Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Team

The Dodgers will celebrate their 100th anniversary season without the most celebrated pitcher in franchise history, as Sandy Koufax confirmed Tuesday that he has severed his ties with the organization. Koufax, a Hall of Fame member who served as a minor league pitching instructor since 1979, said he has resigned because he is weary of the job. Although Dodger officials called it a one-year sabbatical, Koufax said he has placed no time frame on the resignation.

The last time most of the players at Chase Field had the kind of game that Hyun-Jin Ryu had Saturday, they probably were still in high school. For Ryu, it was even before that. "Even in high school, I don't think I got three hits in one game," the Dodgers rookie said through an interpreter. As a hitter, Ryu was three for three with a double and a run in the Dodgers' 7-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks. On the mound, he struck out nine and limited the Diamondbacks to a solitary run over the first six innings Midway through the game, the husky South Korean left-hander was being called "Babe Ryuth" by Diamondbacks television broadcasters Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly.

Dressed impeccably in tie and sport coat, the Panama hat on his head, a cigar in his mouth and the Stalker radar gun raised in his right hand and pointed at the mound from a position directly behind the home-plate screen, Mike Brito was as much a part of the Dodger Stadium landscape as palm trees and congested concession lines. He provided radar readings for 20 years before yielding to the redesigned luxury seats and an automatic radar system.

With the Dodgers' offense stuck in neutral through the first five games of the season, Manager Don Mattingly thought his team could use a little pick-me-up Sunday. So he held four regulars out of the starting lineup, replacing them with four guys who had combined for one hit this year. So guess what happened next. The Dodgers collected season highs for runs and hits in a 6-2 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates in front of a sun-splashed sellout crowd of 52,053 at Dodger Stadium. "You ask for energy from those guys," Mattingly said.

Bill Plaschke predicted doom for the Dodgers in 2001. . . . Plaschke criticized. . . . Plaschke forgot. . . . Plaschke compared unfairly. . . . The Dodgers need encouragement, not negativity. . . . * That was part of a 1,200-word screed e-mailed to me last December, a holiday package filled with colorful rips. It was not much different from other nasty letters I receive, with two exceptions. This note contained more details than the usual "You're an idiot."

I walked into chilly, wind-whipped Dodger Stadium Monday, past nameless uniforms taking batting practice, through seats scheduled to be torn out, down a freshly painted stairwell, around the office of a new manager, into a clubhouse soon to be filled with more strangers . . . And there sat Eric Karros. As comforting as blue and white. After spending two years saying he should be traded, I shook his hand, said something else. It was good to see him. "You know what's ironic?" he asked, shrugging.

It wasn't as though athletic superiority was a physical requirement in a marriage partner. It just happened to work out that way. Ann Meyers' athletic prowess in women's basketball is legendary. Don Drysdale is a legend. Nor was their betrothal part of a scientific experiment in the reproduction of herculean offspring--Drysdale is 6 feet 6 inches, Meyers 5-9. That just happens to be working out, too.

Eric Karros heard about it at 5 p.m., less than three hours before his first major league start. His father heard about it moments later. "I'm in my office in San Diego. I get this phone call from Eric in the clubhouse," George Karros recalled of last Sept. 4. "He says, 'Dad, Eddie Murray is hurt. I'm finally gonna get to play.' " George was nearly a three-hour drive from Dodger Stadium, considering traffic. The game against the St. Louis Cardinals was possibly a sellout, and he had no tickets.

The bell that signaled the end of Round One of the cruiserweight fight between the Dodgers' Gary Sheffield and the Pirates' Jason Kendall was also an alarm in the Pittsburgh dugout Sunday night. At the time, the Pirates had only two hits through a somnambulent six innings and had scored only one run in almost 48 hours. Then Kendall lit a fire under them with a couple of right hands to the Sheffield's head after bracing the Dodger baserunner in a World Championship Wrestling-approved headlock.

As she stood in a Dodgers Stadium parking lot, Terry Romero pointed to one of the hillsides that shape the urban panorama around the baseball park. "I sat up on that hill pregnant with my son," said Romero, 63 and trim in her Brooklyn Dodgers shirt -- a reminder of the provenance of the team before it moved to Los Angeles. "I've been here every opening day since they built this stadium." So of course, Romero, an administrative assistant who lives in Highland Park, was there Tuesday for the Dodgers' home opener.

