Most readers here are old enough to remember what it was like to be a Dodger fan before the internet age. It was through the box scores and the Sporting News for those outside of southern California. For L.A. area natives, Dodger News was essentially limited to the pages of the LA Times, The Herald Examiner or (depending where you lived) the Valley News, SG Valley Tribune or Long Beach Press Telegram, maybe the OC Register as well. I remember staying up for the 11:00 PM News on local ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates who all seemed to each have their sports news on around 11:20 PM, so you’d bounce from channel to channel hoping to catch a glimpse of each report on the Dodger game. Sportstalk radio was in its infacy and there was Dodger talk on KABC in the 70s that provided some entertainment value as well.
But that was about it. We were extremely limited to the amount of television broadcasts, and at one time it seemed that the only games we’d get were Dodger-Giant games from Candlestick. A home game? Not a chance. Remember, our owner broke city codes for a sports venue when he didn’t install drinking fountains originally in Dodger Stadium in order to beef up beverage sales. Walter O’Malley didn’t give anything away for free and if it risked his gate receipts, he sure wasn’t going to televise home games.
I recall getting one Dodger home game telecast on KTTV Channel 11 that was the final home game of the year in 1971. It was a sell out, so O’Malley acquiesced and allowed it to be televised, as the Dodgers were one game back in the standings and we were all hopeful that they would catch the Giants, (they didn’t, Dodgers won but Giants also won on that date).
What did we do in the early stages of the internet age?
Dating back to the early days of the internet, and by that I mean America On-Line (AOL) message group days, where I would regularly post. There were some real smart guys with opinions that posted on that site. It was a whole new era of information that every news starved Dodger fan now had at their fingertips. What happened to the old posters at those message boards? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure many of them ended up in places like this. There were a few message boards that were quite popular. Aside from AOL, I remember the LA Times had a decent one and then the Dodger website, which was run by Ben Platt. Eventually these message boards morphed into blogs when rules and censorship essentially turned out to be their demise.
Let me clarify. I believe that it was the posters that pushed the envelope of the “terms of service” rules that eventually killed the message boards. Eventually, a place like the Dodger.com message board began to police thought and anything viewed as a personal attack or maybe an opinion against the current front office moves got banned. You could say that General Manager Dan Evans made a bad move when he traded Kevin Brown to the Yankees, but if you called him a “moron” for trading him, that was a line that was crossed, and you were gone. It was kind of like how it is when players argue with umpires. You could tell the umpire that that was a “f’d up call,” but the moment you called the umpire a “f’er,” you were tossed.
If you were an opinionated writer/poster, it could get you in trouble if you didn’t choose your words carefully. If you shot-gunned some insults, even while using creative, clean language, a board monitor eventually could banish you. There was no appeals process. They didn’t have time for them. These board monitors became quite haughty with their attitudes and ultimate their power as judge, jury and executioner. Yes, I got booted or placed in the penalty box from posting on some of those message boards at one time or another. I imagine some of the readers here were in that position as well. By 2004, the monitors were simply out of control in my opinion.
Ben Platt, who went by the moniker “BennyP” started the Dodger website in 1994. He was ahead of MLB in the internet age and essentially was the creator of the initial website and message board. An internet pioneer and genius in my opinion. He had the ear of Peter O’Malley and was an innovator that was extremely smart. It is my personal belief that he had no idea that the message board on his site would grow into what it became by the early 2000s. His post to everyone about “taking their chill pill” in 2003 was evidence that he was finding the message boards on the site as being too difficult to monitor. The more posters, the bigger the headache.
In 2001 MLB patterned all their websites after Platt’s format and hired him to create all team’s sites. All MLB teams in the early stages of the internet age were distinct and under team control, and MLB didn’t like that. Platt was hired away from the Dodgers and tasked with creating a template that had the same format for each team. This was the beginning of the end for the message boards, and blogs began to surface. Mark Timmons’ blog was one of the first. An excellent writer, Jon Weisman, created “Dodger Thoughts” and it soon became the most popular one. By 2006, the Dodger message board was discontinued as well as the message board of all team’s MLB sites.
Weisman interviewed Ben Platt at Dodger Thoughts in January of 2004. Platt admitted that things were getting difficult to manage at the message boards, “The negativity is at an all-time high,” he said. He admitted that he attempted to read every post and that could number 500-600 in a day. Also, that he had hired full time board monitors that would read it all. Of most interest I found that he admitted that Dodger GM, Dan Evans at the time, would read the board as well saying: “Evans peruses the board on a regular basis during the season. He and I will talk about certain threads, and if he feels a clarification is needed or if a rumor is floating around on the board that is completely off-base or with no foundation, he will call me, and I will relay the message to the board.”
Platt did not admit that the Dodger GM was framing moves due to fan posts on the message board, but he did have interest in their content, so I wonder how much they actually influenced his thinking. Within months of that interview, the McCourt era began, and Evans was unceremoniously fired with Paul Depodesta replacing him. I lost track of Ben Platt’s employment history, but his Linkedin profile states he was under MLB’s employment in their Advanced Media Department until 2018. His whereabouts are unknown at this time.
