Eight songs into U2’s new album, and there it is: the silvery thrum of the Edge’s electric guitar, echoing into infinity as Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. lock into a driving groove and Bono starts crooning about how “love’s the hardest easy thing.”
More than any other passage on “Carnaval de Luz,” which dropped Friday, the beginning of “The Greatest Show on Earth” is instantly identifiable as the work of these four veteran musicians — and clearly an assertion, 50 years after they formed the group, that they’ve still got it.
Except, hold on: What’s that Bono sings when he gets to the song’s sweeping chorus?
If this is love, don’t act surprised when you get hurt
Even if our dreams lay in the dirt
We were once the greatest show on Earth
Stuck in a moment you can get out of — that’s the spirit of U2’s 16th studio LP, a grippingly honest if typically idealistic meditation on the value of a rock ’n’ roll band at the end of history.
The quartet’s first album of new songs in nearly a decade, “Carnaval de Luz” might easily have not happened: After touring the world to celebrate the 30th anniversary of “The Joshua Tree,” Mullen was in such bad shape physically (thanks to a long-standing neck injury) that he sat out U2’s residency at the Las Vegas Sphere in 2023 and 2024. And even if the drummer was able to play — a necessary precondition, his bandmates have said, for the group to make a record — it’s not as though anyone was clamoring for one after the increasingly tedious “Songs of Innocence”/“Songs of Experience”/“Songs of Surrender” project.
But then Mullen met a young neurosurgeon willing to perform a risky surgery; back together as a foursome, U2 found enough inspiration in various global outrages — Gaza, Ukraine, the state-sponsored killing of Renée Good — to bust out a couple of surprise EPs early this year.
Having worked through an animating fury, “Carnaval de Luz” aims for what the Edge has called “defiant joy,” which I’m sorry to say yields some deeply embarrassing lyrics.
“I see a summer down the road of songs and a silver sea,” Bono sings in “Can’t Stop Us Now,” “Where the rainbow refuses the gold, and that’s revolutionary.” In “Superficiality,” he proclaims, “You and me are breaking news because the news can’t break us.” (Bro.)
Yet what comes through is U2’s earnest belief that these songs matter — that the band has something to offer a world in crisis, even if that something is just a righteously crunchy guitar riff, as in “La Reina” and the title track, or a soaring vocal melody like those in “Superficiality” and “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Indeed, Bono sounds better here than he has in years — supple and sensual but with just the right touch of desperation — which bodes well for the band’s 2027 stadium tour.
The achievement of “Carnaval de Luz” is an emotional state somewhere between nostalgic and thirsty; the music seems to know more about life (and death) than it actually says, at least until the album’s closer, “Torn.” Recorded shortly before Dolly Parton’s death in August, it’s a stirring yet unflowery duet between her and Bono about a mother who has no idea how to get her warring sons to reconcile.
The song’s beauty is in its intertwined voices; its wisdom is in its acceptance that no fix is assured.
Even before Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman won her campaign for mayor, residents in her Hollywood Hills district had begun talking about who might run to replace her after she’s sworn in to her new job next month.
But now, with the dust settled on Raman’s mayoral victory, community leaders have begun prepping for a different type of political fight: making sure the City Council moves forward with a special election for Raman’s seat.
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said this week that the council won’t make a decision on the vacancy until next year. Raman, for her part, has not said whether she would want a special election for her 4th District seat, which stretches from Silver Lake to the west San Fernando Valley.
Anastasia Mann, president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council, said she has received numerous calls from people across Raman’s district worried the council will skip a special election and instead select someone to fill the seat until the end of 2028.
The council made a similar move several years ago, appointing legislative aide Heather Hutt to serve as a voting member after the indictment of then-Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas on corruption charges.
“We just want to have a voice. That’s the way the system is supposed to work,” Mann said. “It’s not like we have six months left in her term. We have half of the term left.”
On Wednesday, the Encino Property Owners Assn. voted unanimously to ask Raman, Harris-Dawson and the rest of the council to hold a special election so that voters can choose their next representative.
“Any other way is essentially backroom anointment,” said Rob Glushon, the group’s president. “We won’t accept an anointment.”
A coalition of neighborhood and business leaders from across the district is scheduled to meet on the issue this week.
