It’s true — either the Giants or Cardinals will represent the National League in the World Series this year. That the Dodgers will not remains the saddest truth in this fan’s sports world.

This morning, though, there is a glimmer of something for sullen Dodgers fans to get excited about. It comes in the form of an announcement.

The Dodgers have hired Andrew Friedman as President, Baseball Operations. Ned Colletti will stay as Senior Advisor to Stan Kasten.

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 14, 2014

Then I did this.

OK, Friedman won’t change the team immediately, but it’s the beginning of the offseason. The fact is, the Dodgers could look a whole lot different by the time March rolls around in Glendale. By then, this organization — the baseball part of it anyway — will surely have his stamp.

Ned Colletti wasn’t bad bad. He somehow found a way to hang around and bridge the largest ownership gap in the history of sports, having success all along the way. Most of the time, I’m a fan of consistency. I like a GM who stays with his guys and allows them to do what he hired them to do. Colletti’s time, though, had run its course. It was time to change the way the Dodgers were operating. Consistency had turned to stagnation and change, in this case, was the right thing to do.

Colletti will still be around — as a Senior Advisor to Stan Kasten — but the management of everything baseball-related now belongs to Friedman.

For today, my Twitter feed will provide my entertainment. Mike Petriello, Chad Moriyama, Sons of Steve Garvey, Dodgers Digest, DJ Short, Molly Knight, Alanna Rizzo, Craig Calcaterra, Jeff Sullivan, Rob Neyer, Howard Cole and every other baseball personality I follow will certainly have a take and an angle. So will @DodgerzGM who has changed his visible name to DodgerzSeniorAdvisor. It’s the best parody account on Twitter.

They’ll all have reactions that are more thought-through and worth reading, but mine is simply an exhale. That nasty, cold, bitter pit in the bottom of my stomach that’s been there since Game 4 of the NLDS — it might be dissipating. Good deal.

Some fun Tweets about the Friedman thing from today:

Andrew Friedman as soon as he gets to Los Angeles: http://t.co/9w8JH2QnQB

— Cespedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) October 14, 2014

The toughest thing about this transition is figuring out how to change my wifi password from G1ANTS2010 to G1ANTS2014.

— DodgerzSeniorAdvisor (@DodgerzGM) October 14, 2014

Fingers crossed that Andrew Friedman hires me to be the GM.

— DodgerzSeniorAdvisor (@DodgerzGM) October 14, 2014

I'm not exactly what a Senior Advisor is, but I imagine I'll be working with a lot of old folks.

— DodgerzSeniorAdvisor (@DodgerzGM) October 14, 2014

Colletti: /eats $15 reuben Friedman: /bag lunch Colletti: Friedman: Both: /laughter Friedman: /burns $100 bill Friedman: /tosses into woods

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) October 14, 2014

btw, here's actual data showing that (good) baseball executives have been wildly underpaid: http://t.co/HXd7Ek1Xnm

— robneyer (@robneyer) October 14, 2014

Bonus: Dodgers' Friedman announcement upstages Cards/Giants.

— Sons of Steve Garvey (@sosgsosg) October 14, 2014

If it wasn't before, @jonahkeri's The Extra 2% is now required reading, Dodger fans http://t.co/Z9IOiFDPr6

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) October 14, 2014

Don's gone by the end of the week.

— Howard Cole (@Howard_Cole) October 14, 2014

Clayton Kershaw is the ace of a much-improved Dodgers pitching staff. By Owen Main

It seems like such a long time. It was only a year though. Twelve months, and a lifetime ago.

Last April, the Dodgers were in limbo. Frank McCourt was on his way out, but nobody knew who was coming in. The Dodger organization was one year removed from the ownership tipping point — the Brian Stow beating — and months away from the beginning of what Dodger fans hope is the great turnaround — Magic Johnson and the Guggenheim group leading the way.

This year, the Dodgers’ spring training was the first under their new ownership and the outlook is actually bright for the first time in a few years Here are five reasons why Dodger fans are justified to have a sunny outlook on 2013.

* Dodger Stadium has been renovated: For fans, this should be a nice change. I, for one, was not excited about the sometimes-compromised sightlines created by the previous renovation of the lower level.

But this renovation has been a little more complete. It’s about as much as a team can do to an existing facility like Dodger Stadium in a single offseason. New state-of-the-art scoreboards have been installed that, while brand new, keep the Dodger Stadium aesthetic that those fans who are more sentimental will appreciate. All initial signs point to a better fan experience — something Frank McCourt promised, but new ownership has actually delivered in less than a year.

The thing that may be the most fun about the renovations will be what team president Stan Kasten called “the most elaborate and the most extensive Wi-Fi network anywhere in baseball.”

“Pretty good for a 50-year old stadium,” said Kasten.

Have you ever been somewhere and there were so many people that it overloaded the wireless network? Dodger Stadium will be a place where that probably won’t happen anymore. Again, good news for the fan experience.

Magic Johnson and the new ownership group deserves a lot more than a high-5 from Dodger fans. By Owen Main

* Veteran Leadership: One of the best things about this Dodgers team is that they actually have had a whole spring to mesh. In the end, production, wins and losses, etc… are all that matters. But it’s interesting how often “chemistry” gets brought into the conversation. By all accounts, the Dodgers are generally getting along and fans should take heart that now that the season is starting, the team should be comfortable and have no excuses not to perform to their potential.