In the end, here we are today. Dozens of blogs created. Some extremely short lived and poorly constructed. Others very organized, structured and powerful. Some even getting mention by Joe Davis periodically on his broadcasts. We live in the internet age and have a plethora of baseball news at our fingertips. We can turn on the TV and see baseball information on the MLB channel 365 days a year. This would have been a dream us 40-50 years ago. Today, in this internet age, there isn’t enough information available. How things have changed. Have we reached a saturation point yet? Only time will tell I suppose.
Discussion (18)
Disagree, not disagreeable
The Dodgers DFA’d Jake Reed, again. This time to clear a roster spot for JDM. Weird considering that Yonny Hernandez is still on the roster.
I’ve enjoyed reading the banning stories. I’ve only been banned from one place, and I was banned twice from Dodger’s Digest from only three total posts. How is that even possible?
First time was maybe four years ago. I responded to something someone posted about their bicycling, because I do that seriously, too, and later posted a somewhat snarky response to the general maturity level of the discourse there, saying something to the effect that I felt like I “lost a couple of brain cells” just reading through it.
Banned. … But that’s not all. Dodger’s Digest uses a third party comment section management platform called Disqus. Not only did the moderator ban me from DD, but he also went through and looked at comments I made on completely different websites that use Disqus as well, including some right of center ones I’ve commented on before.
From that he then publicly announced in the comment section of DD that I was a “full blown white supremacist,” and that he had reached out to people who may have known me from my real identity that he uncovered with his mod access and discovered that we had “mutuals.” … people who knew us both.
So I was doxxed. Soon after I started getting somewhat cryptic and strange interactions through Facebook when I was selling some cycling related stuff. It made me wonder. It still makes me wonder. It’s a really unsettling feeling to wonder if you’ve been hurt personally and professionally by bad actors trying to smear you. It was really unsettling to be called a “full blown white supremacist.” I actually went and looked back at all comments I made on that other sight, and none even brought up race.
The second time was after the Bauer suspension. On a new identity I just wrote that it created a somewhat interesting legal dilemma. Can there be sexual battery if the partner prior to the act consents to that sexual battery? It was/is a legal conundrum, and was actually the rationale used in part by the Pasadena DA in deciding not to pursue legal charges.
My comment lasted about 30 seconds before Nosler deleted it, banned me, called me a “piece of shit” and wrote that he just couldn’t put up with that, today.
Not only are those people completely toxic, but they are emotionally volatile children …and they are vindictive – which makes them capable of being very damaging. Cancel culture sucks. It’s demonstrably destructive.
So, the moral of the story, I have zero tolerance for being falsely accused of bigotry by unscrupulous people. Badger tried that once with me. I asked him, respectfully, to apologize for mischaracterizing me and my character, and he ignored me, which tells me all I need to know about his character. Masher’s Pop tried that with me the other day when I made a post that was clearly meant to be a joke. They’re dishonest. They use you as a foil so they can signal their own virtue through performative outrage and falsely accusing you of bigotry. More people need to push back when that happens.
Ok, rant over. Back to baseball.
Brazilian soccer legend Pelé dead at 82. RIP
Is there a date when Bauer needs to say whether he’s opting out?
I remember back in the 80’s and half of the 90’s when I lived in California I would get either the LA Times or USA Today newspapers to read the box scores and stats. All they had back then from the slash lines that we have today was batting average. I also remember barely getting Dodger games on TV and it does ring a bell that I only got away games against the Giants.
A lot of talk here about Busch making the team and starting. I like Busch a lot but looking at his stats I think he needs more time in AAA. .266/.343/.480/.823 is not very impressive in AAA. I look for approximately .290/.390/.560/.950. I may be too conservative to others about bringing up prospects but I’d rather not see someone brought up too early. Vargas meets my batting average and OBP but not my slugging. Outman meets all 3 of my slash line.
Therefore RIGHT NOW I rate who’s ready in this order:
1 Outman
2 Vargas
3 Busch
Only blog I’ve been banned from was TBLA and that was because I responded to a poster by welcoming him to the site by telling he would fit right in if he posted recipes, talked about dinner plans constantly, rooted for Auburn football and occasionally asked for relationship advice.
I was summarily banned by a moderator who apparently I pissed off and have never gone back.
LADT is my preferred blog for Dodger information and good spirited Dodger Talk.
Bear, I bet you’ve bought sandals at Greekos Sandals. And fished off the Redondo Peer and are familiar with surfers, grimmies and ho-dads and if never visited, knew of the lighthouse and it’s history. Someone here had mentioned their mother worked at the May Company on Hawthorn Blvd., My oldest sister worked there. Larry Reed sports cars on 190th Shelby’s test track on Carson. I could go on and on as I always seem to do, but I’m fairly certain we both knew a
same someone in our back pages from the South Bay. After leaving there I often visited friends and kept up with changes until i didn’t. I knew some famous and infamous of the era from Ascot figure 8 racers to folk singers. I was just a kid on a Schwinn.
