LOS ANGELES – If a baseball season were any more fragile it’d be delivered in a velvet pouch swathed in bubble wrap sprinkled with foam peanuts in a corrugated box and presented by a skittish guy with lip sweat and a slight hand tremor.

“Here,” he’d say and practically faint from the relief. Will Hanley Ramirez's return bring life to the Dodgers' offense? (AP)

You break it, you bought it. Except you already bought it. So, you break it, you live with it, every stinkin’ day for six months. And just for kicks you invite tens of thousands of people in to see it every day, and if it breaks then, tens of hundreds might show up not for support but to sharpen the humiliation.

The daily delivery of the product has changed so that, as New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman once said, teams are no longer judged by the baseball they play over a summer, or a month, or even a week, but over “162 one-game seasons.”

Which means stuff breaks. A lot. And then comes the expectation that it be fixed, you know, right this instant, because there’s another game, like,

Wilin Rosario launches a three-run homer on Monday in Colorado's rout of Los Angeles. (USA Today Sports)

LOS ANGELES – Dante Bichette, the Colorado Rockies' rookie hitting coach, was endeavoring to explain how Wilin Rosario reminds him of Manny Ramirez, how innate bat speed meets God-granted power meets some other mystical denomination.

Rosario himself sat 20 feet away, rolling the handle of a bat from one hand to the other.

These are elastic conversations, given the length one must travel to see one of the great right-handed hitters of his generation – maybe the greatest before Miguel Cabrera came along – in a 24-year-old, 5-foot-11, 220-pound catcher whose hero growing up in Bonao, Dominican Republic was, indeed, Manny Ramirez.

No matter that the young, stubby catcher, in 155 big-league games, or what amounts to one big-league season, has 38 home runs, more than any catcher since his September 2011 debut. No matter that Rosario, batting .329 when the Rockies arrived near exhaustion (their flight was delayed several hours in Phoenix the night before and arrived at about 3 a.m. Monday

LOS ANGELES – When the Milwaukee Brewers were what must have seemed like hours into a labor of six months, when they’d lost eight of their first 10 games and grinned thinly and assured anyone who needed assuring that this was not who they were, Carlos Gomez looks on after reaching base. (USA Today)Carlos Gomez began a 12-game push in which he batted .500 and, at the same time, Jim Henderson saved five games and won another. 

As deliciously random as baseball can be, you probably couldn’t do much better than to be rescued in large part by a 27-year-old Dominican who’d spent his young life chasing the expectations put upon him and a 30-year-old Canadian who’d stubbornly resisted evidence that he’d become a career minor leaguer. From the extremes of a system that will coddle talent and prospect status until the last man no longer believes, that will reject a late-round, late-bloomer because no one else believes, Gomez and Henderson share a locker room, and therefore a purpose.

“I know him a little bit,” Henderson said of Gomez. “I’m getting

On Al Gore, Bryce Harper's disappearing jersey, Korean piñatas, more Al Gore, Wrigley history and Jays fans:

The rankings (records through Wednesday):

1. Atlanta Braves (15-6; Previous: 1) – So, after all those years, turns out the anchor was Chipper.

2. Texas Rangers (14-7; Previous: 7) – From historical perspective, Berkman says Wrigley has "mainly been a place for people to go and drink beer." Like there's something wrong with that.

3. San Francisco Giants (13-9; Previous: 3) – Zito tells GQ his new hobby is "shooting firearms," teammates really hope he's got better command with that.

4. Boston Red Sox (14-7; Previous: 9) – Papi slays 'em with profane ode to city. Next Patriots Day, thinking he'll tell "Aristocrats" joke.

5. Baltimore Orioles (12-9; Previous: 11) – Chris Davis breaks bat over knee, but Showalter forgives him. Alternative was bat boy.

6. St. Louis Cardinals (13-8; Previous: 14) – Cards take three in D.C. or, as it's being sold in Hollywood, Olympus Has Fallen II.

