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He men, she men, brutes and dandies… a look at Dodger GMs since Al Campanis
Your “Dodger Boy” post, which was amazingly detailed and right on, got me thinking about a topic we’ve discussed a few times in our own conversations. I thought I would throw out there the comedy that has been Dodger GMs since Al Campanis. Let me explain…
First off, Al is looked at fondly as a great Dodger character, and was. I don’t think for a second he was racist – drunk, as you point out, probably, and old, confused and thrown last minute in front of the camera certainly, but not racist. We all know Al’s relationship with black and Latin ballplayers, so it bothers me when Dodger haters painted Al as a villain.
An interesting thing happened after Al stepped down though, non baseball people, or business-minded guys with white collar trappings, “Metrosexuals”, began populating the Dodgers front office – as well as other front offices throughout the league. The real issue to me here, and it’s meant to be funny, so please take it in the spirit of which it’s intended – after Al Campanis, there were a lot of “Dodger Boys”, in some way, shape or form – and very few men.
NO baseball men, NO guys who could down a bottle of scotch, grab a dame around the waist, or in fact get away with calling a woman a dame, a broad, a skirt, baby, or any of those lovely chauvinistic things we as guys hold so dear. That is, until Ned Colletti came aboard. (And rest assured, Kim Ng is a better woman because of it!)
Think about it…
Fred Claire – VERY effeminate speaking voice, beautifully sculpted and sprayed hair, natty attire without so much as a wrinkle, always gentlemanly. Can you imagine Fred across from an old school baseball guy at a negotiation? No wonder after his whirlwind of great moves leading up to the 1988 season, he almost never replicated that genius, even backpedaling whenever a trade opportunity arose. Ok, Pedro for Delino bit him in the ass badly, but I’ll go on record and defend that move, as I clearly remember how all of that went down, and moving a little relief pitcher his manager and team physician ruled too slight to start 35 games per year for one of the most exciting young catalysts in baseball, after losing his second baseman, isn’t such a crazy idea. But Fred was impotent (sorry, Fred) for years after that and when offered a then in his prime Robin Ventura for guys like Roger Cedeno or Billy Ashley, Fred shied away. Tsk, tsk, it wasn’t just the voice, the hair, the ironed Dockers and properly fitting polo shirt, Fred, it was your spine. You didn’t have much of one.
Kevin Malone – already gone over in great detail. A guy with a wimpy voice, odd looking, almost Hitler-like mustache (say what you want about Hitler, I hate the guy’s guts, but at least if the Sheriff shaved his ‘stache a little smaller and it actually WAS like Hitler, he might’ve been more of a bad ass), and corporate suck up mentality – how tough could he be? Sure, he immaturely challenged taunting fans to fist fights like an ape, but he also talked an awful lot about God, faith, Jesus, church, and perhaps the Holy Ghost. So again, “Dodger Boy” sitting down across from an opposing GM in a negotiation, a guy who probably chewed pistachio nuts with the shells on, or a Godless parasite like Scott Boras…? No match.
Tommy – ok, a blip on the radar. Here’s a man’s man who has been rumored to have had infidelities, even those of the “professional” nature. Tommy comes from a fine line of hard drinking, foul mouthed baseball guys that any guy would be proud of knowing. He was an abysmal GM however, well past his prime, a throwback not equipped to mix it up with more alert, younger, and better educated GMs. Tommy, at least you were a dude, so I can appreciate that.
Some proof Tommy’s all man…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPx327SbBQ0
Dan Evans – Dan is a hero of mine, a HUGELY underrated Dodger GM. If Malone didn’t foul things up so much, Fox wouldn’t have clamped down on the purse strings the way they did. Evans had to work with nothing, and still managed to field a competitive Dodger team. I went into details about his pitching staff, his defense, his scouting, etc. Evans took over and realized our pitching rotation and lineup needed variety and intentionally went out and found that variety, creating a staff of dissimilar styled pitchers that excelled. The remaking of the sad farm was absolutely brilliant, and it amuses me to no end when Sabermetrics lovers trash Evans and assume all the kiddies they love so much fell out of the air, or that Logan White just appeared and made all of this happen by himself. Dummies. But as far as a man’s man…? Dan wore the famous pink shirts, had a very nicely styled haircut and also spoke in a quasi effeminate voice – though not nearly as Charles Nelson Reilly-esque as Fred Claire’s. Dan, I love you, but we got you on the pink shirt and high-pitched voice technicality.
