Free Republic

The Dodgers are finally going the statue route at Dodger Stadium and on Tuesday announced the first would be of Jackie Robinson. The Dodgers said the statue will be 9 to 10 feet tall and located at a stadium site to be determined during the 2016 season.

The following piece was originally published in the March, 1958 issue of True, and is excerpted from The Top of His Game, a collection of W.C. Heinz's best sportswriting. It is reprinted here with permission from Gayl Heinz. "Down in Los Angeles," says Garry Schumacher, who was a New York baseball writer for 30 years and is now assistant to Horace Stoneham, president of the San Francisco Giants, "they think Duke Snider is the best center fielder the Dodgers ever had. They forget Pete Reiser. The Yankees think Mickey Mantle is something new. They forget Reiser, too." Maybe Pete Reiser...

It is not what anyone in the Los Angeles area wants to believe. When Vin Scully first said in August that next season would realistically be his last broadcasting the Dodgers, willful thinking became rampart ... Scully [turns] 88 Sunday and has reached the point where he cannot envision a scenario where he returns beyond the 2016 season. "I really can't see that I would come back," Scully said. "Sooner or later, you have to be realistic. I've done it for a long, long time. I've done reasonably well at it. But I don't want to stay on any longer...

Dodgers starter Zack Greinke opted out of his contract to become arguably the top free-agent pitcher on the market Wednesday. Greinke, 32, figures to command a significant raise from the $23 million he made last year. He went 19-3 with a major-league leading 1.66 earned-run average and a 0.84 WHIP, making him a favorite for the National League Cy Young Award.

Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, who has cycled through eight "permanent" managers and two interim managers since buying the team in 2002, on Thursday landed the man he targeted in his latest skipper search: former New York Yankees star Don Mattingly, sources said. Mattingly, as expected, agreed to a four-year contract to replace Dan Jennings, who was reassigned to the front office but instructed not to return to work until he has more conversations with Loria. Mattingly, 54, and the Dodgers parted ways recently after he led the team to three consecutive National League West titles but no World Series...

Don Mattingly won't return as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers next year after agreeing with his bosses that he and the team needed a fresh start.

NEW YORK -- Major League Baseball has suspended Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Chase Utley for Games 3 and 4 of the National League Division Series for what the league deemed was an illegal slide into New York Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada.

LOS ANGELES -- Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada suffered a fracture to the fibula of his lower right leg in a nasty collision at second base Saturday night in the seventh inning of a Game 2 loss to the Dodgers in the NL Divison Series. The Dodgers' Chase Utley slid late and hit Tejada hard just as Tejada was turning around to attempt a double play on a grounder hit by Howie Kendrick. Tejada flipped over Utley and landed hard on his left side. The Dodgers went on to score a total of four runs in the inning en route to...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Clayton Kershaw lingered on the field a few moments longer than the rest of his Los Angeles teammates, then looked up at the cheering fans in Dodger Blue, smiled and tipped his cap before quickly disappearing into the dugout and heading off to celebrate. Kershaw pitched the big-money Dodgers to their third straight National League West title, tossing a one-hitter as Los Angeles beat Madison Bumgarner and the San Francisco Giants 8-0 on Tuesday night. Kershaw allowed just a third-inning single and struck out 13, and now he'll get a chance to erase those sour postseason memories...

Los Angeles is such a complicated metropolis of disparate neighborhoods that it's hard to imagine a single event truly changing the place. Well, there is perhaps one: the retirement of Vin Scully. Dodgers fans (and surely many of the team's executives) released a collective sigh of relief when their sainted announcer said last week that he would return next year for his 67th season. But tempering that excitement was a warning by the 87-year-old game caller that next season will also likely be his last. More than a year out from the day that fans knew would arrive but still...