The most expensive team in baseball history will start to assemble Tuesday, when pitchers and catchers report to the Dodgers' Arizona spring-training complex. The Dodgers have a projected opening-day payroll of $230 million and a roster that includes a dozen former All-Stars. Several of these players were acquired in the middle of last season, which ended with a shocking collapse that left them eight games back of their division rival, the San Francisco Giants. General Manager Ned Colletti thinks that spending the spring together could allow these Dodgers to meet the incredibly high expectations of their ambitious and free-spending owners.

The Dodgers left baseball's winter meetings Thursday without their top free-agent target. The upside: No other team signed pitcher Zack Greinke, either. And the field of suitors seems to have thinned. The Texas Rangers are the only other identified remaining bidder for the Cy Young Award-winning right-hander. The Angels and Washington Nationals were also interested in Greinke, but they turned to considerably less costly alternatives. The Dodgers may end up looking elsewhere too. While Greinke remains the Dodgers' top choice, General Manager Ned Colletti said his team wouldn't be left paralyzed waiting for him to make a decision.

The Dodgers are prepared to start spring training with Hanley Ramirez as their starting shortstop. While they have maintained contact with Zack Greinke's agent and checked in with the New York Mets on the remote possibility of trading for R.A. Dickey at the winter meetings, they haven't pursued any shortstops. And they don't plan to this off-season, General Manager Ned Colletti said. Colletti and Manager Don Mattingly acknowledge that Ramirez has to play better defense than he did after he was acquired from the Miami Marlins in July.

So much for our glory hounds winning best in show. Everyone goes bonkers after the trade with Boston, including Page 2, but it's pretty obvious now our Choking Dogs react better when tapped on the fanny with a newspaper. Yes sirree, a very peculiar thing has happened to our heroes as they make their way to the World Series. They suddenly stink. They appear lifeless and uninspired in three consecutive losses to the dead meat likes of the Marlins and Rockies, and how much more condemnation of their play can one make?

The Dodgers placed waiver claims on Cliff Lee and Joe Blanton earlier this month. The Philadelphia Phillies let Blanton go, but not Lee. The Dodgers' 4-1 defeat to the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night showed why. Blanton departed from the field to the collective boos of the 56,000 fans who were drawn to Dodger Stadium by a bobblehead promotion featuring Fernando Valenzuela. Blanton lost his third consecutive start and the Dodgers fell 11/2 games behind the first-place Giants in the National League West, as he was charged with four runs in 52/3 innings.

The San Francisco Giants will be without their best hitter for the remainder of the regular season. In time, Melky Cabrera's 50-game drug suspension could turn out to be a lethal blow to their postseason ambitions. But that time hasn't come. The Dodgers fell half a game behind the Giants in the National League West on Monday night, as Clayton Kershaw was outpitched at Dodger Stadium by fellow left-hander Madison Bumgarner in a 2-1 victory for the visitors. Kershaw pitched masterfully, limiting the Giants to two runs and six hits over eight innings.

CHICAGO -- Takashi Saito is the Dodgers' closer again -- at least that's what Saito said he was told by pitching coach Rick Honeycutt at the start of the National League division series. Saito didn't fool the Cubs in the ninth inning of Game 2, giving up two runs on two doubles and a single, but for him to pitch at all is almost a medical miracle. "For me to be here with my teammates at this time of the year," Saito said, "I really can only think that I had luck on my side."

On a June day in 2003, Paige Bilbrey was on the phone frantically trying to reach her boss, former Los Angeles Dodger great Steve Garvey, at Le Parc Hotel in Paris, where he was attending the French Open tennis tournament. The matter couldn't wait: Standing in the lobby of Garvey's hilltop mansion outside Park City, Utah, was an employee of the local power company. Pay the overdue bill, the man said, or he'd turn off the lights. The incident wasn't the result of an embarrassing oversight.

Walking out of the showers with a towel wrapped around his waist, Matt Kemp shouted over the music that blared in the clubhouse. "That was sick!" Kemp barked. "You guys are fun to watch! That was sick! That was sick!" His smile was as broad as his voice was loud. Improbably and inexplicably, the Dodgers won again on Thursday, completing a four-game sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies with an 8-3 victory at Citizens Bank Park. It was the first four-game series sweep for the Dodgers in Philadelphia since their move to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in 1958.

A federal grand jury is investigating possible criminal financial misconduct of the Dodgers and related entities during the ownership of Frank and Jamie McCourt, according to two people familiar with the matter. Authorities have requested documents from representatives of each of the McCourts and from Major League Baseball, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of grand jury investigations. The investigation started early last year and appears to be focused on tax issues and possible improprieties in the spending of team funds, one of the people said.