From the LA Times' "Dodgers Thoughts" blog, legendary announcer Vin Scully's opening from last night's game broadcast:

"Hi, everybody, and a very pleasant Thursday evening to you, wherever you may be. The Dodgers and the city of Los Angeles and all of California and for that matter, all of baseball, still shocked and stunned over the suspension of Manny Ramirez. We'll have more to say about that a little bit later on -- but no one man stops baseball ..."

 In the comments section, one reader immediately chimed in to nominate Bud Selig.  That had me laughing so hard, coffee almost came shooting out my nose. 

   Then again, there's me.  I am commissioner of the fantasy baseball Critical Asian Studies league again this year, and it has been an awesomely awful year for my squad.  Changing my team's nickname from last year's "Oedipal Trees" (there was another team in the league called "Mille Plateaux":  we're a sophisticated bunch of critical thinkers) to "Twinkies" has not turned out well.  I am not only in seventh place out of seven teams, I am fast losing sight of the other six as they disappear beyond the horizon.

    It's a simple Rotisserie league scoring system:  there are five batting and five pitching categories, and you get points depending on your relative standing in each.  E.g., the team with the most total RBIs gets seven points, the team with the second most RBIs gets six points, and so on down to my last place team, which gets one point. 

   Under this system, the maximum number of points a team could have is 70.  Today, our first place team has 54.  The absolute minimum a team could have is ten.  As of this morning, I have 14.5 points.  But, hey, there's a long way to go before the end of the season, and baseball is too big for any one man to stop.  I'm trying, though.  Lord knows, I'm trying.