! It’s a great combination of the LA and the D in champagne. Playful and a nice dark color cap. It has some colored sprinkles on the underside of the bill and on the top button. A fun detail, also there on the jerseys.

Finally, and this might be an unpopular opinion… the All Star Game cap. I love it! The colors, completely not LA chique, are all over it and the lone star and Texas patch are wild. Makes for a colorful alternative.

The New Yorker - Shotime

It’s always fun to see a Dodgers-related cover on a magazine. Sure, on a sports magazine it might be expected, but on the New Yorker, a magazine full of commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry, that’s something else.

The artist
Mark Ulriksen has been a cover artist for the New Yorker for over 30 years. Of his 70 covers 12 are about baseball (most of them Yankees related, which is curious because he’s a Giants and Red Sox fan, but understandable because… The New Yorker). His latest featuring our own Shohei Ohtani.

Ohtani
The cover features Ohtani seen from the back, just after a hit (probably hitting one out of the park) and in his back pocket a wad of money. Now, this piece of art was done when the ‘Ohtani financial scandal’ was still the talk of the town.
those hoping for a piece accompanying the art... you'll be disappointed. the cover itself is reason enough to get a copy, though.

Ohtani deal in Dutch media

In the final days I kinda suspected the deal would not happen. Then people started to follow a flight to Toronto which had Ohtani on board... but it turned out to be fake news and shortly after, the big news broke: Ohtani moves from Anaheim to Los Angeles! Ten years, $700 million. $2 a year for the first ten years, then $68 a year for ten more years. Now, that's a smart deal!

Internet exploded but what about media in my country? Well, news travels fast and although baseball isn't very big in the Netherlands this bomb was too big to ignore. The NOS posted on its website 'Dodgers tempt superstar Ohtani with record salary' and NU.nl: 'Ohtani trumps Messi'. Multiple newspapers had extensive articles about it as well. Parts of some of the articles shown below.

Retired Bracelet

I’d always been looking for a way to have my Boys in Blue with me at all times. I’ve thought about a tattoo, but somehow that didn’t really do it for me.

So, some years back I found this online jewelery shop that sells bracelets with engravable beads. I was sold and had the names of the players that had their jersey number retired engraved and I still wear the bracelet with pride.

Ten beads, ten names. It’s been in Dodgers history for years and years: 10 retired numbers, 6 World Series titles. Those numbers were fixed for so long.
Then came 2020 and ‘we’ won a 7th championship. That fact had to settle into my brain for quite some time.

Then, after years of hoping, and to be honest: years of expecting, the Classic Baseball Committee in 2022 was wise enough to, finally, induct Gil Hodges into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Dodgers organization responded swiftly by retiring number 14 soon after.

Before I could get used to 11 retired numbers, the Dodgers decided to retire number Fernando’s #34! This will happen in August 2023.

Now, I have 12 name beads on my bracelet and we all know there will be al least one more in the near future, the moment he is eligible for the Hall of Fame: #22.

Book review: A Damn Near Perfect Game

A Damn Near Perfect Game : Reclaiming America’s Pastime written by Joe Kelly with Rob Bradford sounded, to me, like a book about how Joe himself would make baseball more entertaining. I could not have been more wrong.

It is a personal book in which Joe tells the reader intimate details about his struggle as a kid with an abusive father and how the man influenced him and the way he plays the game.

It’s honest, often funny and well written with the help of Rob Bradford.

Joe is also honest about his view of the game as it is played nowadays. I was surprised by some of his opinions about altering the game, coming from a pitcher. It’s good, though, to read these kind of statements from the guy on the mount.

While Joe kelly isn’t a Dodger anymore, (july 2023 update: he's back!),there is enough stuff in the book about his time with the Boys in Blue. I always enjoyed his antics and by the looks of it, so did his teammates.

All in all a good read and I know you mustn’t judge a book by its cover, but this cover is awesome!

Claude Shafer Cartoon (1920)

Shafer
Newspaper cartoonist Claude Shafer (1878-1962) found the fight for first place in the National League in the 1920 baseball season interesting enough to dedicate a cartoon to. The Cincinnati based cartoonist, creator of Old Man Grump, was a Reds fan and saw his team battle for a place in the World Series with the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Robins.

The Sketch
The original sketch has seen better days. It has quite some water marks and mold. It’s approximately 14x8-1/4” (35,5x20,9 cm) and signed by Shafer on the bottom right corner. It features Old Man Grump sitting in a boat, fishing while smoking a corn cob pipe. Below the hook with worms and a card saying ‘first place’ three fish jump out of the water. They all have a ‘name’: Reds, N.Y. and Brook. Grump addresses the reader: ‘Look! In all yer life did ya ever see ‘em bite like that?’

The Season
When you look up the 1920 season the three teams were closest at the beginning of September. On September 5th, for instance, Brooklyn was on 73-55 (0.5 up), Cincinnati on 71-54 and New York on 71-57 . At the end of that month, though, the Reds would be 9.5 games behind, the Giants 5. The Robins would go on and face and lose to the Indians in the World Series.

Why buy a century old drawing from a Reds fan? I think it's a nice peek into the history of the Dodgers. On the brink of their second World Series appearance in 4 years. It would be quite some time before they would reach again (1941). It predates the first Yankees win, Jackie Robinson was far away and Branch Rickey was still with the Cardinals and exactly 100 years later the Dodgers would win their 7th World Series title. I really like that way of looking at history.