Paul DePodesta – whiz kid smart-ass Paul DePodesta looked and sounded like a child. His squeaky voice and Howdy Doody look no doubt got him shoved into many a locker during his school days. A wimp who tried to pad his resume as a baseball man by saying while at Harvard – yes, Harvard! – he played baseball and football. That’s like saying he… well, played baseball and football… AT HARVARD! A GM I thoroughly despised for his destructive need to screw up a good situation and rebuild the thing in his own Moneyball image, it’s highly unlikely DePodesta has reached puberty yet. A wimp, putz, dork and dipshit all in one package, this bespectacled waste of space is a blight on the name Dodgers. And did I mention he’s a jackass? No? He is. And not a man by any stretch of the imagination.
So there’s my case – except for the Lasorda speedbump that did it’s darndest to derail our ship, even in the brief time he had in the hot seat, the Dodgers GM office was high on flower arrangements and Kenny G music from Al Campanis’ time ended, to Ned Colletti entering.
Now we have a red meat-eating man’s man with forearms Lou Grant would be proud of. Ned’s a no-nonsense tough Italian who could kick my ass and yours – at the same time. Ned’s all man and no doubt has had driver/bodyguard-loving Jamie McCourt sighing lustfully at the Dodger offices and fanning herself more than once. No Jamie, those aren’t hot flashes, sweetie, that’s Ned’s man musk driving you crazy.
Ned should be bottled. He’d surely outsell Axe, the products marketed to Neanderthal-ish young men who read Maxim magazine and are told to believe if you use some of it, chicks will line up around the block to hop into bed with you. Axe probably has no hormonal effect on women, but Ned…? Ned’s Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Forrest Tucker, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Sinatra, Dean Martin and Russell Crowe all in one guy.
Does all this testosterone matter for a Dodger GM? Of course it does! When Ned sits down with other GMs, they know a man’s sitting across from them. They send Manny to Los Angeles for Andy LaRoche, and PAY Manny’s salary to boot! When reporters ask asinine questions at a press conference, Ned rubs his face with disgust and growls out a short answer that has none of the nasally twang of gentlemanly Fred Claire, math whiz DePo or genial Dan Evans. AND Ned shuts the dumb reporter down – fast, moving onto the next question, and probably dinner at Musso & Frank.
Ned’s a smart baseball man who makes a mistake on occasion, but GETS the game. He isn’t pouring over spreadsheets and developing cute, little Excel macros to calculate a player’s worth. Ned looks at a player’s performance, factors in his character, goes with the word of his scouts and coaching staff, and uses some old-school gut to make the final decision.
While the same folks who criticize Evans take shots at Ned, I’ll defend both to the grave. Will I say both are flawless? Hell no, I already said as much. But would I prefer either of them over some of the other dolts who have managed to majorly screw our beloved team up?! You better believe it.
Ned, here’s to you, the winner of the Most Manly Dodger GM Since Al Campanis award, given to you for your thick, hairy arms, mussed, unstyled hair, sloppily trimmed mustache and overall machismo.
And lastly, a word from our sponsor…
Dodger Boy
Okay DFNY. I’ve been staring at that absurd picture of Kevin Malone for days, just trying to get my mind around your last post. There is so much more to be said about the Fox era, I wasn’t sure exactly where to go next. But that face kept taunting me. Ultimately there was no denying it – the Sheriff demanded to be accounted for.
So. Kevin Malone then…
Is there a figure as easy to mock in Dodgers lore? Talk among fans of the team, both casual and fanatical, and you’ll find someone willing to defend even the most unlikeable and ineffective member of the organization – past or present. But who defends Kevin Malone? Certainly not me.
