by Jon Weisman

In a sport played upon grass, a sport that is pastoral at its core, you’ll find concrete everywhere. In the dugout, in the aisles, in the concourses, floors of concrete, columns of concrete, walls of concrete.

I’ve stolen an opportunity this afternoon, while some Dodgers are doing early drills, to take my computer out in the visitor dugout at American Family Field in Milwaukee. Last night, you might have seen Blake Snell looking at a screen in between his innings of Game 1 transcendence. Me, I’m just a communications guy with an office laptop who from time to time likes working anywhere but a desk.

I’m on the dugout bench, made of mostly unsanded wood planks, eye level with concrete dugout steps kicked and clicked by cleats, proudly pockmarked with the life of a ballpark. Over my head, beyond the low-lying dugout ceiling, a stratosphere of beams and lights exists to protect the fans from the outside elements. Massive windows beyond the outfield remind us there’s a world out there, somewhere very far away.

Back to earth, past the top step of the dugout, a segment of the red dirt wraps around the field. (I think it’s red, though the less color-blind among us might easily correct me.) Working for the Dodgers, I’ve spent some time standing on that dirt. Lately, I’ve found myself scraping it into small piles with my Dodger blue and white sneakers, kind of soothing, don’t know why, don’t really want to know why.

Beyond the dirt, the grass.

I can walk on the grass. I have walked on the grass. Others in my position walk on the grass without even thinking twice.

I think twice. I’ve never stopped feeling a certain unique reverence for that grass. I am part of the Dodger organization — I’ve even been encouraged to call myself a Dodger, something I can promise takes getting used to. But in this world, I’m a man of gray concrete and brown wood and red dirt, who thinks the green grass of a Major League baseball field exists on another plane, almost floating. Especially at Dodger Stadium. We can pretend otherwise, but it’s not really for mortals, is it?

Don’t worry about the flowery prose betraying that I take myself too seriously— there’s a part of me that can be as cynical as can be about life. Still, that part of me disappears at the border of the grass.

Baseball in the material world was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While a given hitter’s performance in the clutch can very year to year — or as we’ll see, month to month — Dodger batters are having timeless success with runners on base in 2025.

Los Angeles leads the Major Leagues in its performance with runners in scoring position (RISP), and it’s not close. The Dodgers have posted a .298 batting average, .374 on-base percentage, .545 slugging percentage and .919 OPS to top MLB in all four categories.

That RISP OPS is .057 ahead of the next-closest team, the Chicago Cubs, and in fact would be the highest in recorded Dodger history for that category, dating back to 1912. Only the 2020 San Diego Padres have finished a campaign with a higher mark in MLB history.

Not for nothing — in fact, quite for something — the Boys in Blue have the best OPS with runners in scoring position and two out (.929) and with at least one runner at any base (.855).

Who’s responsible for all this pitcher-plaguing success? Among MLB players with at least 15 RISP plate appearances, the Dodgers boast four of the top eight in OPS: Freddie Freeman (second at 1.458), Tommy Edman (fifth at 1.348), Will Smith (seventh at 1.270) and Teoscar Hernández (eighth at 1.266).

Now, as we hinted above, past performance in the clutch does not guarantee future results, near-term or long-term. Look no farther to illustrate this point than Shohei Ohtani. Through early May in 2024, Ohtani was hitting .184/.250/.237/.487, alongside the fewest RBI of any Major Leaguer with at least 35 at-bats in RISP opportunities. However, keen-memoried fans might recall he finished last season a wee bit stronger, including one heater in which he went 16 for 19. (Exclamation points for that last sentence available at your request.)

How much of the Dodgers’ 2025 success with baserunners ahoy can hold up? That’s for the future to reveal. What we can say is that in what has been a competitive pennant race to date, the Dodgers have banked a MLB-best 25 wins, and their clutch stats are a big reason why.

Record RISP pace propels Dodgers was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Jon Weisman

Amid the flowers that have populated the Opening Day starting lineups of the Dodgers, you’ll find the perennials: the Garveys, the Karroses and of course, the Kershaws. Even in recent years, you’ll find bloomin’ blossoms in the darndest places. You know you’ve cycled through some seasons when you come to terms with the fact that last week in Tokyo, Max Muncy made his seventh consecutive Opening Day start, the longest streak by a Dodger infielder since Ron Cey’s nine from 1974–82.

You might note the unexpected sprouts, those whose Opening Day starts seemed to come out of nowhere. Perhaps most famously, Fernando Valenzuela’s Opening Day debut in 1981 arrived when injuries uprooted one veteran starting pitcher after another — before El Toro became a perennial himself.

We should also remember those who resembled hibiscus trionum, nature’s meteor, whose blossoming endures as briefly as a single day. Press the pedals of such Opening Day third basemen as German Rivera (1984), Chris Donnels (2001) and Blake DeWitt (2008) into your scrapbooks.

However, if you are searching for one of the most unexpected yet rewarding Opening Day starters for the Dodgers, you need not look farther than the man who now chooses the Opening Day starters for the Dodgers.

When the Dodgers acquired a 29-year-old outfielder named Dave Roberts on December 22, 2001, their plans for him were about as modest as the players they traded: Christian Bridenbaugh and Nial Hughes, neither of whom ever made it above Single-A in the minors.

