Dodgers' Season Ends As Angels' Season Begins

Today, at 4:32 p.m., the Los Angeles Dodgers' season came to an end.

Six months and 162 games. Every year the same for every team. Batting practice, the same. Plane flights and bus rides, the same. The towns and hotels, the same. Same bats, same ball, same effort. but for some, vastly different results.

As Andy LaRoche, the third-baseman of the future, flied out, stranding left-fielder of the future Delwyn Young after outs by center-fielder of the future Matt Kemp and first-baseman of the future James Loney, in a game lost by ace-of-the-staff-of-the-future Chad Billingsley, 2007 for the Dodgers was over.

And on Wednesday, October the 3rd, the season for the Los Angeles Angels will have just begun.

In Boston, the Angels will begin the real season - the post season - while the Dodgers go golfing, or fishing, or siting on the couch playing video games, or whatever a bunch of young, twenty-something pro athletes do when they have nowhere to be until next February 15th. As recently as July 15th, the Dodgers held the best record in the National League and a one game lead in the West over the San Diego Padres. Tonight, after the season-ending 11-2 loss to San Francisco, the Dodgers end the year in 4th place, only 2 games over .500, and 8 games behind division champ Arizona.

On the other hand, after cruising to a fourth American League West title in the last five seasons, the Angels... well, that's another story for later in the week.

Expect firings, new-hirings, and loads of veteran players moving on to greener (read that long green) pastures as the L.A. team that hasn't won a World Series in 20 seasons tries to move forward with a core group of players, most of whom were not yet in kindergarten the last time the team played that late into October.

Vin Scully, sole remaining bright spot on the last day of the season, summed it up this way, "Baseball... It's designed to break your heart."

At least if you bleed Dodger Blue.

Copyright © 2007 Bill Friday

"I'd Like To Report A Missing Person..."

It was Tuesday, September 4th. I drove north on Wilcox, my destination now in sight. I found a space in front of the building and parked. It was only space left on the street. Was it fate, or just dumb luck?

For this job, I could use a little of both.

5:45 p.m. After a hard day at work the A/C inside was cool and inviting. Outside, the air was hot and wet, a lot like the pavement in a Whitesnake video featuring Tawney Kitaen. 100 degrees every day for... days, but that was another story.

1358 N. Wilcox. Hollywood Division. LAPD's Precinct of Broken Dreams. I stepped inside. A pale-legged tourist with black socks and an Iowa drivers' license sat next to a "self-employed actress" with six-inch heels and no permanent address. Even in the late-summer heat I noticed both of them were wearing wigs.

And just like the curls in their nylon hair, nothing about either of them seemed out of place.

At least not here.

I asked the one in the heels if this was where you go to file a report. She nodded like a regular. As I made my way to the window, a fat cop, dressed all in blue, sat on a stool behind bullet-proof glass, staring at me. Suddenly, I felt dirty. He was looking up me up and down like I was a... or maybe he was looking at the "actress". From where I stood, it was hard to tell.

Before I reach the counter, the fat cop spoke.

"How can I help you?"

"I'd like to report a missing person." I paused. "Make that five missing persons."

I reached into a manila folder I carried under one arm, and pulled out a list. As I slid the list under the glass, I saw the box. Pink cardboard with white paper sticking out of it. The box looked like it had been worked over good.

And the cop looked full.

"What's this?"

"They're all missing," I said.

The cop wiped his hands on a near-by napkin, then grabbed the list.

"These are... names? What kind of names are these?" He picked up a pair of reading glasses from on top of the pink box, and hung them on the end of his nose. He read the names out loud.

"V? El G? Mora Uman?"

"Oh, sorry... I'm pretty sure that's not really her in the picture." Suddenly, I felt foolish, but I pressed on. "Next to the names are the dates anybody last heard from them." I must have looked anxious. The cop looked at me as much as he did the list. He finished reading the names and looked at me over the top of his glasses, as if to make sure I meant business

"Crowbar? Vundula? Bill-Bob Bubba... Are these for real?"

"Of course they're for real!"

"What are you, some kind of private detective?

"I'm a writer."