No. I won’t defend him. But I will take him seriously, if only to reconcile his impressive pre-Dodger career with the debacle that followed. His was a fairly unprecendented swan dive into ignominy. How did it all go so badly? The cheap, easy answer is to write him off as a fool. While he may have had some foolish moments, I don’t completely buy that explanation.
I blame the 1997 Marlins.
Though perhaps a forgotten perception now, anyone who was a baseball fan back in 1997 can remember the grousing. The Florida Marlins had bought a World Series victory. Owner Wayne Huizenga had committed to $89 million in contracts (much of which we would later be conned into paying) the previous off season and had managed to spend his way to a championship. Listen to any sports talk radio station or talk baseball around any watercooler in the last three months of 1997 and these sentiments were sure to be expressed by someone.
I don’t know if any other single event has effected the Dodgers franchise in quite as insidious a manner. Keep in mind, all of this is what the Fox people were seeing as they were just entering the baseball business. It must have seemed so seductive to them – the notion that they could write a few checks and find themselves the owner of a championship team. Baseball was easy.
So a deep-seated case of Marlin envy took hold. Within a few months they’d traded for many of the key players from that Marlin’s team – and done so by taking the highly unusual step of bypassing Fred Claire, their own general manager. In doing so, they created the need for a new general manager. Enter Kevin Malone, right?
Well…sort of. But not before an exhaustive GM search. Actually the man at top of Fox’s wish list was none other than Dave Dombrowski – the architect of the Marlins championship roster (did you think I was kidding about Marlin envy? It is amazing they didn’t change our uniforms to teal!). Other candidates interviewed included Jim Bowden, Bob Watson, Omar Minaya, and Dean Taylor. And then of course…Kevin Malone.
Dombrowski ultimately opted to stay with the Marlins. Perhaps he sensed how dysfunctional the situation would get in LA, but that says something given the fact that he had just been ordered to dismantle a world series team and new ownership was also taking over in Florida. It leads me to wonder what the GM interviews with Fox were like. I picture them something like this:
Dave Dombrowski: Given the state of the current roster and the talent within the farm system, I propose a three-year plan to bring a championship to LA.
Fox: Next.
Bob Watson: I believe in a strong focus on player development.
Fox: (yawn) Next!
Jim Bowden: I think a rebuilding process is warranted here.
Fox: (annoyed) Next!
Omar Minaya: Building the proper team chemistry is crucial.
Fox: (lots of eye rolling) Get this guy outta here!
Dean Taylor: I’d like to win the Dodger way. With strong pitching, speed, timely hitting and defense.
Fox: Ugh!
Kevin Malone: Buy a championship? I can do that!
Fox: By Jove, I think we’ve got our man!
My point being, I don’t think Fox unwittingly hired an idiot. I think they specifically hired someone to do an idiotic job. It was your standard issue “garbage in/garbage out” situation. No self-respecting baseball man ought to have agreed to do it. Maybe Kevin Malone was dumb enough to think it was a good idea. Maybe he simply wanted to return to the GM’s office after having grabbed that brass ring in Montreal and losing it through little fault of his own. Who knows? Maybe I’d have done the same. After all, Fox had a an almost limitless budget and Malone had already built baseball’s best team once, only to see the 1994 baseball strike deny his 74-40 Expos the post-season berth they clearly were heading for. He probably decided to put his faith in his own talent and in God (he is an avowed evangelical) – and so he agreed to attempt one of the most colossally foolhardy bad ideas ever attempted by a major league team: He tried to turn a sow’s ear into silk within a single offseason.
The common wisdom surrounding the Dodgers going into the 1998-99 season was that they lacked an ace and were badly in need of left-handed power. So an argument could have been made for making Kevin Brown baseball’s first $100 million dollar man, but it would have been a very bad one. Especially given that the last and most expensive years of the contract extended into Brown’s 40’s. If the Dodgers were already a contender and Brown was the final piece needed, this might have made sense. But as a first piece towards creating an instant contender… it was absolutely reckless.
