The only thing I know about someone named A-Rod is that he's having an affair with Madonna.

This just in ...
 

I started the game late via TiVo. I was skipping through it at a pretty good clip so I could catch up to live and watch the end in HD since our TiVo is not HD. When watching the game like that I tend to miss some of the overall context of what's going on. It took me a few beats to work out why exactly the Dodger Stadium crowd was cheering a double by the Braves.

Realizing he had the perfect game going made Blake Dewitt's sepctacular play in the 7th on Blanco's bunt even more extra awesomer than it already was.

The Dodgers desperately need to make a trade for some starting pitching soon. It was good to see Kuroda at his finest, but their rotation is barely hanging on. It's going to hurt, but they're going to have to make the tough decision and trade one or more of the brigade of awesome young players.

ETA: Oh, and under the heading of, "the defense steps up when the pitcher is pitching well," since when is Angel Berroa able to cover as much ground as he did on that play in the 9th?

I will have to admit that I am not keeping up on the day-to-day as much as I have, but as I was listening to the post-game, there was a lot of discussion about how the Dodger pitching was starting to get into the groove and how the Dodgers were really starting to gel as a "team."

Yes, a groove where the in the 3 game series with the Giants, the starting pitchers in the two games that they WON went a total of 9 innings. Relievers pitched 11 of the 26 innings.

The starting pitchers are doing better in the innings that they're in there, but they just don't have anyone that's been able to consistently give them more than 5 or 6 innings except Kuroda. That's a recipe for destroying even the best bullpen.

Errr??? Wouldn't a double by the braves muck up the perfect game thing? What am I missing here? What was the cheering for?

Acknowledging and applauding the effort of Kuroda and the fact that he made it 7 perfect innings. Standard appreciative crowd response (usually even for a visiting pitcher) in that situation.

Ahh! They were not cheering for the braves double but for Kuroda.

That makes sense now. Thanks.

And, as if to prove that I know baseball, look what happened last night. 4 stellar innings from Billingsly, only to fall apart in the 5th, requiring 4 more tough innings from the 'pen.

Starts like Kuroda's are few and far between. No one expects 1 hit complete games every day. But damn it'd be nice if they could get 2 games in a row where a starter gets them into the 7th. It just doesn't seem likely with the group they have.

Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing last night.