"Figures." He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "And these are friends of yours?"

"Kinda. They're other writers."

"And they're missing?"

The cop looked at his watch. As he did, I noticed the clock on the wall behind him. It was five minutes to six. I guessed that Pink Box was almost done with his shift.

"You got anything else?"

I reached into the folder once more. I pulled out five sheets and shoved them all under the glass. Each one had the writer's profile printed on it.

"Those are the last-know whereabouts for each of them. Plus some personal information. I thought it might help."

He flipped through the pages, randomly reading from each one.

"... common-law wife named Oksana... formerly homeless with three AKAs... a bicycle named Mathilda?" He picked up the napkin again. He wiped the corners of his mouth, then tossed the napkin into a distant trash can. Probably the only excercise he ever got. Then he leaned forward... closer... as close as he could get without touching his nose on the window. As he did, he stifled a silent burp.

I thanked God for bullet-proof glass.

"This is everything?"

"Yeah." Instinctively, I pulled back. As if the smell of coffee and donuts might make it's way to my side of the window.

In one motion the cop shoved all the papers back under the glass in my direction. As he did, the clock on the wall behind him struck six.

"Then I'm afraid you're on your own."

"But they're..."

"Missing. Yeah, I got that. You seem like a bright guy Mr... uh,"

"Friday," he laughed to himself. I thought I heard him muttered the words, "Like that's your real name."

"Excuse me?"

"Mr. Friday..." He stood up to leave. "They'll turn up. They always do."

They always do... They always do...

"So what kind of story is that?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"What genre?"

"Noir."

The thirteen-year-old boy looked up from the computer screen. He shook his head. The words "gimme a break" were written all over his face.

"It's stupid."

"Why?"

"Because they're not really missing."

"It's a metaphor," I argued. Never argue with a thirteen-year-old.

"A metaphor for for what?"

I hesitated. A metaphor for what? "Well, they haven't written in a long time."

"Neither have you."

I thought before I spoke... this time. He had me.

"Okay. Then it's... a metaphor for my own futility as a writer?"

"So you're the one who's really missing?" Brown eyes stared back at me. My son wasn't buying any of it.

"You're right," I said. "It is stupid."

"And the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem."

"Don't you have homework to do?"

"Why? It's stupid."

He turned and headed up the stairs.

"Don't forget to say good night when you're done." And he was gone.

"I suppose I could just email them," I said to no one.

A voice answered from the other room.

"Honey, are you talking to yourself, again?"

Silence.

Copyright © 2007 Bill Friday

Remembering Hal Fishman: Late L.A. Newsman Already Missed

Tuesday morning at 3 a.m. Hal Fishman, a secure fixture in Los Angeles television news, died at home following a brief battle with colon cancer.

For 47 years Fishman, author, pilot, teacher, who began his professional life in the academic world as a professor of political science, was a rarity; a stabilizing presence in a news market known more for weather girls and future game show hosts than for real reporting.

Beginning in 1960 as a political commentator for KCOP-TV Channel 13, and ending with a 32-year-run as the anchor of KTLA Prime News, Hal Fishman died less than one week after being hospitalized following a collapse at his home in Los Angeles.

For me, the story broke in a seemingly strange place, as a last-minute inclusion before the 8 a.m. news on sports talk radio station AM 570, KLAC, as announced by host and L.A. Times columnist T.J. Simers. The usually acerbic Simers was noticeably serious, even solemn, as he relayed the news he told listeners he had just read on the local website http://www.laradio.com/.

If you want to read more about the accomplished life of Hal Fishman, a couple of sources are, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-me-fishman8aug08,1,7565794,print.story?c,

as well as, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Fishman.

In the coming days, for those of us who watched him regularly, the loss of Hal Fishman, the newsman, will pale compared to what we will feel at the loss of Hal Fishman, the man. As a nightly "commentator" on one of the day's top stories, you never got the idea that the man had a partisan bone in his body. In fact, to this day, I have no idea what political affiliation, if any, that Hal Fishman held. Everyone was fair game, simply because Hal Fishman was fair. In one moment, he could be as relevant as any demographically positioned news reader in a $3,000 suit, and as comforting in the way he told a story as a most-trusted Grampa. His lack of pretense was all the cool he ever needed.

