By JIM ALEXANDER, The Press-Enterprise

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - The teenager hears the advice from his father, and ... well, you know how most teenagers are. What could HE possibly know about this?

Usually, it eventually sinks in that Dad does, indeed, know what he's talking about.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - At the end of an afternoon of hits and giggles Saturday, with UC Riverside's baseball alumni having put the finishing touches on a 7-4 victory over the 2012 varsity at the Sports Center, the old guys stormed the field as if they'd just won the World Series.

Well, uh, one of their number had done just that a few months ago.

SAN DIEGO - We are about to learn the real importance of mini-camps, Organized Team Activities and the rest of the off season busy work of which NFL coaches are so fond.

Without putting players through that spring and early summer workload, either the quality of play in America's Most Self-Absorbed League is going to be abysmal.

LOS ANGELES - Wednesday was a dark day, maybe the darkest in the history of an iconic franchise.

Yet it was a bright day, too, when Los Angeles Dodgers fans could hope the mess that has been the McCourt Era is finally coming to a conclusion.

ANAHEIM, Calif. - This statistic may give you a sense of what the Los Angeles Lakers are truly up against this year.

For the past five seasons, Derek Fisher has played all 82 regular-season games, each year. In the past four, the Lakers' point guard has played an additional 82 playoff games.

In other words, he has played the equivalent of six seasons in five years.

Conclusive proof that the local baseball landscape has become Dysfunction Junction will be on display in a Los Angeles courtroom starting this week. In fact, the case can be made that McCourt v. McCourt, the divorce trial that started Monday, is the most important baseball competition in greater Los Angeles this season.

There are no rules for retired numbers. Some places, you'd better be a Hall of Famer. Other places honor the likes of Byron Beck.

But this much is certain: If you want a franchise's ultimate honor, you'd better not burn your bridges.

Through all of the words written and spoken about George Steinbrenner in the days following his death, the ones that best sum up his complex yet unmistakable impact on baseball were his own.

For example: "I hate to lose. Hate, hate, hate to lose."

And: "Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing. Breathing first, winning next."

CINCINNATI - All of the discussion about whether the Los Angeles Dodgers can acquire an ace for the top of their pitching staff ignores one fact: They might just already have one.

Yes, Clayton Kershaw is just 22 years old. Yes, the Dodgers are being very careful with his psyche as well as his gifted left arm.

LOS ANGELES - In the NCAA Committee of Infractions report on USC -- which was in the works for, oh, what seemed like a decade before it was released Thursday -- the term "institutional control," describing lack of same, appears 10 separate times in 67 pages.

Mentions of the "director of athletics" appear in four different places.