Though my Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles were mathematically eliminated earlier this week, the 2007 baseball season will officially put an end to our misery on Sunday when the Blue Crew finish out their 162nd game of the year against the San Francisco Giants.

Though this season started out full of hope, with many fans and analysts picking a Dodgers-Angels World Series, only eight teams not named after Brooklyn’s now-disintegrated trolley system will continue into the playoffs. LA, currently 80-78, will go home and regroup for next year.

I’m not going to analyze the Dodgers’ season over what went wrong. I’m just going to think about a time when my favorite baseball team WAS magical.

It was 1988, a season that should not — could not — have happened. The Dodgers won 94 games in a year that started with a first-pitch homerun by Steve Sax and ended with Orel Hershiser on the mound in Oakland. That was a year when the names Mickey Hatcher, Tim Belcher, and Mike Scioscia took on mythical meaning. When the number 59 became synonymous not just with Orel’s record scoreless streak but became as ingrained in my memory as 755, 56, and .366.

Game 1 of the World Series, of course, featured the greatest moment I have ever seen.

Down 4-3 in the 9th inning against a powerful A’s team, Kirk Gibson came up to bat with the tying run on base. He could barely walk. He could barely swing. I was at home watching in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of my bed as my mom yelled at me to take out the trash, staring at my 13-inch TV hoping against hope Gibby could draw a two-out walk against Dennis Eckersley, then the best reliever in the game.

My best friend Blue was actually at the game. I saw every Dodger fan, more than 54,000 in attendance, on their feet. Gibby worked the count full and then hit the most dramatic homerun in Dodgers history, belting it deep into right field as Vin Scully uttered the lines that, to this day and even as I write them, give me chills:

“In a year that has been so improbable, the IMPOSSIBLE has happened!”

Wait ’til next year.

He was shorter than I had expected. Still imposing, stocky and wide, the perfect build for a running back who amassed 11,236 yards in his NFL career.

His right hand, the one that didn’t fit into the infamous leather glove, was huge. Larger than any hand should be. I had introduced myself as the news editor for my school paper. He took my hand and shook it, looked me straight in the eye, and said “Nice to meet you.”

All I could think about was, “This is the hand that butchered two people.”

It was a quiet evening in my apartment. I was a 21-year-old senior, the news editor of my school newspaper, sitting on the couch watching “Beverly Hills, 90210″.

A loud knock on my apartment door disrupted my watching of Brandon, Dylan, and Brenda. I opened it to find my then-girlfriend British Liz who was supposed to be in a 4-hour evening class panting, trying to catch her breath.

“What are you doing here? What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Oh Jay…Simp…son…is…on campus…you have…to go…interview him.”

“Who?”

“OJ fucking Simpson!!!”

“But 90210 is on,” I said.

Unable to convince her that Kelly, Steve, and Donna Martin Graduates! were more important, I grabbed my notebook and headed to campus. I got the back story on the way.

It seemed that one of our school’s criminology professors had served as one of OJ’s lesser-known defense lawyers in the sensational “Trial of the Century”. He had furtively invited OJ to speak at his class and had notified no one – not the press, not university officials – of his arrival.

British Liz, during a break from her class next door, had seen the commotion and peered into the classroom, only to find The Juice himself standing in front of what looked like 100 students. She had skipped the rest of her class and run to my apartment to tell me (this was before the ubiquitous age of cell phones).

I arrived and walked right into the classroom, confident that no one would stop me. They didn’t. I stood about 15 feet away from OJ for nearly two hours, listening to him lecture to these sycophantic students who had obviously been convinced he was innocent.

When he was done, and amid the roar of applause, I immediately walked up to him and introduced myself before the professor or anyone else could stop me.

He stuck out his meaty paw and we shook hands for 3 seconds. I told him I was a reporter for my school paper. He didn’t pull out a knife so I interviewed him. Students clamored around him, asking for an autograph. He signed blue books, old football cards, and notebooks. Someone even brought in a football for him to sign.

We talked for five minutes. I honestly don’t remember anything he said. I wish I did. I walked back home and typed up my story.

The next day, in our newsroom, reporters and editors asked me what it was like to meet OJ.

Someone inquired, “Did you ask him if he did it?”

“Yeah”, I answered sarcastically, “OJ Simpson confessed his guilt to some Orange County university paper reporter.”

I wish I still had that article.

For many Jews, our parents’ most powerful warning growing up was this:

“If you get a tattoo, you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.”

This dire warning, which always sounded vaguely apocryphal yet was never dismissed outright, was as “factual” to Jewish children as the requirement to get good grades. Questioning our parents’ logic when it came to Jewish law was tantamount to praying for Jesus to save us.

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A conversation I might have had with my mother could have gone like this:

“Don’t ever get a tattoo.”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t be able to get buried in a Jewish cemetery.”

