And then, a final tip of the cap

I leave you with this …

• If the Dodgers do not win it all this year, all the postseason talk will rightly be focused on how they failed to go the extra year to sign Zack Greinke. Still puzzling.
• A.J. Ellis is by far the best quote on the team, if not all of baseball. Intelligent, insightful, honest and humorous -- he has a broadcasting future if he wants it.
• For all the good the Dodgers’ new ownership has done -- and it’s done plenty -- its lasting legacy could be keeping Vin Scully out of most of the Los Angeles-area TV market his final three seasons.
• Greatest Dodgers pitcher I ever saw? My youthful eyes claim Sandy Koufax. Best pitcher I ever covered? Clayton Kershaw.
• I’ll miss Nancy Bea Hefley.
• Anyone who knows Dave Roberts hopes he makes it. The same, of course, can be said for Don Mattingly.
• With apologies to Dylan Hernandez -- did I actually just write that? -- my Los Angeles sports Mt. Rushmore is Koufax, Scully, Magic Johnson and John Wooden, with Jerry West on the bubble.
• Andre Ethier, my favorite enigma.
• Baseball is filled with strikingly beautiful ballparks these days, but nothing quite matches Dodger Stadium with its San Gabriel Mountains backdrop. Never took the press box view for granted.
• Trolling, I believe they call it: Easiest ways for a cheap day of massive hits was to tweak the new numbers lovers or the Giants fans. So sensitive.
• Right now, at this moment in Los Angeles sports history, the Dodgers are the biggest and most popular team in town. Given the embarrassing final crowds of the Frank McCourt era, that says plenty about the deep roots the team has here and the better decisions made by Guggenheim.
• Nervous nanny alert: Kershaw can opt out after the 2018 season. He’d walk away from a remaining $65 million.
• Those in-game “hosts” remain the most annoying aspect of every Dodger game. They are beneath the Dodgers.
• People who have listened to Scully all these years feel like they truly know him. Guess what, they do. He is exactly the warm, caring, intelligent man they think he is. Highlight of every game -- Scully sitting down for a few moments during the nightly pregame press room dinner just to chat.
• The Dodgers do have enough talent to win it this year if they consistently demonstrate that difficult-to-characterize but missing ingredient -- a deep-rooted hunger.
• I have absolutely no confidence in any prediction for the way Yasiel Puig’s career will play out, and neither do you.
• The Dodgers have won five World Series in Los Angeles, but after all this time, their next will be their biggest.

And so after six interesting years here, life calls in a new direction and I bid you a very fond adieu.