The topic is Fox, Fox ownership of the Dodgers to be specific, the defense of Fox actually. Fox gets reamed on a regular basis. Some of the stuff they did was lame, absolutely. The whole Mike Piazza thing obviously, and Kevin Malone of course, but who knew? The guy just snapped. There didn't seem to be any need for a psyche evaluation beforehand.

Much of what Fox does is a leaks in a storm kinda thing, patchwork. Not the best strategy perhaps, but LA wants a winner now, and there aren't a lot of Jerry Wests lunching at the Palm, with nothing better to do. Treading water seems to be the best they can do.

But it's not all Fox's *@&#'in fault. O'Malley is the *@&#'in guy. At least enough so that he should get some of the blame. Peter left a mess, starting first and foremost with Fred Claire, who left a bigger mess. Went on way too long. And the tired line about Claire's not being "a baseball man" was really true all along. He wasn't a baseball man. Didn't have a clue most of the time. 1988 was Tommy's genius, and Orel's, and Kirk's. Claire lucked out, and O'Malley bought into it.

Fox can get it together. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. That's from "Casablanca," if I must explain everything...

The Dodgers will be alright in the second half, by the way. This isn't one of those "it's only June arguments" either, I just think they will. Wild card probably. Brown will be healthy throughout, Dreifort will settle in, Prokopec will be fine, and Chan Ho will make his pitch. The bullpen will go back to being better than most, Grudz will come back, Beltre will make an impact, and Dave Wallace will make one big trade. David Wells perhaps, or a shortstop. Gagne will be thrown in. They'll be fine. Or not...

One thing that would be nice though, is when John Hart gets in there, he just moves forward with what he has to work with, and doesn't blame the last guy. That would be refreshing...

I still say the Dodgers should sign Will Clark...

Raising money for cancer research is pretty much of a no-brainer, and Cap Cure is a great project, but there's something about "Mike" (the name has been changed to protect the guilty) Milken doing all the talking. Sure, Mike's paid his penance, but it just seems like he's trying too hard to make good...

It's weird seeing another Mays in the boxscores, especially another pitching Mays...

Since practically no one has mentioned it, this Ichiro Suzuki guy, not a bad little player. You'd think someone would have said something...

If they can spot a needle in a haystack from a satellite a gazillion miles away, if they can split the atom in the quizinart and make Brittney Spears' singing actually sound like music, why in the world can't they get a fraction into the BottomLine at ESPN?

I mean, if Mike Mussina gets two guys out in the ninth before giving way to Mariano Rivera, it's 8 2/3, not 8.2. He didn't pitch two-tenths of an inning, a fifth of an inning if you will. It's just fractions, not brain surgery.

And can't CNN fix their version so that it doesn't freeze on that first score for forty-five seconds, before giving every other score the requisite blink of an eye that it takes to read the damn thing?

Perhaps more importantly, if we can send a man to the moon, can't we stop Leo Mazzone from rocking? You just wanna smack the guy. Stop already! I don't know, maybe when Coach realizes he's turned John Smoltz into Bret Saberhagen, maybe that'll do it...

While I'm being unbelievably anal, it's time the nation's newspapers change the "runs scored" stat in their league leaders sections. It's not "runs scored," it's just plain "runs." It's implied that the run was scored. What else can you do with a run? And Schwerdtman, there's no "IR" in baseball, it's "DL." Like I said, I'm being unbelievably anal. They pay me to be unbelievably anal...

It's a shame John Schuerholz couldn't say what we all knew about the Rocker trade...

Barry Bonds is gonna get the record, so just get used to it. The real discussion, the MVP discussion, might as well start now.

If Bonds goes .300, 80 and 150, with the Giants around .500, and Luis Gonzalez, let's say, finishes .340, 60 and 140, with Arizona winning the division, who's the most valuable? We'll take up the Todd Helton debate another time, but for now, he's not in the equation...

Bob Vila is a five-tool player...

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