“So?”

“Aye, dios mio!”

But despite such near-desperate pleas from our parents to never permanently mar our skin, all three children – led by my younger-yet-more-rebellious-sister, eventually got tattoos.

I had always wanted a tattoo. I found them meaningful and aesthetically impressive as a child. And when I graduated from college, as a present to myself, I went to a tattoo shop on Ventura Blvd., picked out an arm-band I had liked, and got my flesh stabbed repeatedly by dozens of ink-filled needles for two hours.

I kept the tattoo a secret from my parents, showing only my friends and siblings.

One day, however, while relaxing on the couch at home, my arm sleeve was pulled up inadvertently and my mom spotted a dark stain gripping my bicep.

“Que es eso?” she asked.

“Nada,” I replied, fixing my sleeve.

But she knew. She turned her head, made a stoic face, and didn’t talk to me the rest of the afternoon.

I eventually learned that though the adage that tattooed Jews can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery was a highly perpetuated myth, it did violate the Torah – specifically, Leviticus 19:28:

Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.
Of course, Leviticus also proclaims I shouldn’t turn my daughter into a whore, go to a psychic, or shave my beard, so reading the Bible takes several grains of salt, so to speak.

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I still find tattoos fascinating and have been considering a second one for years. They make women infinitely more attractive (look at my new favorite photographer Cindy Frey, photographed above) and the idea of regretting mine has never crossed my mind, even 9 years later.

One of the most common arguments I still hear from the anti-tattoo lobby was, “What are you going to do when you’re old and have a tattoo on your flabby arm?”

I tell them, “If I have a flabby arm when I’m old, a tattoo will be the least of my problems.”

Besides, I could have inked any of .

When I was a kid, my dad told me the only thing he wanted from me was to “not grow up”.

I didn’t listen. Neither, it seems, have “my campers”.

I spent my summers in college working long days at Camp Sharwood in Woodland Hills, California, singing songs, playing patty-cake, and doing arts and crafts with hundreds of kids. These kids, though, have since become adults. Real, live, full-fledged adults. Who are on .

My campers, who used to call me “Radar” (part of the fun was having the campers call us by our nicknames; I called myself Radar because I loved the show M*A*S*H), are on the popular social networking site and are forgetting that, to me, they’re supposed to stay sweet and innocent forever.

These “adults” are the same kids whose hands I once held when they were too scared to ride a rollercoaster; the same kids who I taught how to hit a softball; the same kids who I read bedtime stories to when I babysat them; and the same kids whose scraped knees I would bandage when they fell down.

Instead, I see pictures of them on Facebook going on beach trips, graduating from college, going skydiving, getting drunk, and hanging out with friends – all things my friends do.

But they’re just children, I thought as I accepted each of them as Facebook friends this week, how can they be kissing boys?

Here is one of my favorite campers, who thanked me for giving her the courage to ride the Matterhorn at Disneyland, wearing a bikini saying “We’re the shit lol” in one of her photos.

They’re only kids.

Here’s another camper who’s now taller than me who I used to entertain with impressions of Mike Myers’ SNL character of “Simon”.

They play with toys.

Here’s another who is now a 6’2” man-giant and who describes his occupation as a “cop killa”. I used to take him to the “emergency room” whenever he overreacted about being hurt.

They wet their pants.

Seeing these kids – er, adults – again brought back memories: The boy who threw up on me while we watched the Batman show at Knott’s Berry Farm. The girl who showed me during a night of babysitting a video of her being born. The ADHD kid who ran away and who I had to haul back to camp over my shoulder. The time I temporarily “lost” a kid at Raging Waters. The “Final Shows” we put on to entertain the kids’ parents.

But my favorite memory is the story of a 6-year-old boy (I wish I remembered his name) who was so shy when he started at Camp Sharwood that he wouldn’t play with other kids, kept to himself, and stared at me without saying a word whenever I talked to him.

I encouraged him slowly without pushing him and after a week or so, he became much more social. After a few weeks I noticed he started combing his hair slick back like mine. At the end of the year, this boy’s mom came up to me and asked, “Are you Radar?”

When I told her I was, she hugged me and said, “You have no idea what an impact you have had on my son.” She went on to tell me how shy he once was but how happy he had become since meeting his “favorite camp counselor”. She added that every morning, she combed his hair but he wasn’t happy until it looked “just like Radar’s”.

To me, that kid will be six years old forever.

Below is a group picture of Camp Sharwood counselors. Can you find me? Click to enlarge.

I played Wii for the first time recently and found it pedantic and boring, if not physically taxing.

A friend gave me a bootlegged copy of Baseball 2007 for Playstation 2 and I felt disinterested at best.

Culito invited me over to play Xbox and I yawned.

