The Yard Work 2008 Season Preview cannot be stopped! Until it’s finished! Shake and bake! Today’s preview features hard-hitting Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers talking about the Los Angeles Dodgers with his Times colleague, Bill Plaschke.

Bill Plaschke has written for the LA Times for over twenty years, twelve of those as a sports columnist. He’s been named National Sports Columnist of the Year by the Associated Press. He’s been nominated for a Pulitzer. He was featured in Michael Mann’s Ali. He’s a frequent guest on ESPN’s Around The Horn. And that smug sack of chins will gladly recount all this to you at the drop of the hat, using the same monosyllabic sentences he foists upon readers of his idiotic columns.

Despite being terribly allergic to stupid people, I performed a public service this past weekend and caught up with the overrated Plaschke at the Dodgers’ Spring Training facilities in Vero Beach, FL, to find out how wrong he’ll be about the Dodgers’ hopes this season. I made sure to bring extra ventilation masks, so I didn’t have to inhale too much of his BS.

I found Plaschke sitting in the stands during a pre-season tilt, his mouth mercilessly wrapped around some sort of cheesesteak sandwich, dollops of mayo and cheese sauce trying to blend into the floral print of his hideous Hawaiian shirt. If you told me the man’s one burp away from serious heart failure, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest. So how much heart-clogging fat is that for you today, I ask him. “Just ask your stupid questions and go back to your hole, Junior.” That’s Plaschke’s cute little nickname for me, since he’s been at the Times longer than me. He’s quite a charmer.

So I ask him what he thinks about Juan Pierre‘s chances of starting this year. “If the Dodgers want to win, he has to start in left field. That’s all there is to it. Kemp and Ethier aren’t seasoned enough to do it. They still need time to learn their place. Last year showed that.” Wow, that’s a pretty long answer. I perform a mirror check on Plaschke to see if he stopped breathing. Sadly, he’s still conscious.

I give His Fatty Eminence time to slake his thirst with more sugar water, then try to find out his opinion of the pitching staff. Does he knows yet how he’ll rain on rookie Clayton Kershaw’s parade? Will he focus his keen eye on bad-mouthing Brad Penny again? Or will he save up all his impotent bitterness for some poor multi-million-dollar sap in the bullpen? He lets out a noxious burp before answering. “I don’t know, Junior. I was just going to follow your lead. With a pooper scooper.” Oh, Bill. Leave the comedy to those overpaid striking hacks you like to buddy up with out in Hollywood, would you?

So how about weighing in on how great Joe Torre is, and how he’ll walk on water to get these guys fitted for a ring? “It’s in my March 9th column, Junior. Try reading once in a while. Your eyes and your brain will appreciate the exercise.” But some of us have to do our taxes and clean behind our refrigerators. How about summarizing your pearls of wisdom for those of us that don’t want to read your drool, Bill? “He’s a living legend. He can bridge the divide that folky-olky Grady Little could not. And would not. You can’t work with Joe Torre, you don’t deserve to work.”

And how about those old overpaid farts, Bill? Like my good friend Jeff Kent? You feel any special ironic kinship towards them? “Why don’t you tell me what you want to hear, Junior? It’s not like you’ll take anything I offer at face value,” he blubbers incoherently, spitting semi-chewed chunks of green and red pepper at me. “You’ll find some way to twist my words to make me look foolish and back up whatever argument you have to support. To be honest, it’s kind of pathetic.”

Wait a second. Was that Bill Plaschke being honest? The guy that spends most weekdays yelling at his peers to score points with Tony Kornheiser’s shoe-shine boy? The man that used his column as an anti-statistical bully pulpit against former Dodger GM Paul DePodesta in the same way that William Randolph Hearst used his media empire to rally support for the Spanish-American War? To quote Dick Vitale: are you serious? This is rich, and I tell him as much.

He slobbers up some steak juice, and smiles at me. “I’m pretty sure you wrote some columns against GoogleBoy and his Excel spreadsheets, Junior.” Yeah, but there’s a difference between journalism and hackism, Billy Boy. Maybe one of these days, you’ll figure that out. I try to explain this to him, using flashcards and scratch-n-sniff stickers, but he waddles away. Says he has to go write a column about yours truly. I can already see what it’s going to say.

Some might say that TJ Simers is a respected sports journalist.

I say he’s as bad for Los Angeles as DePodesta and his pie charts were for the Dodgers.

Billy, Billy, Billy. When will you ever learn?