Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. Thirteen division titles in 14 seasons, and in the year they didn’t win, they had 106 victories. We don’t have a lot to complain about.
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Division titles and Ryan Ward
—The Dodgers won the division title again, clinching it Thursday with their win over the Reds. Remember the olden days of yesteryear when winning the division was a huge deal? Now it is blasé. Dodgers fans live in a time where they have an embarrassment of riches,
Let’s look at how many NL West titles each team has won since divisional play began in 1969:
Dodgers, 24 San Francisco, 9 Cincinnati, 7 Arizona, 5 Atlanta, 5 San Diego, 5 Houston, 2
There was no official winner in 1994, which was ended by a labor dispute.
I guess I’m feeling extra nostalgic today, but I remember growing up the Dodgers’ biggest divisional rival was the Cincinnati Reds, who moved to the Central division in 1994 and have since won a grand total of zero division titles.
If we narrow NL West titles since 2000, we get:
Dodgers, 16 San Francisco, 5 Arizona, 4 San Diego, 2
Poor Colorado.
—The Dodgers made room for pitcher Kris Bubic on the 40-man roster by designating outfielder Ryan Ward for assignment. Ward has been a favorite of newsletter readers for a couple of seasons now, but he really had no place on the team anymore. He’s too old (28) to really be a prospect and his best triple-A season came in his third season at that level. His numbers declined in triple-A this season (you can see his numbers here).
He’s not great defensively, and the team already has corner outfielders who aren’t great defensively. They passed him over for Josue De Paula when they needed someone to fill in for Shohei Ohtani, and there are several outfielders in the system who are considered better than Ward.
In all likelihood, another team will pick him up and give him more playing time in the majors, something he wasn’t going to get with the Dodgers. Hopefully we see him next season in the “There names seem familiar” section of this newsletter.
Evidence of Dave Roberts’ growth
One of the knocks on Dave Roberts has always been his poor postseason managing. But his postseason managing has dramatically improved the last few seasons, and I’m not just saying that because they won the last two World Series. His decisions appear to not always be guided by analytics, like they are during the regular season. And it appears Roberts has indeed learned some things during his tenure. He recently appeared on the 6-1-1 podcast, hosted by former major leaguers Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, and had this to say:
“When you’re talking about winning 11 games in October, I couldn’t believe more that it’s about people, and players you can bet on,” Roberts said. “The heartbeat that the analytics doesn’t line up with. I think that early on, my mistake was I continued to use that same method of the regular season in the postseason….
He also had high praise for two of his players.
“Mookie has said to me, ‘Doc, we wouldn’t have won the World Series if it wasn’t for Shohei and Yamamoto. And his point was, the discipline that they had every single day, how they worked with intention every single day … it raised the level even higher for our guys.”
Forgotten Dodger: Pete Reiser
Pete Reiser in 1941.
(Associated Press)
Pete Reiser never met an outfield fence he didn’t like crashing into and it may have cost him a Hall of Fame career.
Harold Patrick Reiser was born on March 17, 1919, in St. Louis. He loved westerns and as a child often walked around wearing a cowboy hat and carrying toy guns, so people started calling him Pistol Pete, which stuck with him throughout his baseball career.
After playing in 58 games with the Dodgers in 1940, Reiser came into his own in 1941 when he hit a league-leading .343 to go with 117 runs, 39 doubles, 17 triples, 14 homers and 76 RBIs. He also played great defense in center. That got him second place in NL MVP voting behind teammate Dolph Camilli (Reiser should have won). Reiser led the league in nine categories.
He followed that by hitting .310 with 33 doubles and 10 homers in 1942, leading the league with 20 steals and making his second straight All-Star team. However, on July 18 of that year, he crashed full speed into the center-field fence, which was made of concrete, while chasing a fly ball. He ended up with a separated shoulder and fractured skull. In those days though, you didn’t let little things like a fractured skull slow you down. He returned to the lineup a week later, but he wasn’t the same. He hit .244 the rest of the season.
He then enlisted in the Army and spent three years there. In 1944, after a long march in below-zero weather, Reiser was diagnosed with pneumonia. The Army decided to put him in Fort Riley, Kan., so he could play for the camp’s baseball team. With Reiser on the team, they were virtually unbeatable and Reiser was given his own room and excused from all other duties.
Reiser returned to the majors in 1946 and broke his leg while stealing second. He crashed into the fence in St. Louis and missed some time. But he still led the league with 34 steals, though his batting average dropped to .277.
In 1947, he was chasing another fly ball when he crashed into the wall face first. This caused another fractured skull. He was given the Last Rites by a priest in the hospital before making a miraculous recovery. He ended up playing 110 games that season.
He was a bench player the following season, as he had put on a little weight and had been slowed tremendously by his numerous injuries. The Dodgers traded him to the Boston Braves after the season for Nanny Fernandez and Mike McCormick.
By unofficial count, Reiser’s injuries over the years included four fracture skulls, multiple dislocated shoulders, two broken ankles, torn ligaments in both knees and and two beanings. He was carried off the field on a stretcher eleven times—five times when he was unconscious.