Similarly you could look sideways at both Todd Hundley and Devon White and tell yourself that they were the answer to our left handed power problems. If you had only the free agent pool and trade options available at that exact little sliver in time, it would be possible to view guys like them as reasonable targets. Of course you’d have to put out of your mind the fact that Hundley was coming off reconstructive surgery and that an aging Devon White was coming off of only his second season of 20+ homers in a o15 year career.
And so it was for almost all of Malone’s moves. He paid top dollar and gave out long term cntracts to players simply because they were there and they appeared to fill a need on his roster – if you did not look to closely.
Meanwhile he seemed to enjoy shooting his mouth off for the press, proclaiming himself the new sheriff in town at his first official press conference. But within the organization he was hardly the law. Fox was still convinced that they knew baseball well enough to make baseball decisions and thus they forced him to hire Davey Johnston to manage the Dodgers over his clear choice Felipe Alou, who had all but accepted a deal with us before supposedly changing his mind just minutes before an announcement. Could it be that the Expos simply outbid us with a last minute offer? I doubt it. Not given the open check book Malone clearly had. Nope – the incident clearly stunk of interference by Fox.
The net result of all of these and other moves was a third place finish in 1999 led by a barely interested davey Johnston. Fox would allow Malone to continue to try and spend his way to a championship in 2000 as they approved his trade of disgruntled Raul Mondesi for Shawn Green – a trade which allowed the Dodgers a window to extend Green to a six-year $84 million dollar deal. Green was a talented player and had success in LA, but the team around him was still too fundamentally flawed to truly compete for a championship and ended up in second place 11 games behind the dreaded Giants.
After that Fox apparently abandoned their hope of buying a championship, clamping down on the wallet from then on until the sale to Frank McCourt. Meanwhile our hero Kevin Malone finally shot his mouth off one time too many when he challenged a heckler to a fight during a game in San Diego in April of 2001. He resigned a few days later. Not to return to baseball since. Among other ventures since he is co-owner of a Mercedes dealership in Southern California with Hall of famer Eddie Murray.
As for me, I’m waiting for the day that they get the bright idea to sell off all of their inventory in a single off-season. I could use a cheap Mercedes!
Fox
This topic is too large to dissect in one post, so hopefully I’ll have help with comments and subsequent posts, but the Fox piece of our history should be put out there. Why? Well, the hot stove has just begun to warm and how many times can I say “We need a solid pitcher or two” and “Our owner is a sham”? So, without further ado…
When I first heard Peter O’Malley was planning on selling the Dodgers, I couldn’t believe it. I hoped, once the idea sunk in and it was obviously going to happen, that some local businessman would step up. I had the same hope when I learned Fox then planned to sell the team. Anyway, Fox turned out to be O’Malley’s buyer, and I must confess I had some mixed feelings on the transfer.
Of course losing the family history dating well back into Brooklyn sucked, but of course times change and at some point it seemed inevitable something like this could happen. O’Malley handed the keys over to Fox and the good news was we suddenly had very deep pockets. While Peter O’Malley was not Frank McCourt, obviously we were starting to feel the same effect – that our large market team might not be able to compete financially with other large market teams. So, it intrigued me to see what Fox might be able to do.
Fox went to work right away, having suits handle baseball operations since they obviously didn’t have much respect for “baseball people”. I guess in some ways you can understand that. Anyone who fancies himself a baseball geek feels at one time or another they know more than the “experts” in charge. Playing Monday morning quarterback is easy sometimes, though I must confess, oftentimes I arrogantly do feel I know more than some of these geniuses. I’m sure anyone reading this has felt the same way.
If you watch GMs sign guys who obviously are coming off a career year, or just suck in general, or are injury risks, to big, bloated contracts you know they’ll never in a million years be able to live up to, it’s easy to feel you know more than they do. Of course they might know what we know, but they’re rolling the dice, making a move to save their butts, or any number of other reasons. So, when you get some smarmy entertainment execs together, why shouldn’t they feel they know more than guys like Fred Claire? He of the Aquanet hairspray, Dockers and closeted, effeminate voice.