True, Roberts had played three seasons for Cleveland, but his career totals of 182 plate appearances, 12 stolen bases and a .601 OPS didn’t scream “Start me!”

In fact, when the Dodgers arrived at Vero Beach for Spring Training in 2002, Roberts ranked no better than fourth on the depth chart in center field, behind Marquis Grissom, Tom Goodwin and McKay Christensen —the one-time №6 overall pick in the 1994 MLB June Amateur Draft who hit .327/.400/.429/.829 in a 28-game trial with the Dodgers the previous summer.

That spring, Roberts did what more than a few upstarts have done — he played his butt off in exhibition games. He batted .368 with a .478 on-base percentage, three doubles, eight walks (against four strikeouts) and six stolen bases in 18 Grapefruit League games. In doing so, he rocketed past Grissom, Goodwin and Christensen into the Dodger Opening Day lineup on April 2, 2002, as its leadoff hitter no less.

Then Roberts did what far fewer upstarts have done. He backed up his stunning arrival through summer, fall and back into spring.

As a Dodger from 2002–04, Roberts had a .342 on-base percentage while stealing 118 bases in 143 attempts. His success rate on steals of .825 is second in Dodger history (minimum 100 attempts) behind only Davey Lopes, and his 33-for-34, .971 showing in 2004 is a single-season Dodger record.

Roberts is more famous for what he did among the fall leaves in October with the Boston Red Sox (you know what we mean) than anything he did in March or April. Nevertheless, if you’re searching for the seeds that defined the future Dodger World Champion manager, you can probably find them in the soil of a 2002 Opening Day.

The Opening Day surprise: Dave Roberts was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Jon Weisman

It was October, it was a World Series, it was a Dodger hero gone far too soon.

The year was 1978, and the timing was similar to 2024 with the passing on Tuesday of 63-year-old Fernando Valenzuela. In 1978, it was 49-year-old Jim Gilliam.

Already, the two players were linked in Dodger history, as the only two whose jersey numbers were retired without induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. While Dodger fans of every generation know Valenzuela’s saga, far fewer today know why Gilliam’s life and career resonated so deeply.

Gilliam, nicknamed “Junior” by those who knew him and “The Devil” for those who really knew him, debuted with the 1946 Baltimore Elite Giants at age 17. Five years later, he found himself with the Dodger Minor League team that Jackie Robinson made famous, the Montreal Royals. One day shy of Robinson’s sixth MLB anniversary, on April 14, 1953, Gilliam officially followed Robinson to Brooklyn as the Dodgers’ leadoff batter and starting second baseman on Opening Day. Hitting .278 with a .383 on-base percentage and a Major League-leading 17 triples, along with 100 walks against 38 strikeouts, Gilliam won the National League Rookie of the Year Award.

For the purposes of this story, we’ll gloss over a multifaceted career from beginning to end — well, the first end. Gilliam retired after the 1964 season, having compiled 1,866 hits (1,734 with the Dodgers). The next April, he took the field as the Dodgers’ first-base coach … only to unretire at the end of May to fill a gaping hole in the Dodger infield. Just shy of his 37th birthday, Gilliam started all seven games of the World Series, making the defensive play of Game 7 — and therefore, the year — to preserve Sandy Koufax’s triumphant shutout.

Gilliam came back for one swan-song season, retiring for good in following the 1966 World Series, after which he slid right back into coaching. There he remained, a mentor for the generation of Dodgers who sparked Los Angeles to NL pennants in 1974, 1977 and 1978.

But as the ’78 postseason got underway, Gilliam was at Daniel Freeman Hospital (now Centinela Freeman Regional Medical Center), having suffered a brain hemorrhage in September. For those at Dodger Stadium, Junior was absent physically but extremely present spiritually.

“It seems like all the things he preached and practiced to us became more vivid when he was no longer there to see us do those things,” outfielder Lee Lacy told Scott Ostler of the Los Angeles Times.

In the gloaming of Oct. 7 at Dodger Stadium, Bill Russell’s single scored Ron Cey from second base in the bottom of the 10th inning of National League Championship Series Game 4 to give the Dodgers a 4–3 victory and the NL pennant.

The following night, October 8, Gilliam passed away.

By October 10, the Dodgers made the decision to retire his №19, taking the field in Game 1 of the World Series with the number represented in a patch on their uniform sleeves. Davey Lopes, who had said before the game that “it’s going to be very difficult not to keep thinking about him,” homered in the second and fourth innings, driving in five runs in an 11–5 Dodger win.

Such was Gilliam’s legacy that on the next day, Oct. 11, members of both the Dodgers and Yankees were among 2,000 mourners at Trinity Baptist Church to pay their respects at Gilliam’s funeral. Reggie Jackson, the villain of the 1977 World Series as far as Dodger fans were concerned, joined Lopes and Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda to deliver eulogies.

A singular talent, Gilliam became a singular figure in the pantheon of Dodger retired numbers until joined by Valenzuela in 2023, and now the linkage is almost too much to be believed.

Game 6 of the 1978 World Series against the Yankees took place on what would have been Gilliam’s 50th birthday.

Game 6 of the 2024 World Series against the Yankees, if necessary, would take place on what would have been Valenzuela’s 64th birthday.

How Gilliam’s retired No. 19 bookends Valenzuela’s retired No. 34 for the Dodgers was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.