Night Owl Cards

I am not the most positive person in the world. Even when the Dodgers make seemingly intelligent decisions like they did today -- scrapping Scrappy McScrapperson, Ryan Theriot, after only a couple of months to land a much needed middle reliever -- I expect it to come with a catch. Instead of being relentlessly upbeat, I am relentlessly examining the fine print. So even though I haven't been as happy to see a former Giant come over to the good side since Brett Butler changed his evil ways, I'm certain the bad news will come in the form of a pudgy strikeout machine that is now the Dodgers' starting second baseman. Sure, Uribe can come through in the clutch -- he's demonstrated that against the Dodgers -- but there is a whole lot of padding his un-base percentage in between. But that's me being negative again. I'm trying to cure that character flaw. It's hard to do so when being negative actually produces positive results. In fact, very recently, I won a...

Apparently, the Dodgers still believe they're in this thing. I don't necessarily agree, although I applaud their optimism and Ned Colletti's enthusiasm, which was demonstrated in his shocking willingness to cough up once-and-possibly-still key prospects in order to land a relief pitcher. The biggest deal was getting Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot from the Cubs for Blake DeWitt and a couple of minor leaguers. I don't like the swap at second base of DeWitt for Theriot -- the Dodgers are weaker at that position now. But Lilly I've always liked and wished the Dodgers never gave him up in the Mark Grudzielanek trade way back in 1998. But while every other fan's brain focuses on a mid-season deal in terms of "how will this affect my team now?" I think of it another way. I am always intrigued by the relationships that teams have with each other when it comes time to trading. Most teams go to the same trade partners over and over. The thing that interests...