Dodgers hope for more scenes like this. AP Photo/Matt York The Dodgers first half was, as Project Runway 4 winner Christian Siriano puts it, “A hot tranny mess.” But what has been very haunting during this All Star Break was a piece in the LA Times by the incomparable Ross Newhan examining the demise of the Dodger organization. While most people will point to the sale of the team to Fox as the turning......

Yesterday was one of the toughest days in Los Angeles sports: - USC loses to Stanford 24-23. Yes, Stanford. The school with a tree mascot. The same school who went 1-11 last year, and lost their starting quarterback earlier in the week. Their coach, Jim Harbaugh, proclaimed that USC was the best team in college football history, getting some snickers from Pete Carroll throughout the week. The question before the game was whether Carroll......

Giants 4, Dodgers 2 - Jeff Kent's two solo shots gave the Dodgers a lead, but it fell apart on a three run pinch-hit blast by San Francisco's Ray Durham in the eighth. Los Angeles went 7-2 against the Giants this year, both losses coming in this weekend's series. With just 18 games to go this season -- all against division rivals -- the Blue Crew sits 5.5 games behind NL West leader Arizona and......

Is it too little, too late for the Dodgers? I hope not. With four weeks to go, the Dodgers now trail by four games in the NL West after their 11-3 victory over the Cubs. This is not the same Cubs team the Dodgers faced at home in May. Then the Cubs were a bad team that couldn’t hold a lead for the life of them. It took manager Lou Piniella’s ejection and consequent......

It's a national holiday, so we got this one posted a little late. For those of you wondering why we're not inundating you with USC coverage, that's because I'm posting All Things Trojan over at latimes.com. If you'd like to help us do some Trojan coverage here, drop me a line at adam@laist.com. Also, "LAst Night's Action" is only posting about three times a week but will return to a regular M-F schedule starting September......

The Dodgers are winning. They’ve won nine of their last 13 games crawling back to 4 ½ games within the NL West lead. It looks like a rosy picture, but I’m still not buying into it. The problem is the Dodgers are merely a singles-hitting team that can only run station-to-station. Of their 1,232 hits 225 are doubles (ranked 13th in the NL), 27 are triples (tied for 8th) and 96 are home runs......

Now it’s so pathetic it’s just plain funny. Last week Grady Little was quoted as saying that the team had hit rock bottom. Obviously he didn’t see what lie ahead. Now that the Dodgers have a firm grip of fourth place in the NL West, it looks like the offense has completely collapsed. I knew that there would be games where the Dodgers wouldn’t be able to score since they have no power, but......

Reds 1, Dodgers 0 - Life is wacky in Dodgertown. The pitching staff has been riddled with injuries, but held Cincinnati to one run. This was just days after shutting down Barry Bonds, who has smashed three homers and set the career record since departing LA. Meanwhile, the offense has a catcher hitting almost .300 but they've been shutout in three straight games. They actually haven't scored in 28 innings, making the Angel's post All-Star......

Angels 4, A's 3 - The NorCal-SoCal rivalry is heating up in the junior circuit. Oakland and LAnaheim split the four game series, but not without a some players getting beaned (or close to it). In the final game, the Angels got three of their RBIs from Garret Anderson, who is not one of the three Halos to get hit this year. Vladamir Guerrero almost became the fourth victim on Sunday on a pitch that......

That was just plain pathetic. Here you have a bad Giant’s team with aging position players and suspect pitching. The Dodgers could only manage one run off of five hits while giving up three runs off of 10 hits and an error in Tuesday night’s loss. The sad thing is nothing the Dodgers have been doing since the Mets series at home would indicate they would muster any sort of production anywhere. They lost......

Angels 13, Tigers 4 - The Angels got back on track this weekend, hammering NL Central leader Detroit for 34 runs in a three game sweep. Anaheim reached double-digits in each game and had 12 runs by the end of the third inning on Sunday. Chone Figgins had three runs in the finale and every starter scored at least once. Rockies 9, Dodgers 6 - Los Angeles couldn't sustain a 9th inning rally and dropped......

Between the competitive NL West, the blazin’ Brewers, and the surging Indians, there are more compelling stories out there than what A-Rod’s bitter wife wore to a game and what the Bronx Bums aren’t doing....

Ducks 2, Red Wings 1, OT - Down 1-0 with a few ticks left on the clock, Scott Niedermayer hit the back of the net to forced OT. Tweve minutes later Teemu Selanne scored and gave the Ducks a 3-2 series lead over Detroit. Anaheim could win the Western Conference Finals at home on Tuesday night. Angels 4, Dodgers 1 - LAnaheim swept the Freeway Series by a combined score of 19-4. On Sunday Kelvim......

Dodgers 6, Padres 5 - The Blue Crew spoiled Trevor Hoffman Night in San Diego, smoking the Padres closer for four runs in the ninth. Hoffman was being honored that game for being baseball's career saves leader, but all the Dodgers gave him was a loss. The comback win snapped LA's losing streak at four and put them back into first place in the NL West. Canucks 2, Ducks 1, 2OT - Anaheim staged a......

Lakers 95, Suns 89 - After getting smacked around in the first two games of the series, the Lakers were looking up at a 17 point Phoenix lead in game three. Then something snapped. Kobe went on a 45 point rampage and -- surprise! -- Kwame Brown had 19. Lamar Odom had 18, but more important were his 16 rebounds (6 on the offensive glass). Los Angeles finally has the spark of hope that sometimes......

