Idiots Write About Sports

One other note about the Dodgers, a melancholy one that saddens me as much as learning that one of my favorite players is retiring or that a beloved ballpark is slated for the wrecking ball:

Ross Porter is no longer hosting Dodger Talk.

Ross is a terrific play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers; you’d probably hear more about him if the Dodgers didn’t already employ the best baseball announcer ever. Ross doesn’t have Vin Scully’s flair for storytelling, but he calls a good, clear game, doesn’t make himself the center of the broadcast, and has a wealth of statistical minituia at his fingertips that he’s not afraid to use to staggering and sometimes unintentionally hilarious effect.

He also hosts Dodger Talk, the team’s postgame call-in show — or at least he did when I lived down here in L.A. in the late ’90s. The great thing about Dodger Talk, particularly during the disappointing 1999 season, was when the Dodgers hit a particularly rough patch and the fans would call in with preposterous trade proposals, bizarre conspiracy theories and other ridiculous opinions about the state of Dodger baseball. And Ross, bless his heart, would treat their calls with audible disdain — politely, yes, but it’s clear he had no use for 90 percent of what people wanted to talk about.

“That’s a really interesting trade,” Ross would say, when a caller might propose trading for Cal Ripken in exchange for Tripp Cromer, Dave Hansen and cash. “I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

So I tuned into Dodger Talk on the way home from the ballpark the other night… and Ross wasn’t on.

Instead, the host of Dodger Talk was A. Martinez. (No, not the soap opera actor. The other A. Martinez. And while he’s a capable, competent broadcaster who keeps things lively without being too much of a Dodger apologist, he’s no Ross.

That said, there was a nifty little moment Tuesday night when a caller phoned in to complain that Dodger manager Jim Tracy doesn’t play enough small ball — never mind that the Dodgers set up their winning run with a sacrifice play and that they had multiple steal attempts in the just completed game (one successful, one not). If Tracy kept that up, the caller warned, the new general manager might give Tracy the boot.

That new general manager would be Paul DePodesta, of the Oakland DePodestas, incidentally.

“You haven’t read Moneyball, have you?” Martinez asked the caller.

It wasn’t Ross promising some belligerent knucklehead that he’d be sure to bring that up with the Dodger brass, but it’ll have to do.