He retired after the 1952 season and came back to the Dodger organization as a roving minor-league hitting instructor. He joined Walter Alston’s coaching staff in L.A. in 1960 and helped tutor Maury Wills on how to steal bases. In an interview with this newsletter a few years ago, Wills made sure to give praise to Reiser as being a big part of his 104-steal season.
Reiser had a heart attack in 1965, went on to coach for other teams. He smoked a pack of cigarettes a day throughout his adult life and died of emphysema in Palm Springs in 1981. He was only 62.
The postseason race
Here are the postseason seedings as of Thursday’s games. The three division winners get the top three seeds, followed by the three teams with the best records. The top two division winners get a first-round bye. Milwaukee and the Dodgers have clinched division titles.
Remember, there are no extra games to break ties anymore. It all comes down to tiebreakers. Atlanta and Milwaukee have the tiebreaker over the Dodgers. For the wild card, the Cubs have the advantage over the Phillies, having won six of seven games against each other. The Diamondbacks and Padres have split 10 games, but their final three games this season are against each other, so that very well could determine the final wild-card spot.
These names seem familiar
How notable players who were with the Dodgers the last couple of seasons are doing with their new teams (through Wednesday). Click on the player’s name to be taken to their full stats page:
Anthony Banda, Twins: 2-0, 4.46 ERA, 2 saves, 34.1 IP, 31 hits, 15 walks, 33 K’s, 95 ERA+, out for the season
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
A new plan by California lawmakers to help fund the state’s struggling journalism organizations could advance in the coming days but faces an uncertain future.
Assembly Bill 2222 would create refundable tax credits for California local news organizations based on the number of journalists they employ, which in practice would provide direct cash infusions to participating newsrooms.
The bill, introduced by Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego) earlier this year, is the latest effort to provide a lifeline for the news industry. There has been much talk both in California and globally about government support for journalism. But this is potentially the largest relief plan to date, with the state tax board estimating it would make more than $40 million available to newsrooms annually. The bill passed the Assembly and needs approval from the Senate to reach the governor’s desk.
Publishers, journalists and their unions have long argued that online search and social media platforms are harming the journalism business by eating up advertising revenue while publishing content they don’t pay for.
Previous attempts by California lawmakers focused on forcing Google, Meta and other platforms to pay their share, but this proposal has a unique solution to funding the program.
Ward described the bill as an important step in keeping a strong press corps in California, which he said is more important than ever in an era of digital misinformation.
Ward said the bill would “strengthen democracy” and “keep the lights on” in newsrooms. He cited President Trump’s own attacks on the press. “We thought, ‘What more can California do to help support them?’” he said.
Trump’s efforts to strip public radio and television stations of federal funds and the steep downward profit-losing trend for commercial newsrooms has meant, Ward said, that newsrooms have severely scaled back operations. Rural areas in particular have altogether lost their news sources, with many forced to shut down.
The amount of advertising to local newspapers declined by 82% — a $40 billion drop — since 2000, Pew Research Center said in 2023. And almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, according to an annual report on the state of local news put out by Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school.
A report last year by data firm Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News, a nonprofit advocating for government help for the journalism sector that is sponsoring AB 2222, estimates there has been a 75% decline in the number of local journalists per 100,000 of population in the U.S. since 2002.
The law, if approved, would work by assigning a “job retention credit” of $20,000 per journalist for up to five positions, and after that $15,000 for every additional journalist. Part-time positions would be awarded half-credits. It also stacks an additional $15,000 credit for each new hire, to incentivize expanding journalist headcounts.
To pay for the credits, the bill would amend California’s tax code to align with a little-discussed component of Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill that expanded taxes on some companies by eliminating a deduction for executive salaries of over $1 million annually.
It is common practice for the state to consider aligning its tax code with the federal structure to make filing taxes easier and administering them more cheaply. But California has not yet sought to adopt this federal tax expansion.
As a tax measure, AB 2222 requires approval from a supermajority two-thirds of the Legislature, no easy task in an election year and with a fast-approaching deadline for lawmakers to approve bills Monday, which marks the end of this year’s legislative session.
The California Taxpayers Assn. and groups representing business interests such as the California Chamber of Commerce oppose the bill because it raises taxes on employers that they argue already face billions of dollars in new taxes. They contend that the higher costs will be passed along to consumers, and they also take issue with funneling a new funding source to a niche industry without going through the budget process.
“Financing an industry-specific tax credit with a tax increase on an unrelated group of taxpayers is an unsound way to budget,” the taxpayers association wrote in its letter of opposition.
Republican lawmaker Carl DeMaio of San Diego has vocalized his opposition in discussions of the bill, criticizing the idea of providing funding to outlets that make political endorsements. DeMaio did not provide a response to a request for comment about his current position on the proposal.
The bill’s backers are hopeful it will wriggle through this legislative session and land on the governor’s desk.
Yet they are not sure whether Newsom will sign it. In the past, Newsom has been reluctant to greenlight laws that tinker with the state budget after those fiscal discussions conclude in the first half of the calendar year.