The council has the power to call a special election for a vacant seat, installing a nonvoting caretaker in the interim, said Josué Marcus, a spokesperson for the city clerk’s office. The council also could appoint an interim replacement, one with voting power, to fill a seat until a special election is held and those results are finalized, he said.
The council also could appoint a voting member to fill the seat until the end of Raman’s term, which concludes in December 2028.
Harris-Dawson declined to say whether he has a preference for any of those options.
“We haven’t ruled anything out,” he said in an interview.
Raman takes office as mayor Dec. 14. The council is scheduled to go on winter recess the following day. Harris-Dawson said Tuesday that he does not plan on having the council decide how to fill Raman’s vacant seat until after the council returns from the holiday break.
Stella Stahl, a Raman spokesperson, said her office has already received a policy briefing on “potential pathways forward.” Raman, she said, believes that district residents deserve effective representation and “continuity of services.”
“She looks forward to a thoughtful process that puts their interests first,” Stahl said in an email.
In 2022, the council selected Hutt, a former state legislative staffer, to temporarily replace Ridley-Thomas as a voting council member as he fought federal corruption charges. The following year, after Ridley-Thomas had been convicted and forced from office, the council reappointed Hutt to serve out the remainder of his term.
Hutt won her own election to represent the South L.A. district in 2024.
After the abrupt resignation of Council President Nury Martinez in 2022, then-Council President Mitch O’Farrell designated the office of the chief legislative analyst, which advises the council on policy matters, to serve as the nonvoting caretaker of her vacant seat until a special election could be held. Her replacement, Imelda Padilla, was elected the following year.
Councilmember Traci Park , who represents part of the Westside, said the council shouldn’t make any decision without first hearing from Raman’s constituents.
“I strongly urge the Council President to engage directly with CD4 leaders and residents to discuss their needs and vision for the next two years,” she said in a statement. “Whether it’s an appointment, election or both, residents deserve a say in their future.”
Leo Daube, a spokesperson for Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, said his boss believes that district voters “should have the opportunity to decide who they want to represent them on the city council, and that there should be a special election as soon as possible.”
“She does not believe a candidate for that seat should be appointed by the City Council before a special election is held,” Daube said in a statement.
On the eastern end of Raman’s district, Debra Matlock, president of the Los Feliz Improvement Assn., said she too believes that a special election should be held. She recommended that the council appoint one of Raman’s staffers to serve as the district’s caretaker in the intervening six to nine months.
Meanwhile, at least two people are looking to run for Raman’s seat.
Jimmy Biblarz, who served as a senior advisor and campaign counsel to Raman’s mayoral campaign, said he is prepared to launch a campaign if a special election is called. A resident of Hollywood, he said he is focused for now on putting together next month’s mayoral inauguration ceremony.
Deputy City Atty. Ethan Weaver, who lost to Raman in 2024, said he too would run for the seat if a special election were held.
LONDON — A satirical dystopian novel whose themes of “catastrophe and apocalypse” chime with our uneasy times won the Booker Prize on Monday, the first work of science fiction to take the prestigious literary award.
British writer M. John Harrison was awarded the 50,000-pound ($67,000) prize at a ceremony in London for “The End of Everything,” a book the judges said combines “huge ambition” and “extraordinary, expert writing.”
Harrison beat five other finalists including previous winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James, who had been the oddsmakers’ favorites, and Pulitzer Prize laureate Elizabeth Strout.
“The End of Everything” is set on England’s Channel coast in the near future, after an unspecified calamity has shattered society and brought an influx of enigmatic alien entities to Britain. It centers on a beachcomber who lives with his gun-toting aunt and discovers a puzzling, shape-shifting artifact on the shore.
Asked what he wanted to convey to readers, Harrison said: “It’s a grim world, and it’ll keep on being grim. And it’s weird. But at the end of things there may be some kind of — I wouldn’t say hope, or closure, but there might be some kind of relief.”
Critics have praised the book’s dark humor, though some have been confused by its elusive narrative.
Historian Mary Beard, who chaired the judging panel, said the book is “the politics of now seen through the lens of the future,” and about a society “undergoing a catastrophe that they don’t really understand.”
“What he does is to say, when the catastrophe comes, you won’t know what’s happening,” Beard said. “And there are bits where you, the reader, are with the characters in not fully understanding. Now, I think that’s fantastically exciting.”