A sweet moment with Vin Scully at his news conference Saturday to discuss returning to broadcast the Dodgers next year, suddenly took a dramatic turn to unwanted melancholy. It was a turn everyone knew would come one day. But still, hearing it from Scully took the air out of the room: Scully expects next year will be his last as the Dodgers’ broadcaster.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Vin Scully is returning to the Dodger Stadium for yet another year. The legendary broadcaster announced during the 2nd inning of the Dodgers game against the Cubs on Friday that he will in fact return for another year. “I talked it over with my wife, Sandi, and my familyand we’ve decided to do it again in 2016,” Scully said. “There’s no place like home and Dodger Stadium and we look forward to being a part of it with all of our friends.”

It was a brawl that forever defined one of sports' fiercest rivalries, with an ugliness that offered a new and frightening definition of sports violence. Yet, 50 years later, the most enduring memory of baseball's most famous fight is that it did not define the men. Monday marks the 13th anniversary of a far more powerful moment, one occurring at Roseboro's funeral, when, in a hall filled with old Dodgers, an old Giant suddenly walked to the lectern. It was Marichal, who wanted to say goodbye, and thank you.

In 1950, an unfussy, callow rookie tiptoed into the Dodgers broadcast booth and never left. Vin Scully was just 22 and a year removed from his graduation at Fordham when he suddenly found himself alongside veterans Connie Desmond and the legendary Red Barber in calling Brooklyn Dodgers games on radio and television. Sixty-five years later, Scully and the Dodgers are both in Los Angeles and both still together. Throughout a career in which he has called the NFL, golf, tennis and, of course, baseball for a national audience and even did college basketball in his early days, he remains a...

We asked you to list your choices for the 10 greatest Dodgers of all time. You could vote via comment, Facebook, Twitter or email. And vote you did. We received an amazing 14,383 ballots. So many, that we have decided to expand the list from the top 10 to the top 20. You were asked to rank your top 10 in order. We assigned points, with your choice for first getting 12 points, second getting nine points, third getting eight points, all the way down to one point for 10th place. Each weekday here, we will unveil the top 20,...

In the first major breakthrough to get Los Angeles Dodgers games carried on a major distributor outside Time Warner Cable, starting Tuesday, June 9th. SportsNet LA will be available on Charter Spectrum TV Select, Charter’s most widely subscribed to tier of service. The games will be shown on the Charter listing as channel 44 SD/ 789 HD in the LA designated market area. It will be on channel 44 SD / 773 HD in San Luis Obispo, and channel 44 SD in Porterville. For SportsNet LA’s Spanish-language game telecasts as well as its Korean-language Secondary Audio Programming (SAP) will also...

Charter Communications plans to soon begin offering the Los Angeles Dodgers TV channel, SportsNet LA, in Southern California, breaking the year-long impasse that has prevented thousands of baseball fans from watching their favorite team on TV ... "We want the Dodgers on every outlet and we are committed to making that happen," [Charter Communications Chief Executive Tom] Rutledge said ...

It appears the long, frustrating wait for Dodgers fans hoping to see their team on TV will continue indefinitely. Multiple reports Thursday indicated the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable – distributor of the Dodgers-owned SportsNet LA – was on the verge of collapsing. The merger between the companies had been viewed as a potential solution to the distribution impasse that has prevented about 70 percent of the local market from seeing the majority of Dodgers games since the start of last season. The collapse of that deal means "the status quo remains in place," said sports-media consultant...

It bears repeating every season. One of the things we're most thankful for is Vin Scully, the legendary voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers. On Saturday, the broadcasting legend is celebrating his 87th birthday, and in tribute the folks over at MLB have released many of his greatest calls on video. With that in mind, we thought we might share a few of our own favorite Scully calls and moments from just this past season. Yes, even in his 65th season as the Dodgers play-by-play voice — he'll make it a remarkable 66 seasons in 2015 — Scully is on...

It was a milestone day around here, perhaps the greatest doubleheader sweep in Southland hardball history. Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. American League and National League Most Valuable Players. The Angels and the Dodgers sitting alone atop the baseball world. In the middle of November. Too bad this isn’t the end of October.