And, he had a sense of humor.

In a story that first appeared in the industry magazine Broadcasting & Cable, Fishman, the former Cal State L.A. professor remembered his first words on television on the program, American Political Parties and Politics :

"Good afternoon, I'm professor Hal Fishman, and this course is certainly quite unique for me, because it's the first course that I have ever taught where the student can turn the professor off."

At present, KTLA has no word on who will replace Hal Fishman on Prime News. And even when they do, they should probably make no announcement about his "replacement". It wouldn't do any good.

We'd probably just turn him off.

Hal Fishman leaves behind a wife, Nolie, and a son, David.

And all the rest of us, too.

Hal Fishman was 75 years old.

Copyright © 2007 Bill Friday

Booooooo! Barry Bonds Rolls Into Los Angeles

If a tree falls in the forest, and there's no one there, does it make a sound?

If Barry Bonds breaks Henry Aaron's home run record at Dodger Stadium, and 56,000 people are there, booing their guts out...

Tonight, in the middle of Chavez Ravine, San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds will face Brad Penny of the Dodgers in the top of the first inning of a game that could go down in history - not just baseball history, HISTORY - as a defining moment for the sport, for Los Angeles as a city, and for the United States for that matter. More than the story of how a cheater (allegedly) broke the most hallowed record in a game that measures it's history by the numbers, tonight marks the moment when a game's fans, L.A., and the U.S. will show how it feels.

How it feels about Bonds.

How it feels about the game.

How it feels about itself.

What will those 56,000 people do if Barry Bonds makes history in their back yard?

For the Dodgers as an organization, no special ceremony is planned in the eventuality that Bonds hits number 755 to tie Aaron, or 756 to pass him over the next three games in L.A. Why should they? The Dodgers and the Giants have been the bitterest of rivals for more than a century. There will never be any love lost between the two. Major League Baseball has no official plan to make with the speeches yet either. Only a possibility of that exists should Bonds break the record later on in San Francisco, and then only a faint "maybe" for even having Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig make an appearance at an event neither he, nor Selig's long-time friend Hank Aaron desire to be "photo-opped" at.

This leaves only Bonds' teammates and the ticket-holders to determine how this moment in history will be remembered.

Los Angeles has had it's share of defining moments before the watching world. 1968, and the Watts Riots. The beating of truck driver Reginald Denny and the subsequent L.A. Riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict in 1992. Even what, by comparison, seems meaningless - the burning of an LAPD cruiser after the Lakers' first championship of the Shaq/Kobe era - may become lost in the memory of tonight, of Wednesday, or Thursday, depending what 56,000 people do if...

Does America hate Barry Bonds? Pretty much. And for nothing more than a perception that he has somehow tainted the game that he loves by taking unfair advantage of science in his pursuit of immortality. That, and the belief that Bonds is a class-a a-hole when it comes to his dealings with media, team mates, fans, ex-wives, mistresses, best friends, and personal trainers spending years in prison because they refused to testify about Bonds' alleged steroid use before a Grand Jury.

Is the hatred of Bonds, as some suggest, racial in it's motivation? Hard to say. In part? Probably. Exclusively? Doubtful. Will the fans' reaction to the events of the next few days have more to do with the former than the latter? Definitely.

But how, if the place goes grease fire and the worst of all possible scenarios plays itself out before millions on world-wide TV, will it be recalled by future generations when they look back with wonder?

Los Angeles, what will you do?

Will you make a martyr out of a man who is worthy, neither of your hatred or your worship, simply by how you react to the way a ball flies through the air in your town? Can you be trusted to boo without having to be strip-searched on your way into the ballpark?

How will the world remember?

Game time is at 7:10.

Copyright © 2007 Bill Friday

Harry Potter, Or A Good Night's Sleep?

Tuesday, July 10th, 11:59 p.m.