Harrison’s work includes large dollops of fantasy and speculative fiction, and he won the Arthur C. Clarke science fiction award for a previous novel, “Nova Swing.” Although borders between publishing genres are increasingly blurred, it’s still rare for a work of sci-fi to win a major literary prize.
Harrison said before he won that he had been “working for 40 to 50 years to shift the balance, both as a novelist and as a critic. Why shouldn’t a well-written (work of science fiction) be considered to be literary fiction?”
Booker Prize Foundation Chief Executive Gaby Wood noted that the prize has removed references to “literary fiction” from its materials, because “all fiction is literary.”
Beard said Harrison’s win was “recognition of what some people would see as the blindingly obvious, that you find great books in every genre.”
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to English-language novels from any country published in the U.K. and Ireland and has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers.
Its winners have included Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Arundhati Roy. Last year’s winner was “Flesh” by Hungarian-British writer David Szalay.
Harrison, 81, is the oldest writer to win the Booker, two years older than Margaret Atwood when she won in 2019. “The End of Everything” is his 13th novel. But Beard said the prize was definitely “not a lifetime achievement award.”
“We thought this was a book that had earned it,” Beard said.
She said the judges, who included poet Raymond Antrobus and singer Jarvis Cocker from the band Pulp, met for four or five hours to pick a winner, and the choice was ultimately unanimous.
“There was a lot of discussion and disagreement and debate, but nobody stomped off,” she said.
From the time I met a guy playing a violin near Pershing Square in 2005, and followed him to the Skid Row slab of pavement where he spent his nights, I’ve listened closely to what mayors promised to do about homelessness in Los Angeles.
All of them were going to fix the problem.
Antonio Villaraigosa.
Eric Garcetti.
Karen Bass.
None of them came close.
Each of those mayors invested vast sums of money and manpower and each of them made inroads. To be fair, they collectively helped thousands of people turn their lives around. But the problem is not finite, the waves keep coming, and more than 40,000 people are currently homeless in the city.
That’s one of the primary reasons Mayor-elect Nithya Raman will get a chance to do what her predecessors could not. In the most recent year of accounting, homelessness increased slightly in the city but declined significantly in Raman’s council district.
So Bass is out, and Raman is in after a contentious campaign in which Raman attacked the Bass strategy (which she helped implement) as too costly and ineffective.
“Here’s my promise,” Raman said in a video on her campaign website. “When I’m mayor, we’ll cut tents and encampments in half by the Olympics, and bring everyone in tents and encampments indoors by the end of my first term.”
Really?
Bear with me, because I’m about to explain why I have some hope that Raman might do a better job on homelessness than her predecessors. But I cringe when I hear such grandiose proclamations.
Why?
In 2006, I attended a Skid Row news conference where a gaggle of politicians including Villaraigosa touted a 10-year plan to end homelessness in L.A. County.
In 2013, Garcetti vowed to end chronic homeless, and in 2018, he said: “We can cut this problem in half in five years. And in 10 years … we can end life on the street.”
In 2023, Bass told a CNN audience that by the end of her term as mayor: “My goal would be, really, to end street homelessness. … There’ll still be people in shelters and interim housing, but to at least not have people dying on our streets.”
Have you noticed how these kinds of amped-up promises have played out?
I don’t mean to discourage lofty goals, but we’ve been let down time after time, feeding cynicism. We’re just looking for significant progress, not a miracle.
The hard truth is that homelessness is the result of a raft of problems beyond any mayor’s full control. It begins with an economy built for stark disparity, with the crippling cost of housing, and with untreated mental illness and drug addiction. A mayor can’t magically clear the decks without help from federal, state and county allies, and from strong partnerships on the City Council.
But none of that excuses the paltry returns on big investments. Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe program moved about 6,000 people into motels and other forms of interim housing as of this past spring at a cost of $300 million, and 41% of them had returned to homelessness by the end of May.
Raman wants to mothball that program and use short-term rental vouchers she claims will be far less expensive and more effective. She wants to open doors for City Controller Kenneth Mejia to audit every dollar spent on homelessness. She says she’ll demand a full accounting of county services, use Medi-Cal funds for more street medicine teams, invest in shared housing and case management.
