I caught a great night at Dodger Stadium, with plenty of interesting little plot turns and a walk-off home run to send everybody home happy. Plus the Kings win game one in St. Louis and the Lakers and Clippers prepare to start their playoffs.

Some days after the 1992 riots had begun to calm down, LA Times editors selected some of the staff's writers to produce first-person stories about what the violence meant to them as Angelenos. On Saturday, the Times ran fresh pieces from Patt Morrison, Elaine Woo, Greg Braxton and, sitting in for George Ramos — who died last year — Hector Tobar. They are good — go read them.

Harold Meyerson, the LA Weekly's executive editor and chief political writer at the time of the Los Angeles riots in 1992, is one of the alumni whose jaw dropped when the current LA Weekly posted a blog item yesterday claiming that the alt-weekly did not cover the riots when they happened. (Alas, I fell for it.) In a note to LA Observed, Meyerson explains what actually went on.

Peter Hong was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times who, he writes today, got his newsroom job because of the 1992 riots that tore up Los Angeles after the acquittal of white LAPD officers in Simi Valley. His career "roughly covered the rise and fall of newsroom diversity." Now he's a deputy to Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

A piece in Orange Coast magazine focuses on the dilemma in OC's Newport Harbor where the good Republicans of Balboa Island either believe the Pacific is rising and need an $80 million seawall — and soon — or they believe Rush Limbaugh and friends that global warming is a creation of the loony left.

In its communication this week on the riots, the Police Protective League downplays the role of the riots in changing the department. It includes an interesting stat: about 7 in 9 of today's officers were not in the LAPD at the time of the riots, or by extension at the time that Rodney King was beaten in the dark on Foothill Boulevard.

Trying to get a handle on highlights from the Los Angeles Times, KPCC and other sources.

One of the milestones of LA Times lore from Shelby Coffey's era as editor was his use of scissors to repel rioters trying to climb through a smashed window in the LAT Magazine's first-floor suite. He writes about the episode at the Daily Beast.

According to LA Weekly blogger Simone Wilson, who went back through the paper's archives, in 1992 "two full issues went by without any mention of the riots." She was wrong. The LA Weekly covered the riots in a big way. Wilson has posted a correction.

There has been so much terrific journalism published and aired and posted around the twentieth anniversary of the 1992 riots. It's been an especially awesome week for "Which Way, LA?", started by KCRW right after the riots with Warren Olney providing the steady hand.

Back when most baseball players were lean and a little mean, Bill Skowron looked like his nickname: Moose. He was big and muscular, but he actually got the name in childhood because somebody thought he resembled the Italian dictator Mussolini. Obit material

The grand opening to unveil the new Expo Line light rail train is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. at the 7th Street/Metro station in downtown. That kicks off a weekend...

In his column over at the Jewish Journal, Bill Boyarsky looks at the ballot battle over a judgeship that once again appears to be a case of a challenger trying to capitalize on a sitting judge having an ethnic name. The highly ranked incumbent is Superior Court Judge Sanjay T. Kumar. The challenger is a guy named Smith. And that's all most voters will know when they look at their ballots.

West Covina police officer Eduardo Flores had a busy morning on Monday.

Studio City's red curb vandal, Browns and Villaraigosa head to DC to schmooze, MTA also approves Regional Connector, more revelations from the assessor's office, staffers exit Daily Journal and more.

Remember all those teachers who were summarily moved out of Miramonte Elementary School after two teachers were accused of sexually attacking children at the school? Fox 11's Phil Shuman found out what they are doing. It isn't teaching.

"The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection," "Wild," "Fifty Shades of Grey" and a certain bossypants comedian lead the lists. Turns out SoCal women like their spanking stories too.

The Los Angeles Conservancy says that the 1959 home by architect Lloyd Wright was torn down on Wednesday, "the day after the Palos Verdes Estates City Council denied the Conservancy's appeal of the decision to allow the home's demolition."

"In a world full of secrets, lies, and depravity, there are some crimes that the police are just too mainstream to handle. Enter: The Silver Lake Badminton and Adventurers club. The heros Silver Lake deserves but hasn't necessarily heard of yet."

Judge Otis Wright II, a George W. Bush appointee who was confirmed in 2007, has filed for personal bankruptcy, "a rare thing for a federal judge." His home in Rancho Palos Verdes will be put on the market.

The Metro board of directors today certified the Westside Subway Extension’s Final Environmental Impact Statement/Report, approving the route and station locations for the first phase out to La Cienega Boulevard.

Flavorpill's Los Angeles bias is showing through again — not that we're complaining. Its Flavorwire site has put Union Station, sometimes called the last great American rail station to be built, in 1939, high on its aggregation of The Most Beautiful Train Stations in the World.

Think this is serious? Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and the president of USC, C.L. Max Nikias, all threw a press conference this morning to try to assure parents, students and potential students — here and abroad — that the neighborhood around the campus is safe. More cops and prosecutors are among the steps.

More on Noguez, Board of Education maps, Ridley-Thomas on the probation department, Sexy Frisbees and the new Pacific Standard magazine.

