Dodgers tumble: How humiliating, how delightful

That annual playoff collapse by the Los Angeles Dodgers? Up here north of Fresno (meaning Giants Land) one can only think of the comments by Henry Higgins near the end of “My Fair Lady.”

“How humiliating,” says Higgins, “how delightful.”

Finding joy in the misery of others (the Germans call it schadenfreude) may not be the most sportsmanlike of options, but the teams have been (is rivals too kind a word?) for more than a century.

And nothing quite matches the bitterness from San Francisco fans or the jealousy and paranoia.

What happened to the Dodgers in the best-of-five National League Division Series was the stuff that makes sport fascinating and baseball enthralling.

Unless you were rooting for those Dodgers.

It wasn’t just that after winning 100 games during the regular season (seemingly most at the expense of the Giants) LA couldn’t win any in the playoffs against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Dodgers were simply awful. Their pitching was terrible—future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw couldn’t throw an inning of the first game and the Dodgers ended up getting pounded 11-2.

Their hitting was worse. Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, LA’s two top batters, were a combined 1-for-21.

In the last 15 years or so, the Dodgers have won far more games than the Giants, but the Giants have won three World Series, the Dodgers one.

That makes no sense, but it doesn’t have to. As has been pointed out, in baseball the line drives are caught and the bloopers fall in for singles.

In the last 15 years or so, the Dodgers have won a lot of games, earned a lot of praise and since they’re in the so-called Entertainment Capital of the Universe, drawn a lot of attention.

But they’ve won only one World Series, while the woe-be-gone Giants have won three.  

Would you rather have a team that keeps you hopeful until almost the very end, then breaks your heart like the Dodgers or one that plods along its merry way and other than a tease and offers no expectations—the Giants at least kept it interesting in 2023 until it really mattered.

Sort of funny. The Giants, perhaps more than any team in the majors, were infamous for coming unglued with their historic “June Swoon,” but that isn’t a sudden tumble as performed by the Dodgers  

“This is hellacious,” wrote columnist Bill Plaschke in the Los Angeles Times. “From first to worst, from 100 to zero, from great to godawful, again and again.”

Wonder the viewpoint of Farhan Zaidi, who before becoming the man in charge of the Giants, was duly employed by the Dodgers.

There’s no question how Giants partisans feel. If there’s anything almost as good as a San Francisco victory it’s an L.A. Dodgers loss. Ain’t sports fun?