I recall many memories of my life as a Dodger fan, one of the best, I think, was after a game seeing Fred Claire on the Club level of the stadium, come out of a door suddenly and make a bee line for the exit. People were filing out, talking about the game, and Fred, with some papers tucked under his arm, neatly pressed polo shirt and Dockers, zigzagged through the throng like Walter Payton in his heyday. A friend and I tried to keep up, but by golly, that white haired gentleman with hair Steve Garvey would be proud of, disappeared into the mob and was gone, without anyone but us noticing him. Anyhow, I digress…
Fox executives Peter Chernin and Chase Carey overstepped Fred Claire and traded Mike Piazza and poor Todd Zeile, who signed with the Dodgers at a hometown discount, to the Florida Marlins for disgruntled asswipe Gary Sheffield, bloated and disinterested Bobby Bonilla, Charles Johnson and Jim Eisenreich, a guy who suffered from Tourette syndrome and a notorious Dodger killer, but also past his prime. Fans’ jaws collectively dropped, sports talk show switchboards went nuts and the Dodgers were never really the same, reaching new points of darkness, with more and more foibles to come.
We all know about that, but let’s discuss a few points of the Fox era.
First, Fox could have been a good owner. They came in and immediately doubled payroll. That’s a great thing if you have a GM like Ned Colletti around, or Dan Evans, but the Fox group hired Kevin Malone, another effeminate speaking guy with scrubbed skin, a meticulously manicured mustache and not that many brain cells. Malone, who nicknamed himself “The Sheriff”, wanted to be a GM for so long that he told his bosses he could do the impossible – rebuild the floundering Dodger farm system, while fielding an immediate pennant contender – at the same time.
Generally rebuilding means, well, rebuilding. To assume you can rebuild and win is a stretch. It’s possible, I suppose, but if your cupboards are fairly bare, it’s ambitious, to say the least. The Dodgers farm, once the envy of every major league team, had gotten pretty barren, left to develop somewhat talented, but imperfect ballplayers. At some point along the line, the Dodger way to play baseball message had gotten watered down, and scouting seemed to beat the bushes to find some raw talents who weren’t that sharp, or not taught the skills they needed to develop properly. That’s my take anyway, I witnessed lots of guys who could do something well – hit for power, run, throw, etc., but very few, almost none, who could put it all together into any sort of cohesive package. Raul Mondesi, perhaps, was as close to a complete package as we had, and he was emotionally immature, impatient and never going to amount to the talent he could have.
Malone went shopping and decided to rebuild the team on the fly, using Fox money and the available free-agent pool. It was a debacle fraught with gambles, poor choices, and just an overall poor assemblage of players. No thought went into character, as players with checkered pasts, questionable attitudes and most of whom were fairly unlikeable, were tossed together and called Dodgers. Dodgers? These weren’t Dodgers. These were guys. Guys who cursed out reporters, demanded extra money to come play here, who beat up water coolers, choked flight attendants, drank too much, seemed completely disinterested, wanting more to fish than play baseball. Oh, for the days of The Infield, geeky Orel Hershiser, Scioscia sitting on home plate in a manner I was convinced was perfectly legal as an opposing baserunner rounded third, and so on.
Kevin Malone whined, perpetually looked like he was about to cry, yet with the power of Jesus in his hip pocket, was decidedly arrogant, and even challenged taunting fans in San Diego to fist fights. The team was a mess, and with the disappointment on the field, Fox ultimately lost interest in the Dodgers. They had gotten what they wanted, a West Coast cable sports network established, and since they were proven right that “baseball people” – like Kevin Malone – knew very little about baseball, and there was NO guarantee that throwing good money after bad would change the situation any, they shut their wallet and let the Dodgers drift.
Eventually Malone was gone and Dan Evans came in – a guy often maligned, but to me was someone who should get much more credit than he has. Evans managed to somehow turn Malone’s mess into a fairly competitive team, reestablished Dodger pitching, made defense a priority, chemistry, and put Logan White, Kim Ng, Bill Bavasi, John Boles and others in place to fix the farm system. Under Evans watch, most of the players we hold near and dear today were drafted and cultivated. Scouting returned to its former glory, and the big league team was very close to contending. Of course, without any help from ownership, Evans’ Dodgers were reduced to scouring the waiver wire and picking up guys who were well past their prime, in hopes of finding lightning in the least likely places.
