Letters: Mookie Betts has the answer to the Dodgers’ drought

If I’m Justin Turner or Clayton Kershaw or Kenley Jansen, and I’ve been killing myself for a very long time trying to win a championship, and now our new star player, Mookie Betts, who potentially helped cheat the Dodgers out of a World Series, asks to address the team, “speaking from the heart,� I’m thinking to myself, “Great, he will address whatever the Red Sox did, or didn’t do to us in the World Series, and the air will be cleared.�

Instead Mookie (with his one-year contract) tells his new teammates (who have won seven straight division championships without him), they need to “produce urgency�.

That doesn’t strike me as a great tone-setter for the season.

Maybe somebody should “produce� some eye black, and put it in Betts’ cap.

Anthony Moretti
Lomita

Not Angelic

People like Tyler Skaggs simply do not do drugs by themselves. They typically party with friends and others but very rarely solo.

This means more than likely other Angels players and or team officials were aware of and may have participated in using.

This is a very difficult realization for Arte Moreno, who is unquestionably a good and decent man who is about to be hit with severe financial penalties not of his making.

Jim B. Parsons
Carpinteria

Move it along

If MLB wants the games to speed up this season, they should play the games without crowds, using the coronavirus as an excuse. Because the players will have no reason to showboat, the games will move along very quickly. I see games ending in two, two-and-a-half hours tops, just like the old days.

Vaughn Hardenberg
Westwood

That’s rich

Question: Why does Steve Ballmer want to buy the Forum? Answer: Because he can. Mere mortal wallets are wasting their time trying to justify how one of the countries richest guys spends his money. At least he’s not flooding the airwaves with political ads.

Jeff Heister
Chatsworth

Off-color

There are play-by-play announcers and color commentators broadcasting football games that are better than others. But, I don’t know anyone that has tuned in, tuned out, changed the channel, or just didn’t watch a football game because of who the color commentator was. Sports fans watch the game because they are interested in the teams that are playing, not who is broadcasting the game or what network it is on. For CBS to pay that much money for Tony Romo because they think more people will watch, they really don’t know sports fans.

If the Hallmark channel broadcasted “Monday Night Football,� we would watch it.

Steve Shaevel
Woodland Hills

All the Kings men

I must admit I got a bit verklempt when in the same week the Kings unloaded Kyle Clifford, Tyler Toffoli and Alec Martinez. It saddened me until I saw Martinez, now playing for Vegas, run rookie
goalkeeper Cal Peterson’s coconut into the post Sunday night.

Sadness gone, the Kings put a thumping on Vegas that night, as they did the Penguins and New Jersey in consecutive nights previous. Maybe no playoffs this season, but this group is looking very sharp and is exciting to watch.

Dan Johnson
Salem, Va.

Westwood, go!

As Jalen Hill and Cody Riley lead the resurgent UCLA Bruins to a possible NCAA berth, one must wonder what ever happened to the third player involved in the China sunglasses incident. I’m sure Jalen Hill and Cody Riley received proper advice from their parents to accept responsibility, go back to school and rejoin the team. Now these two players may be drafted in the NBA and make millions.

I’m sure LiAngelo Ball also received advice from his parents to not accept responsibility, drop out of school, play against 30-year-old men in Europe and make peanuts .

Richard Katz
Los Angeles

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John Wooden always said his favorite team was not one with Kareem or Bill Walton, but his first championship team of 1965, which no one picked to go anywhere. I’m not predicting this year’s team will get even close to a national championship, but the run has been impressive, wherever they end up. #beatSC.

William David Stone
Beverly Hills

Oh, Bill

The fact that UCLA was fighting for first place in the Pac-12 wasn’t enough to hold the interest of the Walton-Jefferson-Pasch trio during last Saturday’s exciting Bruins-Arizona game. Totally insensitive to their viewers, they blabbered on, reminiscing about events and players from 10, 20, even 30 years ago. The “Who cares?� quotient went through the roof. We were even forced to watch the three of them having fun courtside, while the game became background.

To avoid having a stroke, I finally muted the sound. Only in the final three minutes did they recall why they were there to actually comment on the game. I’ve always had sympathy for Dave Pasch, who tries so hard to insert game commentary whenever Walton pauses to take a breath. But this time it was two to one, and poor Dave didn’t have a chance.

ESPN should send these guys to a neighborhood bar, where, as they do on the air, they can all talk to each other — undisturbed by a pesky basketball game.

Ron Levin
Pacific Palisades

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Bill Walton was a great basketball player, but he is a terrible broadcaster. It is not the Bill Walton show. I would rather hear commentary about the game instead of his past experiences. Can’t ESPN see what’s happening?

Don Smith
Santa Barbara

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Would someone please find a ticket in the UCLA stands for Bill Walton to sit with his basketball buddies so they can reminisce at length about their past while the rest of us watching the games on TV can listen to expert analysis and actually follow the game being played?

Joyce Joseph
Del Mar

Do the wrong thing

The same thing that happened to Spike Lee at Madison Square Garden happened to me at Staples Center. Jeanie Buss wouldn’t let me park my Lamborghini in the players’ VIP lot anymore, and on top of that she stopped my personal courtside beverage service. So incredibly unfair.

Marty Foster
Las Vegas

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