I suppose stealing their water wasn't good enough for us.

Man, seems like I've been hearing the name Ned Colletti as long as I can remember, back to when he worked PR for the Cubs in the mid-1980s. I remember being surprised the first time I'd heard that he left the team and was getting front office work, and then when he was assistant GM, and now that he's GM.

I still think of him as Harry's friend Ned Colletti. Does this mean that Pete Von Ochen will be taking over the Boston job, or that the guys from Nuts on Clark are going to buy the Nationals?

I think he'll do all right. From what I've heard, the brains of the Giants have moved down to L.A.

From what I've heard, the brains of the Giants have moved down to L.A.

I'm sure Giants fans will be crying in their beer.

At least they got their #1 guy, right?

The next five years are going to suck for the Giants--possibly a lot more.

Colletti's a good pick because he's a closest stathead, but can fit in well with a room full of old scouts. Good interpersonal skills and he keeps his ego in check. I think that he'll do very well for the Dodgers--as well as anyone can in that environment.

So what source of San Francisco's water did Los Angeles steal? It must have been the water that came out of the mighty San Francisco River.

Or have the Giants moved to the Owens Valley?

I suppose stealing their water wasn't good enough for us.

So what source of San Francisco's water did Los Angeles steal? It must have been the water that came out of the mighty San Francisco River.

Or have the Giants moved to the Owens Valley?

"Take him. He's yours."
Is this bad news for the Santa Clara Valley?

6-4-3.

How do you know he's a "closet stathead?" Please tell me you weren't just kidding.

Perhaps I'll go to Yosemite and go visit the natural beauty of Hetch Hetchy.

Oh, wait, can't really do that can I?

bio from SFGiants.com (written in the winter of 2003-04, I think)
Ned Colletti
Vice President and Assistant General Manager

In his third decade in Major League Baseball, Ned Colletti enters his 24th year in the game. This season marks his 11th year with the Giants organization and his ninth as the assistant general manager to Brian Sabean.
He is a prominent member of Sabean's baseball braintrust that has helped the Giants average 93 wins a season from 1997-2004, including winning the National League pennant in 2002 and division championships in 1997, 2000 and 2003. In addition to handling all Major League contract negotiations, his responsibilities include assisting Sabean in acquiring players via trade or free agency and building the Major League club, which in the last eight seasons has played only 11 games (of 1,296) while eliminated from post season contention. He is also responsible for overseeing waiver and rule compliance and managing the Major League payroll and budget.

Colletti, who has negotiated nearly 400 Major League contracts, has been responsible for signing such premier players as current and former Most Valuable Player Barry Bonds, along with All-Star and 2003 Cy Young Award runner-up Jason Schmidt and key players such as Ray Durham, Kirk Rueter, Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou, Omar Vizquel, Armando Benitez and Mike Matheny. Colletti works closely with Dick Tidrow in signing the organization's top picks in the annual First-Year Player Draft. During the last seven years, the Giants have signed 154 of the organization's top 166 selections, including all but one of the players selected in the first 10 rounds.

Prior to joining the Giants organization in 1994, Colletti worked for the Chicago Cubs, beginning his Major League Baseball career in 1982. He worked in both the media relations and baseball departments in Chicago, assisting in player contract negotiations, including those of Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg and potential Hall of Famers Andre Dawson and Greg Maddux. In addition, he handled salary arbitration cases and assisted in player acquisitions. He was a key member of the organization when the Cubs won N.L. Eastern Division titles in 1984 and 1989. He was honored by Major League Baseball with the Robert O. Fishel Award for Public Relations Excellence in 1990.

The Chicago native graduated from Northern Illinois University and East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, IL, the same high school attended by Denver Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan, former Toronto Raptors general manager Glen Grunwald and former NBA head coach Jimmy Rodgers. He was inducted into the Triton College Sports Hall of Fame in 1993, entering the same time as former major league players Kirby Puckett, Lance Johnson and Jeff Reboulet. Ned and Gayle have two children, Lou and Jenna. Ned's brother Doug has been a member of the Chicago Bears' radio broadcast team for the past 19 seasons.

