Letters to Sports: Joe Maddon, Angels fall guy, is wrong person to blame

Joe Maddon knows the intricacies and strategies of baseball as well as anyone alive. And he has the mature perspective that enables him to see the modest significance of a boys’ game in the larger universe. He is a mature, well-reasoned and articulate spokesman for the great game. Making him the fall guy for the Angels’ collapse is absurd after expecting him to sustain success with an inconsistent and modestly gifted pitching staff. The Angels can change managers every season and they won’t find a better man.

Gordon Cohn
Long Beach

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As a Cal State Fullerton alum, I am ecstatic to see fellow Titan Phil Nevin join Mark Kotsay as major league managers. But firing Joe Maddon and naming “Duck” the manager is nothing more than “rearranging deck chairs on The Titanic.” As long as someone who has to be James Dolan’s twin brother, Arte Moreno, owns the team, 2002 will continue to get further and further in the rearview mirror.

Erik Schuman
Fountain Valley

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That’s it! I officially give up forever on the Angels. I almost gave up when they wasted hundreds of millions on Hamilton, Pujols and Rendon. All of that money should have been spent on pitching; that’s baseball 101. When they hired Maddon, I came back on board because I knew if there was a way, he would find it. Now, Arte panics after an East Coast road trip against the best teams in baseball that are heads and shoulders better than the Angels. I’m out for good.

David Waldowski
Laguna Woods

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Writer Bill Shaikin used the right word to describe the long failure of the Angels organization: dysfunction.

Enough is enough. After decades of failing to contend, it’s time to close the shop. Arte Moreno should sell off the players to other teams. Send Trout to the Yankees and Ohtani to the Dodgers where they can win World Series rings. We longtime Angels fans have suffered enough!

Carl Martz
Redlands

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Joe Maddon fired! Is Dave Roberts next? Terrible record in one-run games. Terrible record in extra inning games. Why? Because these are decision making situations. Something he is terrible at. However, he is Superb when his team scores eight runs or more.

Wendy McCall
Chino Hills

Negotiate this

I have no ill will toward Aaron Donald and think he is a great player. Nonetheless, I have a big problem with pro athletes who demand to renegotiate their contracts because they now feel they are worth more than when they signed. No one forces an athlete to sign a multi-year contract. They normally do that because they want the security of the multiple years in case they are injured or have off years. When was the last time you heard of an athlete telling management he would take less than he is owed under his contract because he had a bad year? Perhaps the solution should be that multi-year contracts are not permitted and athletes get paid based on how they perform the previous year. Oh, wait a second, as I can already hear the athletes screaming obscenities at that idea and threatening to strike!

Mark Kaiserman
Santa Monica

Who’s in the booth?

I’m not sure who Lon Rosen is talking to; however, I can tell you a lot of fans are not happy about the revolving door in the Dodger broadcast booth. It reminds me of the old Abbott and Costello skit “Who’s on First?” In this case, it’s “Who’s broadcasting the game today?” Granted, the days of Vin Scully doing a solo broadcast are gone. I think Joe Davis has done an admirable job taking over for Vin and I’ve always liked Charley Steiner and Rick Monday doing radio. However, the rotating “personalities” in the TV broadcast booth is bush league. Baseball teams need chemistry to succeed. The same applies to the broadcast booth.

Ritch Wells
La Cañada Flintridge

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The title of the article should have been “Too many voices are talk of the town.” The numerous Dodger announcers are all serviceable, interchangeable and vanilla. Los Angeles has been blessed with so many superstar voices, but Vinnie and Jerry Doggett made a special team (who wouldn’t have alongside Scully?) and I can still hear them a little muffled on my transistor under the covers while pretending to sleep.

Allan Kandel
Los Angeles

LIV greed is not good

I hope this reaches not only Dustin Johnson but Phil Mickelson, Graeme McDowell, Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia and the other PGA players who have decided to join the LIV Golf Tour.

Thank you for making clear that your priority is money! Your ethics and understanding of what you are getting into with Greg Norman and the Saudis are despicable, unconscionable and lacking in any sense of reality. Each of you is already a multimillionaire. You, as well as the Saudis, have blood on your hands, and you have sold your souls for money and nothing more.

We can only hope that the group fails miserably and you are never seen again in competitive golf.

Jay Slater
Los Angeles

Inspiring women

The best story by far in the sports section on Sunday was about the Cal State Dominguez Hills women’s softball team. The team flies up north to play Sonoma State and rents vans to get to the game. They stop in Oakland to get some food and their vans are broken into and their valuables and team gear are stolen. The police didn’t respond to their calls. Undeterred by the lack of police support, the team continued on to Sonoma State and wins their first regional title in the school’s history. This should have been a front page story in the sports section (if not the newspaper’s front page) because of the resilience of the CSDH women in the face of adversity. I call on the Angels and the Dodgers to donate $25,000 each to help replace the team’s lost valuables and equipment.

Mark Walker
Yorba Linda

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Thank you for your coverage and assigning writer Thuc Nhi Nguyen to write about UCLA women’s softball, basketball and other sports, and also for putting it on the front page at times and not burying it in the back.

It’s important to give credit where credit is due, and the UCLA women’s teams have been as successful as, if not more than, the men’s teams over the last 10 years or so. Also the women’s coaches in softball and basketball are just amazing leaders.

Steve Shaevel
Woodland Hills

Making a difference

Thank you, Bill Plaschke. I usually do not cry during breakfast, but I sure did today. Your recounting of this wonderful relationship with your “little brother” Andrew touched my heart during a time in which I am starting to feel helpless and hopeless.

Thank you for sharing your life with this remarkable young man. Andrew was lucky, you were lucky, now we all are lucky to have shared your experience.

Judith Braun
Woodland Hills

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What a wonderful column by Bill Plasckhe about his relationship with Andrew, his “little brother” who became a lifelong friend. Something we all should learn from, about giving of ourselves to other people, about sports being a means to unite people and have fun. It’s good to see sports as a vehicle to bring people together in these divisive times.

Michael Roth
Westchester

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