Bill shakin goes Hollywood on the Dodgers

Being the baseball team in Los Angeles (the Angels don’t count since they play over in Orange County) it seems the Dodgers and Hollywood will forever be linked. But Bill Shaikin over at the LA Times decided to use the combination for this week’s Sunday Baseball Report column.

Our first instinct was to ban the usual Hollywood cliche. You know: The Dodgers’ season has been so wacky that even a Hollywood screenwriter could not have dreamed this up.

Dodgers announcer Vin Scully is always playing up the Hollywood moments the team has had, with Kirk Gibson’s home run and the back to back homers in September of ‘06, not to mention Nomar’s walk-off homer in the very same game or this year’s win over the Angels without a single hit.. But Shakin went down to Paramount Studio and spoke with producer/writer/baseball fan Scott Kaufer. Kaufer agrees with the Hollywood-esque nature of the Dodgers, but says this season is more like a television show than a movie.

“It was more episodic, fits and starts,” he said. “Up became down, down became up, like the story was meant to play out in 22 episodes.”

Starting with the firing of Grady Little and hiring of Joe Torre, which Kaufer calls “stunt casting” (“It’s the oldest TV trick in the book. If the show’s not working, you bring in a new face.”), he goes through the season as if it were a series, in fact a “buddy comedy” featuring owner Frank McCourt and GM Ned Coletti. And as with so many shows, there was the “jump the shark” player (Gary Bennett, who has trouble throwing the ball back to the pitcher, a problem a certain movie catcher also had). The Dodgers also have their own “Fonzie”, as well as a player who checks the script each week only to find out he has no lines (actually because he got hurt, but that could be Karma getting back at him for dissing Scully, although he’s being reactivated as a pinch hitter).

Shakin asks for a Hollywood ending for the season, and Kaufer is happy to oblige.

He envisions a dramatic circle, with the Dodgers facing the Boston Red Sox in the same place the teams played in March — at the Coliseum, after city officials uncover seismic deficiencies at Dodger Stadium and force McCourt to find an alternate location for the World Series.The World Series returns to Boston, and Game 7 extends into extra innings. With two out in the 13th, J.D. Drew drops a fly ball, just as he dropped the Dodgers.

That brings up Ramirez, who hits a towering home run, over the Green Monster, knocking out the lights in the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square. As he circles the bases, he blows kisses to the jeering Boston fans.

Shakin takes it from there and writes a scenario that this Boston-based Dodger fan can’t help but love.

The World Series returns to Boston, and Game 7 extends into extra innings. With two out in the 13th, J.D. Drew drops a fly ball, just as he dropped the Dodgers.

That brings up Ramirez, who hits a towering home run, over the Green Monster, knocking out the lights in the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square. As he circles the bases, he blows kisses to the jeering Boston fans.

But of course that’s not the final shot, which has a joke that I refuse to spoil. For that you’ll have to head over to the Times web site and read “The Dodgers get a script doctor”. But the best part is that with seven games left in the season the Dodgers are 3 1/2 games in front of the Diamondbacks with a magic number of five, all but guaranteeing they’ll continue to play once the calendar flips into October. (I’m not saying it’s a done deal, that would be tempting fate.) The Sox, however, are 2 1/2 games behind the Rays in the AL East with eight games left to play and a magic number of seven in their quest for the AL East title. Luckily they’re 6 1/2 games ahead of the Yankees in the race for the AL Wild Card with only a pair of games needed to clinch the title.