Colletti has assisted the Salesian Boys and Girls Club in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood and has also assisted the Charlie Wedemeyer Family Outreach program which is committed to helping ALS patients and their families. The author of four books has been a guest speaker at many law firms as well as a guest lecturer to students who attend the law schools of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, DePaul University in Chicago and students from the School of Business at the University of Southern California.

bio from SFGiants.com (written in the winter of 2003-04, I think)

Probably not, since it mentions a lot of the Giants' signings from the '04-05 offseason.

I didn't notice that part. An average of 93 wins a year made me think it had to be after the really good year, but I guess they did win 91 in '04, didn't they? That's a pretty good record they had.

Kimmy got jobbed.

Ng and Colletti were thought to be the only candidates to interview for the job.

This seems like rather sparse pickings. Unless they knew Colletti was their man all along.

Kimmy got jobbed

Maybe she's smart enough to NOT want the job permanently. Talk about a set-up for failure working for a clown like McCourt.

The Dodgers just cant run a baseball team these days without taking an assistant GM from the Bay Area... The A's have missed the playoffs each year Depo was in LA... now they are sabotaging the Giants... more reasons to hate LA! Heck Im losing count now....

Perhaps I'll go to Yosemite and go visit the natural beauty of Hetch Hetchy.

Oh, wait, can't really do that can I?

Yeah, San Francisco definitely has the moral low ground when it comes to water.

This strikes me as an odd move. It looks like Colleti's biggest skill is contract negotiations, which is the same as Ng's. I guess they could just not bring themselves to signing a woman.

Perhaps I'll go to Yosemite and go visit the natural beauty of Hetch Hetchy.

Oh, wait, can't really do that can I

Thanks for satisfying my duty as a Southern Californian before I got to this thread.

Listening to Bay Area people get high and mighty about water usage always makes me laugh.

Now if it were a situation where the Lakers went and signed all of the good players on the Kings, then you could bring up the water situation. Because if you looked at a map and saw where the California Aqueduct traversed, then you would know who is getting screwed on water.

Christina Kahrl's father is one of the foremost experts on California water and literally wrote the book on it, The California Water Atlas (published in 1979 the Governor's Office).

okay, somebody dive in here -- pun intended -- and enlighten those of us whose only familiarity with the california water situation is a close watching of 'chinatown' ...

Kimmy got jobbed.

Maybe Colletti just looks better in a skirt.

The big water project for Los Angeles, the one that William Mulholland engineered, took water from the Owens Valley (around the Sierra Nevada) down to the San Fernando Valley. Boom! Instant suburbs. The City of Los Angeles annexed that area and L.A. was off and running.

William Mulholland was not like Noah Cross. He wasn't a murderous, incestuous villain. Some of Mulholland's friends and associates (such as Fred Eaton) profited from knowing about the plan to divert the water, but Mulholland didn't.

The Los Angeles Aqueduct was built many years before the time period of "Chinatown". Further water projects, such as the California Aqueduct (which taps the Sacramento and American rivers) and various projects that tap into the Colorado River also supply California with water.

Much of San Francisco's water comes from a part of Yosemite known as Hetch Hetchy.

okay, somebody dive in here -- pun intended -- and enlighten those of us whose only familiarity with the california water situation is a close watching of 'chinatown' ...

I'll tell you what I know. San Francisco gets a portion of their water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the only Reservoir located IN a national park (Yosemite). Hetch Hetchy Reservoir was formed by damming the Tuolumne River and flooding Hetch Hetchy valley, which John Muir described as "another Yosemite Valley." If you've ever been to Yosemite Valley, you can see how angry this makes me.

I'll leave the SoCal story to others.

