That’s a decent lineup. With great pitching, it could win 90. But, that lineup, with good pitching, which I don’t know we have yet, isn’t going to win the WS.

Down 1….. down 2…….. down 3……..

As an example, I have watched Danny Grainger of the Indiana Pacers since he was a rookie. I saw improvement every year and now he’s an All-Star. All the players I mentioned above will be better players in 2009. With their maturity, they will perform better in the clutch, make fewer mental errors and rise to challenges.

If I lived in LA, you’d have to pry the tickets from my cold, dead fingers. I LOVE this team! This team is the team I have followed from Vero to Jax to NLV to LA and they are very good. We have more youngsters coming who will also be very good. I wouldn’t have minded Hoffman, but not for $6 mil a year (plus incentives)! PLEASE! Ditto for That Guy! I’m pretty sure we can get Dunn for 3 years at $40 mil. We might be better with that.

Here’s how I’d set up that lineup:

1. Furcal SS (he has to lead-off)
2. Ethier RF (he flourished here – why mess with it?)
3. Kemp CF (put him in fron of Dunn and with Furcal and Ethier on base, let’s hope he sees more fastballs)
4. Dunn LF (HR or BB with a .400 OB%)
5. Martin C (put a RH bat here and Martin is a good OB% guy)
6. Loney 1B (I expect to see him hit 20+ HR next year with the same OB%)
7. Blake 3B (.260/20 HR/80 RBI – write that down – nice in the #7 spot)
8. DeWitt/Loretta 2B (combined .270/ 20 HR /70 RBI – I’ll take it)

Quit Crying – This is going to be a great year, regardless of whether or not we get THAT GUY!

But, I think in his own unctuous way, he is on the something. The one guy out there that has proven he knows how to close the deal, especially in post-season, is Manny Ramirez.

I think that, no matter what the economy tells us, people will buy tickets to MLB baseball games. We are junkies and gotta have the fix. The Dodgers will draw 3.5 mil, even if they don’t make the play-offs.