Monday, July 19, 2010

One More Salvo in the Plaschke Stadium Debate

In the early days of this blog, one of the continuing features that I thought would be funny would be to riff off the LA Times Letters page that ran each week in the Saturday Sports section. That was back when the LA Times had an actual sports section, rather than the Cars and Other Assorted Paid Advertorials section.

(And nowadays, who writes letters to a newspaper, anyway? The whole idea of relying upon traditional media channels, with their declining subscriber bases and free online content, simply for amplification and publication of one's counterpoints, seems extremely antiquated. Why don't you just start a dissenting opinion blog and report your opinions on that blog?)

But then, this past weekend, I saw a letter that dissented with Dodgers hater and LA Times resident hack Bill Plaschke about his "Angel Stadium rocks" piece (this was before the fateful All-Star Game earlier this week, hosted by Anaheim Stadium, which generated the lowest television ratings in the history of the All-Star Game). One particular letter made me laugh.

Writes Amanda Erlinger of Laguna Beach:

Dodger Stadium has something that Anaheim Stadium will never have. It's got soul. Tearing down Dodger Stadium for the sake of efficiency, or scoring an All-Star Game would break the heart of a city. It would break the heart of this girl, who moved to the OC seven years ago. I still make the trip to Chavez Ravine to wait in the lines, cheer in the narrow concourses, and slip in the bathrooms of the greatest living baseball stadium on earth.

I of course agree with Ms. Erlinger's opinion. But I have to give her mad props for utilizing the old Lincoln-Douglass Debate trick of referencing the immortal logic of Christina Aguilera in "Ain't No Other Man":

Ain't no other man, can stand up next to you
Ain't no other man on the planet does what you do (what you do).
You're the kinda guy, a girl finds in a blue moon.
You got soul, you got class.
You got style, but you're bad ass
Ain't no other man its true - alright -
Ain't no other man but you.

To which I say to Ms. Erlinger, "Do your thang, honey!" And thanks for defending the hallowed grounds of Dodger Stadium, one of the greatest baseball stadiums around.

3 comments:

Kyle Baker said...

Hear, fucking hear!

I thought briefly about writing a letter to the Times re: that article, but then dropped the idea because I didn't want to feed the horrible beast that is a dying medium centered around opinion content and adverts for cars that I will never buy.

Nostradamus said...

Not the greatest rhyme, but it'll pass.

Kyle Baker said...

@Mr F.

Yes, alas.