Hall of Famer Duke Snider Dies at 84

Hall of Famer Duke Snider passed away Sunday morning at the age of 84 from natural causes in Escondido, California.  Edwin Donald Snider was born on Sept. 19, 1926, in Los Angeles, California and nicknamed “Duke” by his father at age 5.  Snider played basketball, football and baseball at Compton High School in Los Angeles before he signed with the Dodgers at 17 in 1943.  He went on to play a HOF career batting .295 with 407 Homeruns and leading all

The Dodgers Sit A-Top of the NL West…Finally!

The Dodgers had clinched a playoff berth with a win against the Pittsburgh
Slowly, but surely, the team whittled down the ‘magic number’ down to one. Any combination of Dodger wins and Rockies losses would mean back-to-back division titles for the first time since the 1977 – 1978 seasons. One game, that’s all they needed to win, just one. So they played the Padres, a team that was better than fifteen games back, and got swept. Meanwhile, the Rockies were on a tear, winning game after game and getting within one of the division lead.

In a twist only baseball could provide, a schedule that had been set nearly a year before yields a story-line scripted TV could only hope to achieve. The final series the Dodgers were to play was against the very team that threatened their hopes of winning the title.

Finally, this past saturday night, only days away from the start of the NLDS, the Dodgers rallied and beat the Rockies 5 – 0 to clinch the NL West. By Sunday, they finished five games short of the one hundred games they should have won, but considering they held on to the division lead since April, and still finished with the best record in the National League, there was plenty to celebrate.

But there’s a tough road ahead of them, to be sure. Normally the team with the best record would play the Wild Card winners, but as the Colorado Rockies have run away with the NL Wild Card, the Dodgers must now face the St. Louis Cardinals (who says the NL West isn’t a competitive division?).

The NL Central has been a thorn in the Dodgers’ side all season long, and the Cardinal’s have proven to be the…thorniest. For the Dodgers, the season series against St. Louis stands at 2 – 5. Albert Pujols and the rest of the Cardinal’s seem to have the Dodger’s numbers, but that’s what people thought of the Cubs last year, and they were swept by the Dodgers despite their home-field advantage.

As far as Monday and Tuesday are concerned, it’s quite appropriate to celebrate a successful, though tumultuous, Dodger season. But come Wednesday, it’s back to work. A formidable foe comes to town and any underestimation of their talent and ability would only undo what the team had fought so hard to achieve.

It’s up to Randy Wolf and Clayton Kershaw to lead this team past St. Louis and on to Philadelphia. The Dodgers have earned home-field advantage through NLCS, let’s hope they get the chance to make the most of it.