I thought my recent lackluster response to video-gaming was a sure sign that I had matured and started acting my age. Then I sang “Milk, milk, lemonade, ‘round the corner fudge is made!” and realized I was wrong.

The real reason, I believe, is that I miss the video games I used to play. I’m not talking about the games we, as a generation, used to play — like Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., or Q-Bert. I mean the games I loved. Here are five games I miss playing:

Cyberball, Atari.

Blue and I were addicted to this game. As teenage nerds with no girls to talk to, we would venture to the Fallbrook Mall arcade every weekend to play the futuristic football game featuring fallible robots. Sure, the science behind it made less sense than the flux capacitor, but you got to destroy robots who tried to gain yards.

Double Dribble, Nintendo.

Since even Super Mario and his brother Luigi could have beaten me at basketball (as long as they ate magical mushrooms), I had to turn to this game to feel like an NBA star. It eventually taught me how to shoot three-pointers from the corner, except in… well, you know… real basketball games.

NHL ’94, Sega.

I dominated this game. Whether I played as the Campbell Conference All-Stars or the weaker L.A. Kings or the awful Winnipeg Jets, I would beat all opponents. Even if I had a midterm I hadn’t studied for the next day and it was 2am, I always made time for this game. This was the version earlier than the one made famous in Swingers (“I can make Gretzky’s head bleed”).

Contra, Nintendo.

When people ask me where I developed my lifetime hatred of South American terrorists and alien life-forms hell-bent on human destruction, I cite this game. My friend Resnick and I used to record our games on my VCR and then watch them in order to analyze our skills and improve. Ballplayers call this behavior “watching film”. We called it “we have no girlfriends”.

Snafu, Intellivision.

This game and console are so old most people reading this weren’t even born when they went out of business. But I remember taking trips to Northern California to visit my uncle and aunt and playing this game for hours. It pretty much involved manipulating a snake-like figure that grew longer so it wouldn’t crash into itself. My sister and I fought over the controller every time we played but, luckily, I was bigger and would pound her if she took too long to play.

“Oh no, no. Too high, it’s too high.” — Cleveland Indians fan Ross Farmer tracking the flight path of a homerun, in Major League.

While watching my L.A. Dodgers pound the natty Nats 5-0 last night at RFK, I overheard two middle-aged men sitting behind me talking out of their collective ass.

Not literally, of course; but enough inane comments to nearly make me turn around and address them.

“Have you seen Fever Pitch?” one of them said. “That’s a great movie.”

Wince.

“He was safe by a mile,” after Ryan Church got caught stealing in the 2nd inning, even after television replays showed him out by a step.

Groan.

“I was rooting for Duke.”

Idiot.

There really should be three guarantees in life: death, taxes, and baseball fans saying stupid things. Attend any ball game and you’ll hear pseudo-managers argue obtusely about topics like the Yankees’ payroll, interleague play, and sabermetrics.

Or you’ll hear fans question a team’s strategy, the umpires’ calls, and baseball trivia — usually contrary to the facts.

Football may have its Monday-morning quarterback phenomenon, but baseball has more fan-based, second-guessing and ersatz expertise than any other sport. We like to think we know what we’re talking about; baseball and the nature of its provincial beginnings bring out that need probably more than any other sport.

P.S. Last night’s Dodgers win raised the ballclub’s all-time record to 9,389-8,542, a winning percentage of .524. Just in case you were wondering. Here are some reasons why some of us bleed Dodger Blue:

Photo credit: Cakeplow.com

When I was in junior high school, I had a bully. I called him My Bully because, like the ubiquitous My Buddy commercials of the 1980s, wherever I went, he went.

I had severe acne then and every day in P.E., My Bully reminded me that my pizza face was unacceptable. Also, he made himself quite clear that my ability to get better grades than he would not be tolerated.

As punishment for having hormone-charged sebaceous glands and a superior intellect, My Bully would push me to the ground and call me a FAG, which, for some ironic reason, stood for “Female Ass Grabber”. One day, I questioned his logic in front of the entire class and wondered if that made him a “Male Ass Grabber”.

This reverse psychoanalysis must have confused My Bully because I never did get an answer, only a violent shove. But it worked. He left me alone.

The problem with modern bullying is that kids rely too much on the instant gratification of hitting someone. Psychological warfare, though, can be a much more satisfying tactic if applied correctly.

My friend GoPats was a self-described bully when he was 11-years-old, but not in a physical way.

“I tended to dominate the conversation and get laughs at other people’s expense, kind of like I do now,” he told me.

I asked him if mental bullying was better than its physical counterpart.

“It takes more brains,” he responded. “Psychologically tormenting someone takes a little more thought. Walking by and punching someone is stupid.”

When my future kid gets picked on –- and he will — I’m not going to treat it like an ABC After School Special and tell him to talk it out with His Bully or that he’s just more scared than he is or any of that other Growing Pains bullshit..