“City Hall has put together a patchwork of programs, agencies, and dollars that were never required to prove they work together, or work at all,” Raman says on her homelessness strategy page. “No agency or program has been required to demonstrate results. No department or office has been put in charge of monitoring the spending.”
Putting a plan on paper is one thing. Pushing it through the teeth of the City Hall grinder without the wholesale shredding of good intentions is a tougher trick. And it remains to be seen whether Raman can wrangle the support of council members who shunned her and unanimously endorsed Bass.
But Raman has a few things going for her, including a penchant for defying expectations. She blitzed two incumbents, first to win a council seat and then to bounce Bass. Then there’s her urban planning education and her work as one of the co-founders of the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition. That gave her a street-level study of the challenge as well as the disjointed government response, and she then led the City Council’s homelessness committee.
“I think that situational awareness” will serve her well, said Louis Abramson, a Hollywood resident and Rand researcher who serves as chair of the SELAH board. “She’ll be able to argue from a perspective of expertise.”
Abramson is also hoping Raman will be able to deliver more affordable housing.
“She’s … proven to be uniquely tolerant of the political risks of being a YIMBY, of making Los Angeles a place that can fit everybody who wants to live here,” Abramson said.
At SELAH, and in Raman’s council district, building meaningful relationships with clients has been a central mission. That’s not always fast or easy. Some people are ready to reach for a helping hand; others are severely damaged in multiple ways, and it takes time.
I learned long ago that recovery is not linear. Sometimes it’s one step forward and two steps back. And as one social worker suggested to me, we’re so preoccupied with getting people in the front door, we barely notice when they slip out the back door.
Reversing homelessness does not end with a temporary address. Long-term case management is critical, and so is a sense of purpose and belonging. The formerly homeless people I recently met at Chrysalis, all of them working now, and all of them housed, were a testament to this idea.
I’d love to see Raman find more ways to turn able-bodied homeless people into a workforce that can help address the city’s many needs. I’d love to see her encourage more people to contribute by volunteering for organizations like SELAH, or for faith-based groups and non-profits.
Nathaniel Ayers works on music in his nursing home quarters, inspired by fellow Cleveland native Halle Berry.
(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)
In the case of my friend Nathaniel, the musician, it took me, his friends in the L.A. Phil and various outreach workers a year to convince him to move indoors 21 years ago. He is in a nursing home now, where he listens to music for hours every day and has kept a gallery of photos on his wall, including Beethoven, Bach, and another person with a “B” last name.
Actress Halle Berry.
“She’s beautiful,” Nathaniel said one day when we were going over a list of famous people from Cleveland, his hometown, and he decided that Berry deserved a prominent place on his wall of fame.
My relationship with Nathaniel, Abramson said, “is not an ancillary thing. It is THEE thing. I have come to believe that the human relationship is the necessary pre-condition to this working out.”
True enough, we are too predisposed to think of the ongoing human catastrophe in purely statistical terms. But there’s more truth in people’s stories than in their status, and more community buy-in when we recognize ourselves in each other.
For the 40,000 Nathaniels of Los Angeles, and nearly 4 million of their neighbors, here’s hoping the next mayor of Los Angeles can make a difference.
That’s what I initially thought when a political novice named Nithya Raman upset an incumbent in 2020 to become the first democratic socialist elected to the Los Angeles City Council.
That’s what I felt when Raman weathered well-funded challengers and loudmouth opponents to win reelection outright in the 2024 primary, despite representing a district redrawn to her disadvantage.
Bold was Raman filing to run for mayor just before the deadline. Taking on her ally Karen Bass, an L.A. institution she had endorsed just weeks earlier. Angering members of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, who hadn’t planned to mount a mayoral campaign this year. Calling out L.A. establishment shibboleths like the pricey Convention Center renovation.
Picking Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” as a campaign theme song despite its stark lyrics of urban despair. Dancing with all the grace of Elaine from “Seinfeld” on primary night, despite being in third place at the time.
“Bold,” I texted a friend when we found out Raman was holding her Nov. 3 election night party at the Greek Theatre — either a brilliant move that would mark the start of a new day for L.A., or the worst venue choice for a political loser since Hillary Clinton threw her 2016 party in a hotel ballroom with a glass ceiling.
