Late Night Dodger Notes: Team Takes Train, Triumphs in Taiwan

The Dodgers ended their Taiwan trip with a 11-1 win over the CPBL All-Stars at Kaohsiung County Stadium.  Among the highlights:

• Manny Ramirez hit the ball hard all night (or day, if you prefer), finishing with three hits, a double, and three runs scored.  His best hit ball was probably the long out to right field in his final at-bat
• Taiwanese native Chin-Lung Hu collected three hits, including a double
• James Loney has a pair of hits, including an RBI triple in the first inning
• Josh Towers started, and allowed one run in his three innings of work, allowing four hits while striking out two
• Josh Lindblom, who along with Towers and Jon Link were called "candidates to make the team," per Ramona Shelburne of ESPN L.A., pitched even better, allowing but two baserunners in his three scoreless innings while striking out four
• Trayvon Robinson hit an absolute bomb of a home run to center field, a two-run shot to close out the scoring in the top of the ninth
• Xavier Paul had a pair of RBI singles, before leaving the game with a broken bloody nose.  He also appeared to hit his head on the dugout while leaving the field.
• Apparently the seventh inning stretch at Kaohsiung County Stadium featured a singer reading the lyrics off his hand
• Before the game, Josh Rawitch of Inside the Dodgers wrote of the club's experience on the bullet train to Kaohsiung

Many thanks to the 18 of you that participated in a weekend overnight game thread for a game halfway around the world.  You, along with the folks at Dodger Thoughts, Dodgerfan.net, and the like, made this a fun night.

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Ken Gurnick of MLB.com, in Taiwan with the team, has a nice profile of Brian Barton, who just might be the most interesting man in the world:

Barton's statistical goals can be measured in hundreds, but it's not about home runs or RBIs.

"I want to visit a couple hundred countries eventually. That's a lifetime goal," he said.

Barton wants to take his family on one of these trips, so they can learn about life in other parts of the world as he has.

"I guess this passion is really from, when I was growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut," he said. "I always wanted to go into space, wondering what's out there, seeing the stars and the moon and thinking about life on other planets.

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Gurnick also reported that, aside from the reported $170,000 appearance fee received by Manny Ramirez, the players on the trip will get paid a few thousand dollars each:

All of the players will receive a fee from gate proceeds that will probably be about double the $3,000 each received from the China trip

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Dylan Hernandez of the L.A. Times wrote about Blake DeWitt's hot hitting and Chad Billingsley's developing changeup

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Tom Singer of MLB.com had a nice profile on many of the 10 players from minor league camp that played in Saturday's Cactus League game in Tucson, including Andrew Lambo, Preston Mattingly, Scott Van Slyke, and Dee Gordon.

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For the traveling Dodgers, they will head home today on another 15+ hour flight.  Meanwhile, at Camelback Ranch, the rest of the Dodgers will play the Rangers later today at 1:05pm (not noon, remember daylight savings!), on Prime Ticket.

Box Score