What do the Lakers have to do to be loved in L.A.? And, Chris Erskine of the LA Times Fancies Beyonce and Enos Slaughters' Speed

Shocking results of an LA Times poll asking its readers, "Which is your favorite sports team?" At last check, with more than 13,000 votes in, USC came in at #1. Which is frankly lame because a college team should not be the fave of the second biggest city in the country. A city should not pin its sporting hopes and dreams on the shoulders of a bunch of unpaid kids. The Angels came in at #2, which I guess is kind of cool. The Lakers, coming off an NBA title and fully reloaded to win again, came in at #3, barely fending off the Galaxy #4, and UCLA, #5. The oddly unpopular Dodgers come in next, in a virtual tie with the Kings.

What gives with the lack of Laker love? Certainly it's not Clipper-Crazies, they came in with a strong 1% of the vote, groveling in the gutter alongside Chivas USA and the LA Sparks. Do glamorous Laker fans find Lamar's betrothal to the ugly Kardass sister unseemly? Do Randy Newman-crazed Laker loyalists hate rap music? Did the Rally Monkey fuck with the results? Do the Lakers need to grow Beckham beards?
I almost didn't see the poll, as I was wallowing in yet another chumpy column from a writer, Chris Erskine, who wrote the kind of observational drivel Andy Rooney would wipe his ass with.
Erskine writes of his love/hate relationship with baseball. "Baseball can be too much of a good thing sometimes. As if Beyonce were born twins." Can you fathom....two Beyonces!?!? Would Taylor Swift ever win an award in such a sexy world?
Baseball is too long for the man, "Hey, here's an idea: 100 games, seven innings each. I never said it was a good idea. Just an idea." You just know he thinks its a brilliant idea, but he cuts off the reader's initial negative reaction through Sophist self-effacement. Savvy.

The column should have ended there, on a high note, but with a clear lack of an editor's guidance, the musings meander on.

"I'm missing baseball already, this awful, splendid game--more fickle than life itself." Oh, I didn't realize that RANDOM DEATH was a daily part of baseball. But you know what? You just never know if a hard-hit ball will find the gap or a glove. Fickle-pickle.

"Baseball isn't a sport, it's a fetish." Like wanting to tickle Beyonce's inner thighs with your sandy mustache as your glasses fog up.

"New York is where the wild things really are. Fans there ought to have rabies shots." I didn't thinkc sheep with cell phones ould transmit rabies.

"Yep, 30 teams started the season and one (or two) are still alive. What other activity suffers casualties like this?" Oh, I don't know, hmmmm......MAYBE EVERY OTHER SPORT ON THE FACE OF THE FUCKING EARTH.

"If baseball were a song, Willie Nelson would sing it. If baseball were a country, it'd be invaded by Lichtenstein." If baseball were cereal, it'd be Grape Nuts. If baseball were tits, it'd be Marcy D'arcy's.
"Sure, baseball can be pure poetry: ivy on brick; mustard in your fingernails; Enos Slaughter sprinting back to the dugout just because." Enos Slaughter played his last game in 1959.

He rambles on to his insane childhood. "Suburbs were tougher then. The things we did with firecrackers would make a modern mother retch." And Beyonce cream. What a rebel. And Ersky, kids today are into sexting, sniffing glue and skateboards, oh, and not reading the paper.

Is there an end in sight? "So fret not, Dodger fans. Life goes on. These days, there dusts mites in my mustache and hints of winter in my knees...Pitchers and catchers report in about 100 days." Which is how long the season should be! What a great/awful idea!

Remember, the LA Times costs 75 cents a day and is shedding readers faster than Enos Slaughter sprinting back to the dugout. It's so easy for newspapers to blame their problems on the internet instead of ignoring the timeless rule; "content is king." People read sites like Deadspin partly because its free, true, but also because its content is funny and entertaining. Which is what a sports section should be.