The governor’s finance office issued an analysis opposing the bill for not including a cap on the tax credits, thus creating “unlimited fiscal liability to the state,” and argued the bill mainly subsidizes existing activity rather than encouraging the creation of new jobs.
An analysis by the state’s Franchise Tax Board — the agency that levies personal and corporate income taxes — found that the funding stream would bring $29 million in new revenue to the state’s general fund in the 2026-27 year and $58 million the following year.
Meanwhile, the estimated amount of the tax credit for local news organizations would be $19 million the first year and $43 million the second year. After accounting for the tax credits as well as the administrative costs, the budget would still see a net increase of $10 million and $15 million in those years.
“It’s fully paid for,” said former state senator Steven Glazer, who is a passionate proponent of the bill. Glazer during his Senate term pushed similar legislation that was ultimately shelved in a deal with tech giants.
In recent years California lawmakers have also weighed tax credits for Hollywood jobs. In June, lawmakers approved a major expansion of the funding allocated each year to the state’s film and television tax credit program, moving to raise that cap to $750 million from $330 million. The legislature is also considering a bill that would provide some $100 million in annual funding to post-production work.
The newsroom bill is designed specifically so as to be as neutral as possible on the medium — whether print newspapers, digital news sites, ethnic media or television broadcasters — as well as the business model of the newsroom — whether for-profit, nonprofit or publicly subsidized. The point is to prevent the government from having strong influence or being able to pick winners and losers in the industry, said Matt Pearce, a director of policy for bill sponsor Rebuild Local News, which successfully backed similar legislation in Illinois.
“You have practically the whole range of the local news world represented in some form. Big, little, independent,” Pearce said.
Pearce formerly worked as a reporter at The Times, and served as president of Media Guild of the West, the union that represents Times journalists.
The bill is also supported by the California News Publishers Assn., of which the Los Angeles Times is a member.
Where are Big Brother stars Saskia Howard-Clarke and Maxwell Ward now after they defied critics with their romance off screen?
Saskia Howard-Clarke and Maxwell Ward had a rollercoaster time on Big Brother(Image: Getty Images)
It’s hard to believe, but it is officially 21 years since the sixth season of Big Brother – and arguably one of the most iconic in history – graced our screens.
The competition, which aired in 2005, saw romances galore as winner Anthony Hutton enjoyed a memorable night in the jacuzzi with Makosi Musambasi – which almost led to the first ever Big Brother baby – while Kinga Karolczak got up close and personal with a wine bottle…
Viewers also had a front-row seat to the blossoming bond between Saskia Howard-Clarke and Maxwell Ward, who fell in love in front of the cameras and kept things going long after Davina McCall bid them farewell.
The promotions girl, 23, and the maintenance engineer, 24, both entered the infamous house on the first day, and sparks soon flew. However, while they quickly became besotted, their romance left viewers – and their castmates – divided.
Kemal Shah called the pair out for their closeness in the bedroom, prompting Maxwell to pour water over him, which earned the engineer a stern warning from Big Brother bosses.
However, in scenes slightly reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, they were forced to face off against each other in a Big Brother first after receiving the most nominations from their fellow housemates, meaning they were both up for eviction.
Their romance was briefly put on pause when Saskia axed on day 36, after receiving 71% of the public vote. But it wasn’t long before they were reunited, as her beau was booted out the following week.
The pair dated for over a year, and even purchased a home together, before their relationship came crashing down. Maxwell confirmed their split in an episode of After They Were Housemates in 2007, announcing he was moving out.
Three years later, he appeared to take a swipe at his former flame in a chat with Heat Magazine, claiming that he could have won the show if they had remained single.
“I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but if I hadn’t got with you [Saskia], I would’ve won the show hands down,” he said, via the Sun.
“If I had the time again, and I’m sure you’d say the same thing, I wouldn’t have got with you and you wouldn’t have got with me.”
Touching on his time in the house in an interview in 2020, he said: “You’re going to be propelled to the best looking bird with a massive pair of, you know…
“She was the best of a bad bunch. We were [an item for a white], we bought a house together. When you’re on Big Brother and you meet someone like that, I was insecure. There’s 12million people watching that series.”
While Maxwell has remained out of the spotlight since the show, Saskia embraced the fame and has since worked as a glamour model.
She initially stepped back from the public eye when she became a mum to her son, Phoenix, with her ex-husband, but has since turned to OnlyFans. In a rare 2023 interview, she also revealed that she had found love again on Tinder.
Unpacking her TV romance with Maxwell with the Sun, she said: “He laughed me into bed, that’s the best way to describe it. “He’s a really nice, funny guy and very persistent, I’ll give him that, but time in there is slow, right? I think I was in there for five or six weeks and you’ve been away hiding for two weeks before with no contact with your family, it’s a long time. Then to get close to somebody…
“It happened organically but, listen, if I’d met him on the outside, I don’t mean to be horrible, but he wouldn’t have been my type at all.”
Reflecting on their split, she explained that she found the reaction from the public more difficult than their romance ending for good, adding: “What was frustrating for me was more the ‘told you so. I knew she wouldn’t be with him,’ and I felt bad for him because he had a lot of stick saying that he was punching, which is not nice.”
