Depressed about Dodgers

Sometimes it’s no fun being a sports fan.

The Pac 10 conference was wiped out early in the recently completed NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Worse, no team in Southern California (from Santa Barbara to San Diego) even qualified.

The Lakers were on a roll and had won 11 in a row until Sunday. Now they’ve lost two straight games.

The Clippers are one of the worst franchises in professional sports. Every time they look like they’re going to flip it around, they flop like a carp on a riverbank.

Neither the Kings nor the Ducks made the NHL playoffs.

Which brings us to baseball.

The fans in Anaheim have never been so excited. They’ve got an owner who lowered prices and raised the payroll. No doubt about it, the Angels should be contenders in the American League West. They might not be ready for the New York Yankees—who is?—but it should be a great year for Angel baseball.

And then there are the Dodgers, the team for which many of us live and die. The worst scoring team in baseball has added exactly one player of any consequence. The new owner and his wife have been "big talk, little do" from the moment they leveraged a deal to "buy" the Dodgers (mostly on credit). They’ve lost good people who know the ins and outs of major league baseball.

Parking and concessions, by the way, will cost more this season at Dodger Stadium.

It’s been 16 years since the Dodgers won a playoff game and there’s no reason to believe this year will be different.

To repeat: sometimes it’s no fun being a sports fan.