The worst crime of all was committed during the 2003 season as Fox scrambled to sell and Evans’ Dodgers had the best pitching staff in baseball, led by a resurgent Kevin Brown, lights-out Hideo Nomo, and Cy Young winner (and then unknown steroid user) Eric Gagne. Not only was the pitching staff collectively the best in baseball that year, it was the best pitching staff PERIOD in almost 30 years. Also, the team was one of the slickest fielding units assembled – all they needed was another bat. Evans pleaded, but was not allowed to spend a penny (shades of this past season with Ned left to answer our ace needs with Ranger dump Vicente Padilla).
Without money, Evans had to add offense with the likes of 100 year old Rickey Henderson, a game but aging Robin Ventura, and of course Jeromy Burnitz. The Dodgers just missed the wild card – that record pitching and defense wasted as Fox prepared to help Boston phony Frank McCourt “buy” the Dodgers and leave us in the hands of someone who cared just as little as they did.
For the record, if you look back at 2002 and 2003, here are some of the players Dan Evans, Logan White, Kim Ng and Bill Bavasi managed to draft and get into our system:
- James Loney
- Jonathan Broxton
- James McDonald
- Russell Martin
- Delwyn Young
- Eric Stults
- Chad Billingsley
- Xavier Paul
- Matt Kemp
- Andy LaRoche
Not bad, eh? This is pretty amazing, especially when you consider how much crap Dan Evans had thrown at him by nouveau Sabermetricians. When called on this, these data crunchers inevitably give all the praise to Logan White, but neglect Evans who brought White aboard, as well as Kim Ng and the rest of the team that turned a failed farm system into one of the best in baseball. The farm literally went from bottom 5 to top 5 during the Evans years.
Anyway, that’s a trip down Fox memory lane, so much to talk about, so much left out.
I’d like to delve deeper into the flight attendant strangulation – pretty outstanding stuff, considering this occurred on a 75-minute flight. What in god’s good name could a flight attendant do to bring upon that sort of reaction? Like the age old question of how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.
(This entry dedicated to Peter Chernin and Chase Carey, Kevin “The Sheriff” Malone, Todd Hundley, Gary Sheffield, Devon White, Kevin Elster, Carlos Perez, Davey Johnson, and all the other wonderful people who made this era of Dodger baseball so entertaining for all of us)
We need a pitcher, not a belly itcher…
Sure DFNY. Lets go ahead and talk about starting pitching.
Last night Yahoo’s Tim Brown reported the following via twitter:
Source: Dodgers and Blue Jays are discussing Halladay again. Looks like Anthopoulos is restarting the process of moving Doc.
Following four hours later with this tweet:
They’ve talked about Halladay trade, but source close to Blue Jays-Dodgers says deal, as of tonight, looks, “highly unlikely.”
I hate to be a fatalist, but I suspect that might have been the most exciting four hours we Dodger fans will see this offseason.
Look – maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Frank McCourt will figure out that he stands to make a lot more money with a real championship calibre team than a pretend championship calibre team. Maybe. But I’m not so sure.
As it stands, my strong suspicion is that all of this will come down to Ned Colletti’s ability to work miracles. I think he will once again be held to a budget that will force him to rob Peter in order to beef up Paul. So unless some team comes forward with the pitching version of Manny Ramirez – a malcontent they deem toxic enough to pay their way out of town – Ned is gonna have to pull something from the bottom of the pack.
One way he could potentially do it is to shop K-Mart for every other need. Perhaps manning second base with Blake DeWitt or a Jamey Carroll type and filling in the bench with warm bodies. Then he could walk into McCourt’s office and point out all of the money coming off of the books this season and try and get permission to make one big splash for a starting pitcher. DFNY – you mentioned that you did not understand letting Wolf and Garland walk, but perhaps Ned was anticipating his need to go this direction when he made that decision.
This is probably the best case scenario for this season.
