Hurry, Somebody Wake Up Joe Torre and Tell Him How Bad His Dodgers Are

Save me a seat at the graduation party. I'm almost ready.

I'm planning to walk about 25 feet in a few minutes to congratulate the neighbor girl for making it through high school and to wish her good luck when she starts new pre-veterinary classes at Iowa State late in the summer.

This world needs all the good veterinarians it can get, and the neighbor girl will be an outstanding one.

Meanwhile, for those of you who choose to live in the previous century and have to depend on newspapers for your baseball scores, I have a bonus for you.

In a game I wanted neither team to win, the St. Louis Cardinals survived a feeble Los Angeles Dodgers offense and a 65-minute rain delay last night in a 2-1 victory before more than 50,000 spectators who either left the ballpark early or fell asleep in their seats.

I'd been watching the game on the Cardinals' TV network, but had fallen asleep by the time it ended. Evidently, so had Dodgers manager Joe Torre, who hasn't been awake for much of the season.

Cardinals outfielder Ryan Ludwick, who is a perfect example of how watered-down major league baseball is these days, hit a two-run homer to win the game for St. Louis. Ten years ago, he'd have been in Double-A.

The rain delay was the second this season at the Dodgers' park, which has had 17 rainouts since the place opened in 1962 -- and none since April 17, 2000.

St. Louis is still one game behind the Chicago Cubs in the National League Central, which is the only thing that matters.


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Hey, it's a good thing Iowa State doesn't need to sell any season tickets to its 2008-2009 basketball games yet. The market would be pretty damn bleak. I'm trying to figure out how coach Greg McDermott can expect anyone to have interest in his team. Players -- good players, bad players and so-so players -- keep bailing out of his program. Pretty soon the only guy left will be the ballboy. If you ask me, McDermott is a lot like mike gartner , whose time with the State Board of Regents has been a joke. Nobody has confidence in either guy.

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The next time somebody tries to tell you the newspaper business isn't in awful shape, refer him or her to what's happening at the Washington Post.

The Post is a paper that likes to think of itself as one of the world's best. If that's the case, the business is doing even worse than all of us thought.

The Post says more than 100 reporters, editors, photographers, artists and others will take early retirement packages offered by the company as a way to cut costs, reducing the newsroom staff by at least 10 percent.

The paper says, "A number of familiar bylines will leave for good or no longer appear regularly in the paper, including those of military affairs reporter Thomas E. Ricks; feature writers Linton Weeks and Peter Carlson; health reporter Laura Sessions Stepp; science reporter Rick Weiss; the husband-and-wife foreign correspondent team of John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore; critics Stephen Hunter, Desson Thomson and Tim Page; Federal Diary columnist Stephen Barr; Weekend writers Richard Harrington and Eve Zibart; and Metro reporters Sue Anne Pressley Montes and Yolanda Woodlee.

"Political dean David Broder took the package but will remain on contract; his column will continue to appear in the paper. Sports columnist and ESPN announcer Tony Kornheiser also took the offer, but his most recent full-length column in the Post appeared in 2005. Since then, his presence has been largely limited to printed excerpts from his daily Talking Points video, which he planned to continue.

The list includes a number of Pulitzer Prize winners, including Ricks, Broder and Hunter."

Pretty sad stuff.

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Here's an item you'll never see in Biz Buzz: In some of the strangest staffing I've heard of in years, Dan Johnson evidently will continue covering the Barnstormers for the paper. Johnson, of course, has been and continues to be the paper's horseracing expert. He previews the nation's biggest horse events, but doesn't cover them because, I'm guessing, the bosses tell him the paper can't afford it financially. So Johnson will combine horseracing and Barnstormers coverage. In his spare time, he'll handle another job at which he does very well -- covering women's basketball. To say the paper gets its money's worth out of Johnson is a huge understatement. One of these days he'll no doubt get his reward by being offered an early buyout.

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The last time I checked the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Jim Ecker was referred to as a sports columnist and not a sports reporter. Looks to me like Ecker has been promoted. If so, good for him because he's a good guy.

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Dogs kept on short leash at farmers' market

-- Des Moines Register headline