Bold was all Raman had going for her. Bass raised more funds and was backed by L.A.’s blue establishment. Haters, from the Los Angeles Police Protective League to the California Post to her fellow City Council members, painted Raman as an immature, insecure pinko wimp who didn’t know L.A. and barely could do her job, let alone run one of the world’s great cities.
But Raman didn’t stop. She left the hipster areas of the city where democratic socialists have found a base and campaigned in districts represented by council members who openly loathed her. She trotted out her imperfect Spanish to show that she wanted to reach Angelenos in any way possible and was vulnerable enough to reveal that she still was learning. Raman even teared up in public, which City Hall insiders have long mocked her for, when crying in the name of trying for a better L.A. is as bold as you can get.
Bold is what this metropolis needs. And bold is what Los Angeles is going to get now that Raman has taken out Bass in a campaign for the ages.
Critics will downplay the victory as more a verdict on a deeply unpopular mayor than an embrace of Raman — a tree stump could have trounced Bass, they’re already saying. But that’s not what heavyweights who have long aspired to become mayor — like billionaire developer Rick Caruso, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez — were thinking when they had the chance to run this year and chose not to.
They saw the road to City Hall as too dangerous to risk their reputations on a potential loss. They weren’t bold.
I can’t say I saw any of this coming. I did call Raman the comeback kid of L.A. politics in a September columna, as indefatigable a politician as I’ve ever covered. But she spent the last month of her campaign apologizing for easily preventable gaffes that seemed to confirm all the skepticism about her. The attacks against Raman became nastier and more relentless, while Bass glommed on to anyone she thought might get her more votes, from walking alongside Caruso to standing next to future governor Xavier Becerra at Homegirl Cafe the day before the election.
I told a friend on the morning of the election that Bass probably was going to win. Angelenos wouldn’t be brave enough to go with Raman. As I wrote just a few weeks ago, Los Angeles has long gone with the old for mayor, when it could have gone bold.
Not this time.
Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman, left, embraces her father, Venkit Raman, during an election night party at Boomtown Brewery.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
As mayor, Raman will need to be bolder than ever. Angelenos yearn for safer streets, an end to homelessness, a renewal of the dreamland that the city has represented for more than a century. They want less of the bureaucracy that has slowed down rebuilding in Pacific Palisades and made running a small business more of a punishment than a reward. They don’t want someone beholden to any ideology other than that the City of Angels needs to be heaven again.
Raman will assume office with nearly half of those who voted, not to mention the entire City Council, having supported her opponent. She needs to go in with the humility to convince naysayers, the conviction to get rid of things and people that aren’t making L.A. better, the smarts to keep what works, the courage to defy the DSA and the vision to make the city believe in itself once again.
Above all, Raman needs to be bold enough to not become another Karen Bass.
The lifelong Angeleno used to be bold when she was an activist in South L.A. pioneering multiracial coalitions and taking on the old guard. She was an effective Assembly member and Congress member. But City Hall sucked out her creativity, her optimism, her drive. She became cautious, then negative. By the end of the race, Bass seemed to be running only so she could say she kept away another DSA insurgent as a final gift to the city.
Bright-eyed outsiders drowning in the swamp — that’s the story of L.A. politics. It’s a story Raman needs to show can come to an end.
“Bold” ultimately is having hope that you can be the one who breaks systems that need to be obliterated. That was the other big note Raman incessantly hit during her campaign, culminating in her election night speech at the Greek.
“Hopelessness can be fatal for a city,” she told an adoring crowd that kept getting bigger and bigger until security closed off the entrances. “But this campaign refused to accept that. You refuse to accept that. You saw hopelessness, and you chose hope.”
Ian McKellen is saying goodbye to his dear friend Patrick Stewart.
Stewart, the storied actor whose performances spanned comic book films, Shakespearean stage productions and sci-fi TV, died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. He was 86. While tributes from former co-stars across the “X-Men” films and “Star Trek” franchise poured in, fans of Stewart were keeping a close eye out for McKellen’s remarks, as the two had a famously close friendship, often on full display with red-carpet smooches and pally interviews.
On Thursday, McKellen posted a tribute to Stewart.
“Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end,” McKellen’s statement began. “You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.”
