The world according to Jim:
• Dodgers TV play-by-play man Joe Davis professed to be dissatisfied with his call of Shohei Ohtani’s 40th home run Aug. 23, the walkoff grand slam that beat Tampa Bay 7-3 and put Ohtani in the 40-40 Club. Really, he didn’t need to be. If there was a small flaw, Davis pointed to the fact that he didn’t mention Ohtani’s name in what turned out to be a historic call, “just for that historical sound bite,” he said during an appearance earlier this month on the Awful Announcing website’s podcast. …
• Anyone familiar with the Dodgers and the history of their broadcasts should know exactly where that’s coming from. Davis has studied the work of the late Vin Scully, and one of Vin’s trademarks during a potential no-hitter was to drop the date or the time into his play-by-play – or both, as during Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965. Scully’s reasoning, as he told me in a 2015 interview: “I always tried to put the date, so that when the fella’s listening to it, or his grandchildren 30 years later, they’d know exactly the day.” …
• But if Davis needed to redeem himself for that 40th homer call – and he really didn’t – Thursday’s calls of Ohtani home runs 49, 50 and 51 on SportsNet L.A. did the trick. In fact, the entire game recording, start to finish, should be part of an Ohtani exhibit in Cooperstown to commemorate arguably the greatest individual performance in the history of the game. When you go 6 for 6, hit three historic home runs and steal two equally historic bases to establish the 50-50 club, account for 17 total bases and just miss hitting for the cycle – man, that’s a day’s work and then some. …
• Yes, Davis made sure he mentioned the date following No. 50. And, true to another Scully trademark, that reference to the date came after 58 seconds of announcer silence, to let the crowd reaction and the pictures on the screen naturally amplify the story. …
• So which call did you like more?
No. 50, a 391-foot shot into the lower deck in left field: “One-of-a-kind player! One-of-a-kind season!”
No. 51, a 440-foot drive into the upper deck in right: “Oh, my gosh … Shohei Ohtani, the greatest day in baseball history! … This is not real life!” …
• Meanwhile, from the “Things I wish I’d written first” file, this from Washington Post columnist Jerry Brewer: “From now on, the best day of your life should be known as an Ohtani.” …
• On a sort of related subject, the increasing importance of live sports programming to TV networks and streamers is apparently extending to the daytime hours. (Given what’s normally on TV during the day, is it any wonder?)
The viewership numbers that NBC and Peacock recorded during the Paris Olympics, for events shown live during the day, bolster that argument. The number of us who now work from home and, er, just happen to have a TV in close proximity doesn’t hurt. And I’ll be curious to see the numbers from Thursday’s Dodgers-Marlins game, which started at 1:40 PDT – especially as the game continued and word spread that Shohei was having a day. …
• If you are a college football fan, you have to have known this was coming: The University of Tennessee announced that it’s adding a 10% surcharge, labeled a “talent fee,” to the price of all tickets over all sports. That’s specifically to raise money to help in directly paying players, as is anticipated should the House v. NCAA settlement become official. And, said Tennessee athletic director Danny White (no, not the former NFL quarterback), football ticket prices will additionally go up an average 4.5%.
Expect every other big-time program, including USC and UCLA, to follow suit. (And maybe this will be consolation: All of those fans of visiting Big Ten teams who will flock to see them play the Trojans and Bruins – and there will be a lot of them, trust me – will help defray the cost of paying the home team’s players.) …
• The Clippers’ move to their own Intuit Dome in Inglewood will get them away from those dreaded weekend afternoon games as part of doubleheaders downtown, but it’s not going to resolve head-to-head conflicts.
The NBA schedule is mostly complete, although a handful of games involving the in-season NBA Cup tournament are still to be scheduled between Dec. 9 and 18. What we know so far: There will be eight dates involving Lakers and Clippers home games at the same time, the first on Dec. 8, plus two other weekend dates (Feb. 8 and March 16) when the Lakers will play at home in the afternoon and the Clippers at night.
• The Lakers and Clippers will face each other at Intuit on Jan. 19 and Feb. 4, and then a Friday/Sunday combo, Feb. 28 and March 2, at The Arena Formerly Known As Staples Center. …
• But here’s the more pertinent issue for those concerned with Inglewood traffic patterns: As of now, there are two dates when a Clippers home date conflicts with an event at SoFi Stadium: Nov. 17 (Bengals-Chargers at 1:25, Clippers-Utah at 6) and Dec. 8 (Buffalo-Rams at 1:25, Clippers-Houston at 6). There’s the potential for two other conflicts pending the scheduling of NBA Cup games opposite Tampa Bay-Chargers on Dec. 15 and the L.A. Bowl on Dec. 18.
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But the potential of traffic crushes in the vicinity of Century and Prairie, with lots of folks leaving as others start to arrive, begins this weekend: The Rams and 49ers play at 1:25 Sunday at SoFi, and Usher plays Intuit at 8. And on Oct. 20, the Rams and Raiders play at SoFi at 1:05, and rapper Rod Wave is in concert at Intuit at 7:30 that night.
You’ve been warned. Plan your alternate routes now.
jalexander@scng.com