The Hollywood Reporter includes in its May 4 issue a 20-page special report on politics that "examines the complicated relationship between Hollywood and politics." It leads with a profile by contributing editor Tina Daunt of Obama fundraisers and power couple Ted Sarandos, the chief of content for Netflix, and Nicole Avant, the president's former ambassador to The Bahamas. "Sarandos is the man everyone in Hollywood wants a meeting with," says the trade. Included is what THR is calling "a guide to 20 of the biggest political players in Hollywood, including George Clooney, J.J. Abrams, Haim Saban and Ron Meyer."

Enthusing about those Hollywood arson fires, Villaraigosa vs Jerry Brown, Fred Karger's Sexy Frisbee video kicked off YouTube, a condom billboard in Van Nuys and Blogdowntown's original blogger leaves town.

April 29, 1986 — the day the Central Library was torched by an arsonist. The building didn't reopen for good until 1993. Some 200,000 books were destroyed, plus irreplaceable periodicals, drawings from patents, historic maps, fine art prints, photography negatives and newspaper archives.

The only Griffith Observatory figure we usually hear about is Edwin Krupp, the longtime face of the institution who has done a thousand interviews if he's done one. Westways goes another way for its May Space issue.

The so-called "teardrop rapist" appeared to stop in 2005 — at least no victims have come forth. Now DNA evidence ties the same criminal to a sexual assault last November around Adams and Normandie. Women should not walk alone at night, an official says. Video

Ivan Rodriguez arrived in Texas from Puerto Rico as a 19-year-old kid with a special arm. He was feted, back in Texas, as the man who caught the most games in the history of baseball.

Up in San Francisco today the 1960s survivor, the Bay Guardian, announced that co-publishers Bruce Brugmann and Jean Dibble "are stepping down from day-to-day operations at the paper." The Bay Guardian appeared on the streets in 1966, before the Summer of Love.

The Lakers will be without Metta World Peace for the final game of the season and the first six games of the NBA playoffs, if they get that far. MWP was suspended for his unprovoked elbow to the head of Oklahoma City's James Harden, sidelining him with a concussion.

Starts in the Valley around Magnolia and Woodman, moves slowly and almost politely through Hollywood, Los Feliz and Atwater Village, then into the city of Glendale.

A Department of Fish and Game warden called to the scene of a mountain lion near homes in Sunland shot and killed the animal last Friday. DFG officials told KTLA the warden felt shooting the animal was necessary to keep the neighborhood safe.

The California Women's Conference started by the wife of Gov. George Deukmejian in 1985, and made into a big event by Maria Shriver, will go on in September — under new organizers and without Gov. Brown.

This is more interesting than the exercise of tweeting the sinking of the Titanic, because as you read the mundane tick-tock of events from the trial of the officers who beat Rodney King you know that something really big is coming. The idea came from Olsen Ebright, a member of the digital team at NBC4.com.

Death penalty to be on ballot, MTA dinged on civil rights, Berman fundraiser, Hefner bids Chicago farewell, the politics of "The Hunger Games: and more.

I woke up this morning to an LA history story of a sort by Nick Roman of KPCC. He reported on the Los Angeles debut 50 years ago this week of the young heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay. Two years later, as Muhammad Ali, he joined the leader of the Nation of Islam on stage at the Olympic Auditorium.

Two decades before the Rodney King verdict riots, the Eastside erupted over the Vietnam War and other issues. The events of that time still echo in the city.

A newspaper story about a grown-up Huntington Beach kid who searched for his former teacher so he could apologize for a long-ago act tells us something about forgiveness, and memory, and life. The story unfolds in layers for him, the teacher and the writer of the story. Go read at the Portland Oregonian.

The news late last week from the LA County coroner must have hit some of Andrew Breitbart's more conspiracy-minded fans hard, kind of like the dissonance felt by the followers of that old clergyman who keeps proclaiming — then surviving — the end of the world. He died at 43 of heart disease and hardening of the arteries, the coroner concluded. Andrew did like his steak.

Lucy Delgado, the founder of the Mothers of East Los Angeles activist group that formed to fight construction of a prison in Boyle Heights, died on April 11. She lived her entire life in Boyle Heights.

ABC devoted a two-hour "20/20" special edition this past weekend to Sunset Boulevard, "a curving slice of American romance running from the rough edges of East LA through the music of Hollywood, past the riches of Beverly Hills and ending at the Pacific Ocean." Well, not quite East LA, or even the Eastside, but hey it's the promotional side of national news — what do they know.

The New York Times Travel section on Sunday offered a tour, with online slide show, of locations in the Los Angeles area that the late Julius Shulman photographed. "Shulman captured Los Angeles and its surroundings in the middle of the 20th century as the city was shedding its small-town roots and becoming an international capital."

AT&T's power in Sacramento, Blue Line woes, gay LA's man in the white House, tax relief for documentary filmmakers, local teacher wins top honor plus riots coverage and John Edwards.

During both days of the book festival at USC this weekend, trains were running on the Expo Line just south of the campus. No riders, though. These were test runs. Would it have killed Metro to accelerate the opening one week with thousands of potential Expo Line users already going to USC?

The Kings will get several days off before opening round two in St. Louis. The Kings had the worst record of any western team in the playoffs, so this is a major upset. Story and video clip