Although the two had known each other since they were young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s, Stewart said he initially was too shy to approach McKellen, but was “impressed.” Stewart said the two had “X-Men” to thank for their close bond. On set, the two had trailers that were next door to each other, and with time to kill between filming, they would head next door and chat for hours.
“It was a delight for me to find that the enthusiasms and passions that I’d had all my life were shared by Ian,” the late actor said in a 2014 interview. When asked to write a hashtag that summed up their bromance, Stewart wrote #Aren’twelucky, and McKellen wrote #eternal.
In addition to playing rivals across multiple “X-Men” films, Patrick and McKellen starred together in “Waiting for Godot” and “No Man’s Land” on Broadway and London’s West End.
“We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions,” McKellen’s tribute continued. “My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in ‘Star Trek.’”
McKellen recalled saying, “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk—getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”
“Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did for not just his devoted Trekkies but film and theatre audiences, who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes (‘X-Men’ of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.”
In 2014, Stewart admitted to Broadway.com that he was envious of McKellen for both his university education and his hair.
“Ian knows and he thinks I’m foolish to feel this way,” he said. “Ian went to Cambridge and my formal schooling ended when I was 15. I envy that, but I also envy your head of hair. If only because in the two plays you don’t wear a wig and yet you manage to make your hairstyle look completely different … I envy that whereas I have to stick on a wig.”
McKellen responded by telling Stewart that he was gorgeous with and without the wig.
In 2013, Stewart married longtime girlfriend Sunny Ozell in a Lake Tahoe ceremony that McKellen officiated.
“America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin. But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.”
McKellen and Stewart star together again in the forthcoming “Avengers: Doomsday,” which hits theaters Dec. 18.
Dodgers left-hander Blake Snell, sitting next to soon-to-be free agent Tarik Skubal at their lockers in the aftermath of their team’s elimination from the National League Championship Series elimination, made a promise:
“I’ll be recruiting,” he interjected with a smile, as Skubal declined to comment on free agency, saying it was too soon to try to predict what the future would hold for him.
That would be Snell’s side project between rounds of video games — 2K specifically. (Skubal admittedly “sucks” at the game, but Snell says his teammate “has heart, though.” The rest can be taught.)
The expected lockout, and MLB’s insistence on a salary cap in their CBA proposals, have also cast doubt on what the system will look like next year — whenever the season begins.
Not to mention, the stars in the Dodgers’ lineup, already the oldest in the majors (weighted by at-bats and games played), will be another year older.
Could this be the end of an era?
“I don’t feel that at all,” Skubal said. “It’s hard to win the World Series, and this group has done it the last two seasons. Obviously, not this year, but … I think that this group is incredibly talented. And the preparation and the work ethic that this group has — I don’t buy into that narrative.”
Said Snell: “We’re only getting better.”
Plenty of people outside of the Dodgers’ downcast clubhouse Thursday evening saw the Brewers’ four-game sweep of the defending back-to-back champions as the fall of a dynasty. But the players inside fervently disagreed.
“When you have Shohei Ohtani on your team, Yoshinbou Yamamoto, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and the years ahead of these guys, you can never think that it’s going to be the end,” Rojas said. “And I know this organization so well, they’re not going to be satisfied with this loss. I think they’re going to move forward and continue to improve the team in any capacity, and I believe that we’re going to be even better next year.”
Said Hernández: “I don’t know what’s going to happen with me personally, moving forward for next year. But this team is well-positioned to keep winning and keep competing deep into October. So not only is this locker room very talented, but there’s a lot of guys knocking on the door in the minor-league system that can be really impactful players. So the organization is in good hands.”
Rookie Josue De Paula showed down the stretch, and with his plate discipline even in high-octane moments in the postseason, just how impactful the young players in the Dodgers’ system could be. And there are more behind him.
This offseason, the Dodgers front office will try to strike a balance between continuity and fresh faces. For some of their impending free agents, who spoke highly of the organization, that meant uncertainty in the immediate aftermath.
“I love this place,” Hernández said. “I’ve played for three other teams, but every time I look at my career, I obviously go back to this place. I’ve been here the longest. I hope I get back. I feel like I have a lot left. … I would love to have one more try, trying to win another one. But I don’t really know what’s going to happen.”
Vesia, too, said he’d love to return.