I’m as excited about Opening Day as anyone else, but the baseball season is a grind. This Dodgers team is filled with players who know how to get through that grind both mentally and physically. There aren’t a lot of rookies on this year’s team. It’s built to win now and there are veterans who have been through this before. If ever there was a team designed to withstand the scrutiny the Dodgers will go through this year, it’s this team.

* Depth: It’s a simple concept, but when you have a veteran team, guys will end up on the disabled list. Guys will need days off. When you sign a team with a lot of players who have some chance of injury (due to age or past history), you have to bring depth along with it. The Dodgers don’t have just anyone as their utility players without some bona-fides. Jerry Hairston, Nick Punto, Skip Schumaker, and Juan Uribe have all been on winning teams. Justin Sellars looks like he’ll get a real chance to play a lot in Hanley Ramirez‘ absence. Hairston and Schumaker both can play infield and outfield positions, giving Don Mattingly a little extra versatility in filling out his lineup card or making late-inning substitutions on any given day.

Uribe and Sellars might not be the best choices in the world, but keep in mind that the Dodgers have players with Major League experience like Dee Gordon, Elian Herera, and Alfredo Amezaga. The most important minor league player, though, might be Yasiel Puig. Puig has yet to see any major league time, but hit over .500 in spring training and could be the answer should an outfielder like Carl Crawford get hurt.

* Grienke: The impact of a second ace is not one to be taken lightly. Zach Grienke had a weird year last season, but should be well-settled in the new Dodger Stadium. Having a second top-of-the-line pitcher should take some pressure off Clayton Kershaw and the rest of the team. With Grienke, the Dodgers have two Cy Young Award winners and Josh Beckett, who has been a World Series MVP in 2003 and finished second in American League Cy Young voting in 2007.

Hitting and fielding isn’t the only place the Dodgers have depth. Having Kershaw and now Grienke at the top of the rotation makes experienced pitchers like Beckett, Chad Billingsley, and Chris Capuano bottom-of-the-rotation guys.

* Puig: Yasiel Puig will start the season in Chattanooga, Tennessee with the Dodgers’ AA team, the Lookouts. After a spring training where he hit .526 (with zero walks in almost 60 plate appearances), Puig injected additional hope for the Dodgers’ future. He is 22 and has some seasoning ahead of him, but if this year’s spring training is any indication, Puig may give the team trade and roster flexibility sooner than later. Also in Chattanooga is Zach Lee, the other top Dodgers prospect. Lee, only 21 years old, is the Dodgers’ top pitching prospect. In the quest to win now, the Dodgers have also not given up all their prospect talent, allowing them to avoid mortgaging the future for a chance to win now.

Scores of empty seats at weekend games in Chavez Ravine will become distant memories, the stain of the McCourt ownership already starting to be washed away by the solvent of the cash-infused new ownership group. For Dodgers fans, this opening day truly should be a new beginning.

The group, figureheaded by Magic Johnson and led by Stan Kasten and Mark Walter, have done lots of tangible things including lowering parking prices and making sure that concessions are manned by an appropriate number of workers — two things Frank McCourt made tangibly worse during his tenure as owner.

In a letter today to fans, Kasten covered many of these improvements:

When Magic Johnson, Mark Walter and I were introduced as the new ownership team two months ago, we made bold commitments to you and to all of the Los Angeles community. Since then, we have conducted surveys, focus groups and town hall meetings. In addition, we’ve engaged in countless conversations with many of you each night at the ballpark. We will continue to listen to you and your suggestions regarding the improvement of your Dodger Stadium experience and we have already begun to act on your recommendations. Some have been achieved already, some are in progress, and still others are being planned. But they all represent a no-excuses culture that we are creating throughout the Dodger organization.

Kasten’s group has done a good job of changing the culture around the team and stadium, as a fan first and owner second.  His email shows that he’s at least making an effort to keep lines of communication with fans open. After an obliteration of such lines under the McCourt regime, it feels like a warm hug to us Dodger fans to be communicated-with even a little bit.

Despite the warm fuzzy that the letter gave me, the most important portions of it were the following two line items from Kasten:

— We have moved forward with a more aggressive strategy in scouting and signing international players, a hallmark trait of this organization, to strengthen our player development system. This strategy has already paid dividends in the recent signing of Cuban outfielder Yasiel Puig and others.

— Most importantly, as demonstrated by the recent signing of Andre Ethier to a five-year contract extension that will keep him a Dodger playing alongside Matt Kemp through at least 2017, the signing of the aforementioned Puig and the signing of Corey Seager, our No. 1 draft choice, we have the resources to assure the Dodgers are contenders year in and year out.

Hey look over here, not over there!

Like a dog abused over and over, many Dodgers fans are still wary. McCourt had what seemed like a number of good plans and a lot of loud and proud announcements that proved to quietly be duds. Examples included, but certainly weren’t limited to the way the Dodgers handled the finances of club-backed charities, continued deterioration of the fan experience inside the ballpark, and a spin-heavy set of roster decisions based on poor financial management and not on the team.

So, while I’m generally pleased with what Kasten has done, he and the Dodgers organization must understand that I need some time to heal before I fall head-over-heels with trust.