Graig Nettles robbing Davey Lopes in the 1980 ASG and Howard Cosell adding to Dodgers fans' complex

Here's the link to the full game,    • MLB - 1980 All Star Game - J R Richar...  

Gawd, baseball has such a head shakingly cruel sense of humour sometimes.

Those great Dodgers teams of the 70s were still a season away from finally dispensing some payback and getting over on the Yanks, so you know this hot corner gem was hard to take for the Los Angeles crowd. It must have seemed like the hometeam's guys would never find a break after the fall classic losses to Nettles' pinstripers and his clutch glove.

A little before your time?

Check out the 1978 Series stabs that bled the Los Angeles team of hope.

For Nettles to rub in those bad memories again, to say nothing of Howard Cosell laughingly adding salt to the wound from the booth, the left coast baseball fan must have rolled their eyes at the seeming spite of the reminder. Knowing how the scrappy lead-off hitter and second baseman could harbour a grudge (poor Steve Garvey), you know the air must have been blue as Lopes returned to his dugout, robbed and hitless, again, at the hand of the same villian.

Gawd, what a great era.

There is no reason why that bottom of the 1st had to lead-off like that. It did, though. The game and its fans are all the better for it.

By no means am I a believer in the supernatural. I typically grin sardonically when those in my company suggest there is an unseen arbiter slightly altering the physical world so to change the lives and fate of men. But (you knew there was a 'but' coming) when it comes to baseball...man, I traffic in those non-camera/non-technology black arts like a son of a bitch. I love the notion that the supposed space between us, where nothing is the definition of that which we cannot see, is the domain of 'something.'

The fantasy that the 'unknown' loves baseball shenanigans is the non-scientific lol that my fanhood embraces. Of course there are stats laden spray charts that suggest Lopes was going to pull the ball off WGN's Steve Stone. And there's a Total Zone defensive stat that suggests why ole Graig was prone to making plays on tough chances (though, not as impressive in that 1980 summer).

But for my money...I'd just as soon pretend/imagine/suspend-rationality-for-a-moment as it relates to that pick and peg to Rod Carew over at first. The groan isn't as noticeable as you'd have hoped from the Dodger Stadium crowd. But for those aware that the stupid stars had aligned themselves against their rooting interests again, you know they were about to start cursing the spirits that had been dogging Los Angeles' fortunes.

Ah, shit.

That's the good stuff.

#Yankees #Dodgers #GraigNettles #DaveyLopes #Reggie #TommyLasorda #BillRussell #WillieRandolph