Instead, I’ll help him design a fool-proof retaliation strike aimed at emotionally scarring the bully.

And if that doesn’t work, I’ll teach him how to trim bansai trees and enter him into the All-Valley Karate Tournament.

After all, not every bully has parents as awesome as this mom.

Photo credit: Frank Bellino/The Press-Enterprise

Two days in a row, Wonkette? I’m blushing.

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During an afternoon coffee smoke break yesterday, I overheard a woman answer her cell phone and repeat “Hello?” seven times – SEVEN TIMES — to an obviously dead line.

I instantly flashed back to when I was 15 and my friend Riback and I would while away lazy summer afternoons playing Telephone Baseball.

Telephone Baseball, for those of you who actually had dates when you were teenagers, is a game in which you dial random people from the phone book, wait for them to pick up, and don’t say a word. You then count how many times he/she says “Hello?” before hanging up and giving the number a predetermined, corresponding value equivalent to a baseball event.

For example, if the unsuspecting mope said “Hello?” once, it was an out. Twice, a single. Three, two outs; four, a double, etc. Getting ten “Hellos?” was a homerun, if I remember correctly.

In the grand scheme of teenage pranks, Telephone Baseball was pretty harmless. I always loved it when I dialed a crotchety old man who would holler into the phone about “snot-nosed punks”, his Medicaid, or “that bastard Wilford Brimley”.

As a result, my personal policy on answering the phone these days is to say “Hello?” one time and, if I don’t hear anything, hanging up — for fear that I, in turn, might be getting pranked by someone like me.

Other pranks my stupid friends and I played when we were teens were Ding Dong Ditch (ringing someone’s doorbell and running away, repeatedly); throwing pennies at passing cars and hiding behind newspaper boxes; and stealing Playboys and Hustlers from the local am/pm convenience store.

Don’t look at me like that. This is what you do when you grow up in the LA suburbs.

What pranks did you pull?

As I write this, Catalina Island is burning.

Marine helicopters are fighting the blaze and rescue workers are evacuating the small, mostly tourist island located roughly 20 miles off the LA coast. The fire broke out yesterday in the hills near Avalon, the island’s only city. The photo above is a Google hybrid map and the arrow shows the distance between my hometown of Woodland Hills and Catalina Island.

I went to visit the island for the first time nearly three years ago with Papi, Hermanita, and Hermano. We rented a golf cart and toured the island (no cars are allowed), did some sightseeing, and my brother nearly got arrested on the ferry ride home when he sassed an arrogant Homeland Security officer.

Tourism is Catalina’s only industry. When we were there, we spent money on food, karaoke (my dad sang Help! by the Beatles), and air hockey. This Mother’s Day weekend was supposed to be a cash cow for the island and now they’re fielding calls from visitors who don’t understand why their reservations won’t be honored.

This is a video my brother and sister shot while chasing me in the golf cart. I know it looks like I’m running like a girl but, in my defense, I was running downhill and trying to evoke pathos by acting like a dork (not much of a stretch, I know).

When I was 18, I went out “cruising” with some friends on Halloween night. Cruising is what kids in LA do when they have a car, little money, and less imagination.

We drove by Lucky Supermarkets and spotted a lone employee in the parking lot collecting shopping carts. As we drove by, my friend threw an egg that smacked him square between the eyes. I turned to look, and the guy had the same expression as Kenneth when Dr. McDreamy threw shit at his house in Can’t Buy Me Love.

Though I didn’t throw the egg and chastised my friend for doing so, I feel guilty about that moment every time I think about the poor kid’s face. I put myself in his shoes and imagine working on Halloween night at a crappy job, dragging those carts around, only to get splattered by a flying egg as a car full of obnoxious fuckwads speeds off, laughing at my humiliation.

But why does this guilt last?

I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life of which I’m ashamed. But this small, perhaps trivial moment, seems to stand out from most of the others. If this were a movie, I’d probably die but find myself wallowing in Purgatory until I was able to make amends with the guy. If it were Greek mythology, I’d be Sisyphus, carrying my burdensome memory up the proverbial hill.

My friend Cagey has a similar story about stealing a rock from an old lady’s rock collection when she was younger.

“I used to deliver the newspaper to her house every Sunday and would always be tempted to touch the black shiny rocks she had lined up on her porch,” Cagey told me recently. “One Sunday, I couldn’t resist and instead of just touching it, I quickly took one and shoved it in my pocket.

“I always imagined her crying over her missing rock, but never had the courage to return it. Silly thing to feel guilty over, but it still eats me up inside.”

I suppose it’s empathy that causes us such deep emotions over these “silly things”. We feel what our victims felt, we remember their pain, we understand their hurt. This, in turn, is the source of our anguish.

*The title is a reference to Ayn Rand, who said, “Guilt is a rope that wears thin.”