The question wasn't if I was going to get in line for the next instalment of the obnoxiously successful Harry Potter and the Whatever Movie is Next... series. It was only a matter of when. I have a thirteen-year-old who lives on this planet. It's Death, Taxes and Get-in-line-for Harry Potter and the Whatever Movie is Next...

A better question would be, "Which line am I willing to stand in the longest?"

I've never been one to stand in lines. I always believed the DMV has chairs there specifically for me. Amusement parks, with their one-and-a-half hour waits in line for a one-and-a-half minute payoff, has never been that hot a ticket for me. Given a choice, I'd be eating fried chicken in New Orleans Square, not standing in the burning sun in anticipation of another go-round of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

The same with movies. Movies come and go, and lines of movie-goers come and go with them. And standing around for hours on opening night with a bunch of strangers who already know the ending of the movie, while I lose sleep on a work night, is not my idea (maybe my kid's idea, but not my idea) of a great time. And drinking cold coffee from the Starbucks on the other side of the Promenade just to stay awake long enough to fall asleep in a Lazy-Boy theater seat with the stub of a $12 ticket tucked in my shirt pocket (for the buy one-get one bowling coupon at the Gable House) loses something in translation between the age of thirteen and... old.

So, which line will I to stand in?

This one.

After I spend several leisurely hours browsing through the 30 or so books I've always wanted to read, then relax at a cafe table, enjoying a spinach-mushroom Strada while sipping a really, really big iced coffee, I stand in a line of another kind.

Friday, July 20th, 11:59 p.m. Inside Barnes and Noble Booksellers, People, faces familiar to each other, gather together, probably for the last time.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the 7th and last book in the series authored by J.K. Rowling (not some junior screenwriter who would "really like to direct some day"), will be released to the reading public as the clock strikes midnight. This night, hundreds of fans, readers, will be the first of hundreds of thousands who, at the stroke of midnight, will receive their copy of the final installment of a story that, to date, has sold over 86 million copies.

Barnes and Noble, as well as Borders stores, Vroman's in Pasadena and a host of smaller, local bookstores, will host events on the night when the whole world finds out what fate awaits Harry.

Here is a short list of L.A. locations offering some kind of Harry Potter activities.

Skylight Books will let you make your own Book 7 book cover, and offers an all-night reading party that goes till 9 a.m. Saturday. 10 p.m., 1818 N. Vermont Ave., L.A. (323) 660-1175.

At Borders Torrance, the Grand Hallows Ball will include a life-size Harry Potter checkers game and a 15-foot snake cake. 9:30 p.m., 3700 Torrance Blvd., Torrance. (310) 540-7000.

Other Borders stores in the area will be holding similar but smaller Grand Hallows Balls at 9:30 p.m., including a Harry Potter spelling bee and the "Great Snape Debate".

Book Soup is giving away copies of the book with the purchase of a $100 gift card. 10 p.m., 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (310) 659-3110.

Storyopolis is holding a Diagon Alley Party and games till the late, as well as an autographed print by Mary GrandPré, the books' illustrator. 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., 12348 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 509-5600.

At Barnes & Noble stores there will be events from 6 to 10 p.m. These Midnight Magic parties include photos with a Harry look-alike, magic shows, and trivia scavenger hunts. Use the store locator at storelocator.barnesandnoble.com/findaspecial_event.do

At Vroman's, bands Wild Youth and Dirty Spanglish will perform, in addition to storytelling, crafts and face painting. 10 p.m., 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. (626) 449-5320.

For a near-exhaustive listing go to http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-wk-potter19jul19,0,4958724.story?coll=cl-books.features.

Any of those lines are worth giving up a good night's sleep for, because reading always beats a movie, no matter how much stuff gets blown up. Big screen, summer blockbusters are often little more than over-long video games, or music videos with 100-page scripts written by the same junior screenwriter who "would really like to direct someday". And for an event that promotes literature for my thirteen-year-old, video-addicted son, well... I would drag him to that.

If I had to.

My son's plans for the weekend involve locking himself in his room and finishing Deathly Hallows before he walks face first into a spoiler before finishing the book.

Besides, a book like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would sure pass the time sitting in one of those chairs at the DMV.

Copyright © 2007 Bill Friday