With a 5-3 loss last night to San Francisco, the Los Angeles Dodgers' lead in the National League West has narrowed to one game over the Padres. The next two games at Dodger Stadium will be key, as a No Cal sweep over So Cal would move the Giants into a virtual tie with the Dodgers in the NL West. One player who will have absolutely no impact in either of the remaining games against......

Pretty amazing game at Chavez Ravine last night. 48,995 (announced) fans watched the Dodgers come from behind and beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-3 on a dramatic 10th-inning grand slam by Russell Martin. Better Known Friends of the Column, Joe Beimel (pitched a scoreless 8th against the heart of the Pirate order) and Wilson "El Gato" Valdez (scored the tying run in the bottom of the 9th on some aggressive baserunning, pictured), also contributed heartily to......

Dear Mr. McCourt, It's not too late. You can still fix this. No, no. I'm not talking about your ballclub. That seems to be going all right. And despite this afternoon's loss to the Rockies, your team seems to be heading in the right direction. You just swept the Giants, Furcal will be back soon, and if Schmidt's hamstring injury from today isn't serious, your squad should be in the running for an NL......

NL West: 1) Padres 2) Dodgers 3) D-Backs 4) Rockies 5) Gyros NL Central: 1) Cubs 2) Brewers 3) Cardinals, 4) Astros 5) Pirates 6) Reds NL East: 1) Phillies 2) Mets, 3) Marlins 4) Braves 5) Nats NL Wild Card: Dodgers NL Pennant: Cubs AL West: 1) Rangers 2) Angels 3) A's 4) M's AL Central: 1) White Sox 2) Tigers 3) Indians 4) Twins 5) Royals AL East: 1) Red Sox 2)......

The major league baseball season begins tonight, with the St. Louis Cardinals beginning their title defense against the New York Mets. And, as always, with Opening Day comes optimism. Fans across the country have convinced themselves that this year the (insert local team here) will challenge for the pennant and make a strong push in October. Next year is now. In no area of the country is this Opening Day optimism felt more strongly......

When the Dodgers had just a two game lead on the Padres, LAist was shocked at the air of confidence that locals had that the Blue Crew were going to just cruise into the playoffs without a care in the world. Well yesterday the other shoe dropped and so did the Dodgers when San Diego continued their dominance over LA with a 2-1 victory, extending their season series lead over the home team to......

The National League West has turned into the most competitive division in Baseball. Every team in the West still has a shot at a playoff berth. They were not supposed to be this good. They were not supposed to be competitive. At the start of the season the division was the laughing stock of Major League Baseball, with many pundits expressing that they would not be surprised if every NL West team finished below......

Talk about two teams heading in opposite directions...Will the REAL LA team please stand up? In Chavez Ravine that team was the Los Angeles Dodgers, who completed a three game sweep of the rivals down the I-5 capping it off with a 7-0 shutout. The Dodgers broke out the brooms in convincing fashion, outscoring the OC'ers 31-7 and sending them to their fifth straight loss. The Angels, World Series Champs just four seasons ago,......

Don't look now, but the Dodgers are actually playing better these days. After a 7-4 win over the Braves, the Dodgers wound up taking two of three from the NL East leaders, and have won five of their last seven. The Azul are now just four games behind the Padres in the weak NL West. What's impressive is the way the Dodgers have won some of their games. In the past week it's been......

Every week, it seems like a new problem costs the Dodgers wins. First it was starting pitching, then the hitting, then the fielding, then the hitting again, injuries all the way through, and now it's relief pitcher Yhencey Brazoban who blew yet another game last night. As the trade deadline rapidly approaches, the Dodgers find themselves 8.5 games behind the Padres in the NL West with a pathetic 41-52 record. Paul DePodesta now has......

We've kind of danced around it in the past couple of weeks, but now we're outright concerned about the recent performance of the Dodgers. After losing 5-2 to the Braves yesterday, the Dodgers have lost first place in the NL West and now sit behind both the Diamondbacks and Padres. It's disconcerting that the Dodgers were outclassed this week by both the Cardinals and Braves, arguably the NL's two best teams. "The competition has......

Responding to growing criticism for his offseason moves, Paul DePodesta reminded the press last month that the Dodger team he inherted was heavily flawed. "It's not like I broke up a dynasty," DePodesta said. No, it wasn't. And DePodesta can feel vindicated by how things have gone so far. His acquisitions of Jeff Kent, JD Drew, Derek Lowe, Jason Phillips, and others have helped propel the Dodgers to first place in the NL West.......

Following in the steps of Tom Goodwin, Shawn Green became the latest player on the Dodger payroll to beat them back. Receiving $10 million from Frank McCourt this season, Green hit a 2-run homer last night for the Diamondbacks in Arizona's 3-2 win over LA. "I'd lie if I said it didn't feel better to hit home runs and make plays against these guys," Green said. Yes, Shawn, but you didn't mind hiding your......

The hounds will be out for blood in tomorrow's paper after Darren Dreifort blew a second game in the eighth inning since the Dodgers gave up Guillermo Mota. Dreifort had a 5-3 lead going into the eighth, before the Reds came back to win 6-5. At LAist, we acknowledged that the riskiest part of Paul DePodesta's deadline deals was giving up Mota. But let's hope Jim Tracy and the Dodgers realize one thing: Darren......