Dodgers Fever: Love Manny? Give Steve Lopez What For
Steve Lopez wants your sermons for Manny. We want your sermons for Lopez.
Wednesday, Oct 7, 2009 | Updated 8:06 AM PST
Hollywood has become Mannywood - at least for everyone but Steve Lopez. The LA Times columnist has given up on the Dodgers because of Ramirez, and is giving away his World Series tickets.
It's less than 12 hours until the Dodgers face the Cardinals in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. That means the city gears up. We've got our Dodgers jerseys and Dodgers hats, and the face-paint is at the ready. Our kids are wearing Manny dreads to school. Vin Scully's on repeat on our iPod, and we watch Kirk Gibson's home run over and over again on our computer at work.
We're hopping on the bandwagon full-bore, ready for a month of Dodgers madness to take over our lives. Then we open today's LA Times and read one of our favorite columnists, Steve Lopez, expecting him to be as gung-ho about the Dodgers as the rest of us. Instead, we find out he's abandoning them.
Bwhah?!?! Say what?!?! When the rest of the city is jumping on the Dodgers the bandwagon, somebody -- not just somebody, but a prominant columnist at the city's biggest newspaper -- is jumping off? That goes against everything Los Angeles sports is about!
But that's exactly what's happening. Steve Lopez is giving up on the Dodgers and giving away his World Series tickets. Manny Ramirez, the Dodgers hero outfielder with the hair to love and the sweet home run stroke, has pushed Lopez over the edge:
I'm sorry for being the cockroach in the punch bowl, but I can't bring myself to join the party. The only thing that could get me to the ballpark in the post-season would be if Manager Joe Torre were to staple Manny's dreadlocks to the dugout wall and play Juan Pierre in his place. I'd rather lose with a scrappy singles hitter like Pierre than win with a loafing slugger like Ramirez.
Lopez says Dodgers fans shouldn't give Manny a pass. He challenged his readers to submit 50-words-or-less sermon aimed at straightening out Manny, and the person who submits the best sermon will get his World Series tickets.
We say hogwash. Mannywood is Los Angeles. Los Angeles is Mannywood. This is a city of second chances, and we won't let a little thing like female fertility drugs stand in the way of that.
And when the Dodgers need us most, we won't turn our back on them.
So we have a challenge of our own: Give Steve Lopez what for. In 50 words or less, tell Steve Lopez what he can do with his Dodgers hat (but please, keep it clean). E-mail us your 50-word sermon by noon Pacific time on Friday, Oct. 9 -- the same deadline for Lopez's contest. Then we'll publish the best of them.
We don't have World Series tickets to give away, but we can give you something much better -- pride that you supported your team and your town.