Basically, no one should live in California. Or they should only drink bottled water.

Chinatown. That was a good movie.

Anyway, here's a summary of the SoCal water situation. Briefly, there's the world's largest acquaduct that brings in water from the Colorado River (reducing it to a trickle by the time it nears the ocean, or so I hear), and about a jillion dams and things. Because LA grew so fast after the Great War and for a good long while afterward, LA has always struggled with where to get its water from (I mean, the city is in the desert, after all. So it takes water from all over the place, including outside the state. A lot of the dams and such were built quickly, without regard to environmental impact, precicely because LA (and San Diego, to a lesser degree) was swelling at such a rate that they needed new water RIGHT NOW over and over again. It's a mess, really.

Basically, no one should live in California.

Certainly, nobody should be growing rice in California. And yet ... There's no more convincing argument for the market pricing of water than the total disaster that is California.

Basically, no one should live in California.

Exactly. I did it for five years and hated almost every minute.

But much of the bottled water is taken from municipal sources.

The people who have gotten screwed out of their water live in the Owens Valley or the upper part of the Sacramento Valley.

But agriculture uses the bulk of the water. One of California's leading cash crops is cotton, which requires a lot of water and is grown in some of the driest areas of the state.

But agriculture uses the bulk of the water.

Exactly.

"Drought Summers" are odd - you'll be in San Francisco, where restaurants aren't serving water and people are putting bricks in their toilet tanks and not flushing, and then you drive for an hour, and you're out in farm country, where they're dumping thousands upon thousands of gallons of water.

LA doesn't "steal" anybody's water, though - they dont' need to. LA county has iron-clad water rights contracts - The rest of the state will go dry before LA does.

The San Joaquin River is essentially not a river anymore because of all the dams. The American, Yuba, Feather, Kings, Kern and Tuolumne also have a significant amount of dams on them. Living river canyons have been destroyed to provide quick water.

I will say that "Chinatown" is one of the greatest films ever made. Just don't use it as history. I don't think that Towne or Polanski intended it to be. They used a very good story (the Owens Valley and L.A.) and created an even greater film using it as a theme.

They're now trying to get various desalination projects started from the Central Coast down into Orange County, but they create potential environmental nightmares all their own.

Jake Gittes: I just want to know what you're worth, over one hundred million?
Arte Moreno: Oh my yes
Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can't afford?
Arte Moreno: A World Series, Mr. Gittes! A World Series!

From what was left, I guess the Dodgers made an alright choice. Theo Epstein apparently did not want to work for the Dodgers. I am not sure how good I should expect Colletti to be. I do not know how Sabean and him worked together and who chose what players.

I like living in California. The state government is not good, but the state itself is.

Bob T, in what city do you live? You seem to know a lot about the area, even that Nebury Park is going to play Paso Robles.

Basically, no one should live in California.

Well, no one new should live in California. We are well over capacity.

Herd a radio interview with Coletti today and he came off pretty well. Seems like a straight shooter, humble, friendly, essentially 1000% better at the PR angle of the job than the previous guy who almost always came off as condesending. The only part of the interview that was a little odd was when he made a big deal about liking to ask a lot of questions and never going into any situation blind and then followed that up with admitting he had no idea why things went bad so quickly between DePo and McCourt. With his resume he seems like a solid hire for the Dodgers.

They're now trying to get various desalination projects started from the Central Coast down into Orange County, but they create potential environmental nightmares all their own.

What's the problem? Where to put the salt?

Well, no one new should live in California. We are well over capacity.

Piss off, damn out-of-staters.

I think I'll move to Seattle. I hear that people like me are beloved there.

I'm planning on doing everything I can to move to California for my first real faculty job. Well, if I fail in my attempt to get into Canada, which these days is probably harder than getting into Princeton, as America's best and brightest flee into exile in the Great White North.

(I like California because there are flowers in the winter...)

Tommy Lasorda hitting the sauce...