I think Jan. 6 is the deadline for a decision on Bauer.
Either way, I am not predicting an insurrection.
Love this picture of Koufax, showing the nearly vertical delivery. About 5 minutes past noon…
I think Bouton might have been the most vertical. He often knocked his cap off his head.
Everyone here, I think, would thoroughly enjoy the documentary “The Battered Bastards of Baseball,” about the independent team in Portland founded by actor Bing Russell, better known as Kurt’s dad. Bouton joined the team after he was pretty much blackballed from the majors.
Great article Evan!
I wonder if you had any thoughts about Nick Frasso the pitcher that came over from Blue Jays for Mitch White last year. He seems to be in the top ten for prospects. Do you think we’ll see him up with the team this year?
Happy New Year everyone!
Actually Cassidy, the Dodgers brass does follow this and several other blogs, because they print out copies and also have digital copies of it. Not every blog…but many of them.
The only place I’ve been banned is here. RIP 59inarow.
Cheers Evan
I remember after living in LA for a year in 90 and falling in love with the Dodgers, returning home to England and every time I saw somewhere selling a USA Today, would sneak a peek at the back page, to see the Box Score.
How mad it is that I can now watch any Dodger (or any) game live and feel totally connected – especially since finding this place over 10 years ago. I have learned so much more about the game here. Some very knowledgeable and Sage posters at LADT.
Have I got this wrong, or aren’t we meant to make a decision on TB’s future soon?
To my mind, if they were going to cut bait, then surely that would have been done immediately? This makes me believe that the powers that be probably aren’t all in agreement with the way forward.
I think, and certainly hope,that he pitches for us next year.
Very nice article Evan. As an east coast Dodgers fan I can really relate to this. When the team left Brooklyn in ’58 I could no longer get scores in the morning. We had an evening paper but it had a very poor pro sports section. It never had any box scores other than the Yankees or the Mets. It was very frustrating. Someone on this site once referred to this era as the “Dodgers dark days”. That is a fitting description. These days, with cable TV and the internet, things are so much better. I get to see so many Dodgers games with all the sports stations there are. I don’t post much but I really enjoy LADT. Thank you Mark for starting this site. You have talented writers and most of the posters are well informed Dodgers fans. Keep up the good work guys!
Never got kicked off but got into some very heated arguments. Funny, cannot remember what any of them were about now. I posted on the Dodgers website for a while, but then it was discontinued. Mark invited me over here and I have not regretted it one bit. Writing for this blog has invigorated me a lot and increased my awareness of how differently we all look at the game and the team. Evan, for years the only games the Dodgers showed on TV were the games against the Giants on the road. Which meant that for years, all we saw on TV of the Dodgers were those 11 road games. Occasionally, not very often, we would see them on the game of the week on NBC. I check out Jeff’s new site and post there some, I quit going on Scott’s site simply because no one posts there much. I do visit thinkbluepc now and then. But mostly I am here. I hope everyone has a wonderful New Years. I am happy, my SSA check came early and I got the increase! Whoopee. Now I can afford a tank of gas! Oh yeah Evan, the South Bay Daily Breeze was my source of Dodger info.
Do you think the current Dodger staff follows the blogs? Because I’m more than a little surprised AF hasn’t contacted me regarding my Dodger insight!
I used to comment on those Dodger boards back then. A while into it (I forget what year), someone private messaged me and wrote something like “you seem to know your Dodger baseball, come check out LA Dodger Talk!”
So I did….
I actually do read many of the posts here, even if I don’t comment 🙂 Happy holidays to all!
Believe it or not, I have never been kicked off of a Message Board!
Looking back, it was quite silly and fun. Of course, there were trolls, and if I took Point A, they would take Point B. Several times, I did that, and they argued with me. Then a few months later, I argued their point, and they took my position. They had no position – they just wanted to argue. Some people are just born to be trolls, and most have moved on to other sites. I will not mention any names.
At US Water Systems, we have lots of Web Tools from Google and SEMRush to measure all kinds of metrics, such as visitors, time on site, etc. I get the use of those for free on LADT. During the winter, traffic is WAY DOWN. In October, LADT had 94,000 visits, but in July, it had 3,700,000! There are websites that have more morons and trolls who comment. We have a lot of people who come here every day who do not comment.
I have been told by several web developers that if I wanted to monetize the site, I could make $8,000 + a month. It becomes a full-time job at that point and changes the one thing that really makes us different from the big commercial sites – this is a labor of love!
Jon Weisman and Mike Petriello used to stop by now and again, but they have bigger fish to fry now. Good for them. I have called Mike Petriello a moron on more than a few occasions, and I am sure he has reciprocated. It’s all in good fun. I do admire the fact that they used their real names – Some people like to hide behind the keyboard in annonomity.
Nice piece, Evan!