Baseball In The Daytime: Labour Day 2009

My standard line on holidays such as this is a congratulations to those lucky souls who have the day off, and a mockery of those who are at work. Because only loser idiots work on Labor Day. Of course, I always type this boilerplate joke from work, as I do this year. Sigh.

The good news, friends, is that I won't be here much longer. And there's lots and lots of day baseball on today. So much, in fact, that I won't even preview all of it. I'm simply going to tell you which games aren't being played under glorious natural sunshine, and then I'm going to risk a stabbing by deranged SoCal gang members by ripping on the Dodgers. Join us for the bloodshed, after the jump...

The only games being played after 5 p.m. Mountain are Texas @ Cleveland and the second installment of the Bay-Rays/Yankees doubleheader from The Stadium. Everything else is Baseball In The Daytime, God Bless America. ESPN used to saturate this holiday with wall-to-wall horsehide action, but they're wrapped up in some combination of tennis, college football, wakeboarding and Around The Horn.

Luckily the MLB Network has a couple games on. The Sox, Red and White, wrap up their four-game series with a reacharound affair at noon. MLBN also broadcasts that second game of the Yankee doubleheader at 6. You can catch Cubs-Pirates on WGN at 10:35, and of course you can check the local affiliate for the big-league club in your area.

With that, let's get to the dirty Dodgers. LA pulled a couple moves right before the August 31 deadline for acquiring players who can be playoff-eligible. They picked up Jim Thome, who promptly proclaimed he no longer owns a mitt and will pinch-hit only (way to be a team player, fatty). The Dodgers also obtained the services of starting pitcher Jon Garland. It was the second move that caught my eye with its fishiness.

First of all, LA desperately needs starting pitching. Why would a division rival help them out with a proven vet like Garland? What's more, the D'Bags picked up the remainder of Garland's salary--say what? The icing on the cake was that no other players were exchanged, the giveback from LA was the old Player To Be Named Later. A complete railroad job.

So Garland becomes a Dodger, and his first start is against...Arizona. Whom he defeats, as the D'Bags had to reach deep into the well for a spot start by the immortal Billy Buckner. Details are now trickling out about that Player To Be Named Later, it's minor-league infielder Tony Abreu. Now Abreu is good, and could easily start for Arizona next year at second, and that would make the trade justifiable. Except Abreu's contract situation is murky, and the Dodgers appear to have hoodwinked the D'Bags about it, and the whole thing may be called off.

What a complete crock of horseshit. What if the Dodgers--who currently lead the Rockies by 3 1/2 and close the season with a three-game series against Colorado at Chavez Ravine--win the NL West by a single game? What if home field for the NL playoffs--LA and St. Louis are currently tied for the league's best record, with Philly two games back--is decided by the same margin? This trade was shady to begin with, and now it turns out that it was a full-on con job. I'm calling shenanigans on the Dodgers.