Last, but certainly not least, I don’t like Ned because he’s Italian, I love him because I’m Italian!

Fink

Vaux,
On New Year's Day down here in Southern California, we have a parade with flowers too!

Well, if I fail in my attempt to get into Canada, which these days is probably harder than getting into Princeton, as America's best and brightest flee into exile in the Great White North.

I'd like to think I helped to start this trend when I moved to Montreal in 2002, in anticipation of the police state that was about to become the US. But really, it was because McGill offered me a pretty good deal and I fell in love with Montreal.

in anticipation of the police state that was about to become the US.

Let's not fool ourselves. If the US becomes a real police state, Canada is coming along as well.

A military of Dudley Doright and 3 moose wouldn't be able to keep it from happening.

Let's not fool ourselves. If the US becomes a real police state, Canada is coming along as well.

I think a lot of people would be quite disappointed long-term if they left the U.S. for reasons of civil liberties. Our unfortunate unfair limitations on civil rights generally make a larger fuss here - our population as a whole may be less cultured, but we're certainly more paranoid.

Let's not fool ourselves. If the US becomes a real police state, Canada is coming along as well. A military of Dudley Doright and 3 moose wouldn't be able to keep it from happening.

I promise that you are seriously underestimating Canadians in general. And if the United States military ever invaded Canada, that would pretty messed up. Although I could forsee an American police state, I don't see how the United States could force Canada to go along without enormous backlash across the rest of the civilized world. I really don't think the rest of the world cares that much about the United States, because (after all) they keep electing the idiots who keep eliminating their freedoms.

Another bashing of DePodesta/Moneyball in the local paper here. http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/sports_columnists/article/0,1375,VCS_225_4245816,00.html

Do the columnists who bash Moneyball actually understand it? Have they even read it?

I think hiring Colletti in itself is a decent move, but as a part of the whole picture it continues to show that the ownership group has no plan whatsoever. Only about what, 20 months ago, they hire DePo from a team that hordes draft picks and young talent, turns over a large portion of its roster year to year, doesn't place a strong emphasis on "proven veterans," and uses the draft and development as its main tools. Then he fires DePo, and hires the assistant from the team that has a completely different philosophy, to the point that they avoid draft picks. I think it shows kneejerk reactions by the owner. The same owner who allows a well respected manager to walk largely because of philosophical differences with the GM, and then a few weeks later fires the GM. No plan whatsoever.

Yes, I am not saying that Colletti is a bad hire. I am saying that firing DePodesta made no sense, unless there were internal personality issues that I am not aware of. I'm not really sure what DePodesta could have done all that much better for a better 2005 season.

Most GMs probably would have given Beltre an 8-year contract. DePo deserves credit for having the nads to let a guy like Beltre go after a big season.

The McCourts clearly blow in whatever the prevailing breeze is and they are standing in the middle of a big bowl with winds swirling about in every direction. Instead of grabbing on to something for safety, they just ride the whirlwind and hope they don't hit anything sharp.

Most GMs probably would have given Beltre an 8-year contract. DePo deserves credit for having the nads to let a guy like Beltre go after a big season.

Actually, the best you can say is that most GMs would have given Beltre a 5 year contract. Don't you think that if most GMs would have given him 8 years then he would have signed an 8 year contract?

Well Ned Colletti is a breath of fresh air and a big blue collar advocate, which the Dodgers need to get back to the basics. Gimmicks dont work in successful baseball, eventually you get found out.

Blue collar? The manufacturing sector in Southern California is declining rapidly.

Am I supposed to be excited about Jim Fregosi? He has had 5 winning seasons in 15 seasons as a manager. He's been fired 4 times. Boy am I excited.

Does anybody know why Hershiser wasn't hired? I have no idea how competent he would be as a manager, but it would be nice to give a Dodger legend a crack at the job. Why do teams continue to hire retreads? I think 4 shots as a manager is enough for Fregosi.