“From the coaching staff, to the front office, to the players that have taken me under their wing, have helped mold and shape me into who I am and how I carry myself, how I go about my business,” Vesia said of his six years in the organization. “And if it wasn’t for the people in this room, I would not be where I’m at today. So, very thankful. This whole experience has been life-changing.”
Skubal is in a unique situation. In line to be the top free agent pitcher in this year’s class, he held his cards closer to the vest. But he gave a glowing review of his time with the Dodgers.
“It was an honor and a privilege to be here and compete with these guys, and to wear L.A. across your hat and across your chest,” he said. “It’s something that I took a lot of pride in. And, obviously, didn’t end the way that I wanted it to. But that’s life. That’s baseball. I had a ton of fun here, and I loved competing with these guys.”
It’s understandable that the P.A. announcer at St. John Bosco High on Friday night misspoke after seeing Mosley’s brother, Grant, catch a 49-yard touchdown pass for Santa Margarita and run like Trent in a showdown game between the No. 1 Eagles and No. 2 Braves.
“Pretty good,” Trent, USC’s star freshman receiver, said on the sideline when asked about Grant’s touchdown. “He’s healthy.”
As if unbeaten Santa Margarita (8-0) didn’t have enough weapons, the return of Grant Mosley after two seasons of dealing with a shoulder injury means it’s time for opponents to start feeling very uncomfortable.
“I’m back,” Grant announced afterward.
Santa Margarita won its 15th consecutive game in defeating St. John Bosco 21-7.
“He looked great,” coach Carson Palmer said.
“We knew when as he got healthier, he was going to be a threat,” St. john Bosco coach Jason Negro said. “He’s a dynamic player like his brother.”
Santa Margarita High sophomore Rayshawn Brandon returns an interception 51 yards for a touchdown Friday night against St. John Bosco.
(Craig Weston)
The touchdown pass happened during a trick play, in which quarterback Fletch Palmer handed the ball to Adrian Petero, who lateraled the ball back to Palmer, who threw a perfect spiral down the middle to Mosley. That play was Santa Margarita royalty at its best — a Mosley catching a touchdown pass from a Palmer, the son of the head coach.
It gave Santa Margarita a 21-7 lead in the third quarter.
“What a pass,” Carson Palmer said. “What execution. What protection.”
Santa Margarita came up with two interceptions in the first half leading to two touchdowns and a 14-7 halftime lead.
After St. John Bosco (6-2) had taken a 7-0 lead on a 28-yard touchdown catch by Kuika Moaalii, sophomore Rayshawn Brandon picked off a pass by quarterback Koa Malau’ulu, who was rolling to his left under pressure, and returned it 51 yards for a touchdown. Then Ca’ron Williams came up with another interception deep in Braves territory, leading to a one-yard touchdown run by Petero.
At the end of the half, Jaion Smith of Santa Margarita deflected a possible third-down touchdown pass in the end zone and Jake Martin followed by blocking a St. John Bosco field-goal attempt.
Jaion Smith comes through with the defensive play with six seconds left on third down. Then Santa Margarita blocks field goal attempt. Halftime Santa Margarita 14, St. John Bosco 7. Jake Martin block. pic.twitter.com/tmsbW9n7EG
If anything was learned about Santa Margarita last season in its first year under Palmer, it’s that the Eagles have one of the best coaching staffs in the state and keep improving each week. By the end of the 2025 season, Santa Margarita was 35 points better than its closest opponent.
Could a similar situation be occurring now?
Dash Fifita and Trent Mosley out supporting Santa Margarita after playing golf. Trent apparently can hit a 5 iron 200 yards. Need to confirm. pic.twitter.com/ggqMIPms51
“I just feel we have the best staff in the nation,” Grant Mosley said. “So every week, we’re just developing. And we’re still not at our highest state. Once we get to the playoffs, that’s when we’ll be at our best.”
With Trinity League wins over St. John Bosco and Mater Dei, the Eagles have moved into the driver’s seat to win the league title.
Before the game, Carson Palmer was walking around the field feeling excited and confident.
“We’re ready,” he said.
He wasn’t kidding.
As for his brother getting initial credit for the touchdown, Grant said, “Oh well.”
“I’m still not even at my full state yet,” Grant said.
That’s scary coming from a brother with the Mosley genes.