7.

Yu Darvish struck out 11 Angels in six innings en route to a victory on Wednesday night. (AP)

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Yu Darvish on Wednesday night made his fifth start of the season, the 34th of his career on this side of the ocean, and after three innings a veteran scout tapped into his phone, "Darvish might have the best slider I've ever seen tonight."

Not Darvish's best slider. Anybody's best slider. Of the tens of thousands of sliders this scout had witnessed, recorded and committed to memory, the best slider. That one.

And Darvish has, like, a half-dozen other pitches.

Several hours earlier, a more veteran scout (by perhaps 20 years) listened attentively to the clumsily phrased question: "How many pitchers have you seen with both the quantity of pitches and the quality of pitches possessed by Darvish?"

He got the gist, formed an O with his thumb and forefingers, and grinned.

"Zero," he said.

In the fourth inning at Angel Stadium, Darvish's former teammate, Josh Hamilton, came to the plate with two outs. The first pitch was a 60-mph curveball. Hamilton swung over it. Darvish got the

ANAHEIM, Calif. – For a recently (and briefly) bankrupt franchise whose iconic CEO has been threatening to quit, for an organization whose manager once tested positive for a controlled substance, for a team that two and three seasons ago played to the final moments of October only to lose, for a club that gave away a division title in September and whose winter reputedly was borderline catastrophic, the Texas Rangers are, as usual, quite composed and, again, pretty capable.

Off a three-game sweep of the Seattle Mariners and through a methodical three weeks (they've yet to lose two in a row), the Rangers opened a three-game series against the Los Angeles Angels on Monday night as the American League's undead. That is, you can't kill them, you can only make them more resolute.

The Rangers haven't shown much of a letdown after an offseason in which they lost Josh Hamilton. (USA Today Sports)In a division that was to be – and certainly still may be – about the fresh-faced Oakland A's and reloaded Angels, the Rangers moved into late April at 12-6, tied for the best record in the AL,

ANAHEIM, Calif. – I have this dog and she’s in the top 10 or 12 people I know. She has this thing she does. Molly barks at the wind. Not at stuff blowing in the wind, near as I can tell. But the wind itself, her legs stiff and her tail taut and her fur spiked and her chest up and her eyes glassy. Josh Hamilton readies for a pitch in the fourth inning Sunday. (Getty)Yes, she looks like a regular diva in those moments. 

Anyway, at the end of a week that had us all a bit wind-whipped, I got to thinking about Molly and this thing she does, and how we all tend to turn and rail against what we don’t quite understand. Or what doesn’t agree with us. Or what seems amiss, sometimes even slightly. Or what simply disappoints us. (Or we’re just hungry. Again.) 

It’s the same in baseball. Maybe even more in baseball. And, especially – lately -- in Los Angeles. Weeks ago, if you were to pick two franchises that absolutely had capable starts, even reasonable starts, you might have gone with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels. Today, the Dodgers are 8-10,

ANAHEIM, Calif. – The inconvenient part of Friday night's 8-1 Angels win over Detroit was that Los Angeles didn't win for the past three years with Torii Hunter in their lineup, in their outfield, or in their hearts.

Torii Hunter acknowledges the Angels bench before his first at-bat. (USA TODAY Sports)In fact, in spite of swollen expectations and a brand new superstar, the Angels with Hunter suffered a perfectly miserable, eight-win last April that all but snuffed their season before the marine layer could burn off. It wasn’t his fault, of course. He hit.

Anyway, there’s an honesty to Hunter, a realness, that draws people to him. Teammates linger at his locker. In his rookie season, Mike Trout basically lashed himself to Hunter’s belt. Fans get a smile and a “How ya doin’?” Even strangers get a wave, a wink, something that says, hey, we’re all good here.

So it’s an event when Hunter comes home, even when it’s not home anymore. He has been kind enough to stay in touch. Every night when they put the American League batting leaders on the scoreboard, there he is,