More likely Ned will be forced to do the same thing all of his counterparts are doing – trawling the free agent and trade market for bargains. Generally this manifests in one of two ways:
1) Finding talent that is undervalued by the entire baseball establishment. – a great trick if you can pull it. I could give a list of guys that I think fit this bill, but I’d be full of shit.
or
2) Signing high risk/high reward guys. – There are always a few. This year’s crop includes Rich Harden and Ben Sheets. Not a bad idea if you can do so cheaply, but realistically a championship team does this to fill the bottom of it’s rotation, not the top. Besides – a lot of teams will be going this route, so even damaged goods like these guys will not come cheap.
The option I did not include was trading for a guy that a smaller market team can no longer afford. This would be the smart thing to do, but it would require investment in something other than real estate. Think McCourt has the stomach? If so, we ought to be all over Josh Johnson. I hope in the end, we are.
I wish I could believe otherwise, but I envision the end of this story having us signing a former ace like Randy Johnson or John Smoltz and then engaging in some kind of experiment in mass myopia as Dodger nation tells itself that Kershaw/Bills/Kuroda/Old Guy might just possibly go all the way.
Ugh. Still bitter. I’m not sure talking it out is working.
Let’s talk starting pitching
Love Hurts
You put me to shame DFNY. Not just because you are a better writer than I am, but because you were right to gently chide me for laying on the negativity too thick. I suppose I figured it ought to be obvious that we both love this team to an almost ridiculous extreme based on the sheer comic obsession evident in our writing. But I suppose it really does need to be spelled out clearly – especially given the context of our conversation. So I’m saying it loud and proud: I love this God forsaken dysfunctional nightmare of a franchise – though often the love feels just a wee bit unrequited.
This brings me to a fairly obvious question – one I think we need to get at if this little therapy experiment is to take hold. I think we need to ask ourselves why we bother to love this team? Why do we tie so much of ourselves up in the fortunes of a bunch of strangers who simply have a talent (on most days) for playing baseball?
Jerry Seinfeld famously remarked that since players changed teams so often after free agency, fans were essentially reduced to rooting “for laundry”. But even as he had the insight to make that observation, the guy clearly remains a baseball fan. Clearly there is an element of cognitive dissonance involved in baseball fandom. And being a Dodger fan would seem to require outright psychosis of some kind – unless you only go to do the wave and play with the beach ball.
Given the above – can you offer any explanation for my inability to extend that cognitive dissonance one step further? Why can’t I convince myself that the folks that own the Dodgers cares as much about championships as I do? Why does my love for this team so often seem tragicomic? I know how I was seduced, but what I don’t ger is how I stay seduced. Bitter as I am, why do I continue to line up for more?
The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. Can you shed some light?
.
Head over heels for the 2009 Dodgers…
So talk about the 2009 Dodgers…
I suppose I feel a bit guilty for complaining.
Well perhaps guilty is the wrong word. I know I’m right to complain. I simply worry that other people won’t get where I’m coming from. They’ll point out that by any measure 2009 was a fantastic season. And they’d be right – if you exclude World Series victories as a metric. But my complaint isn’t simply about failing to win a championship – I get that only one team can win, and that a lot of really great teams fall short Fine. I accept that.
What I cannot except is failure to put in a truly meaningful effort. And when push comes to shove, I think Frank McCourt sat on his hands.
Think back to opening day. Did anybody feel like we had a championship-worthy rotation? Certainly nobody in the press did, and I don’t recall talking to a single Dodger fan who thought so. But we came out of the gate winning and thus it became easier to pretend everything would be okay. Still most fans were looking for a big move right up to the trading deadline.
But the big move never came. We settled for a good reliever and some help off of the bench. Then there was nothing to do but squint when we looked at Randy Wolf and tell ourselves we saw an ace.
Ask yourself this: Has any team ever won a World Series without having at least one starting pitcher exceed 12 wins? Okay – don’t go to the record books on that one. The point isn’t so much a matter of whether it has happened before or not, but rather that it was kind of obvious that it would be fairly noteworthy if it ever did.
If you happen to be reading this Mr. McCourt – please allow me to explain to you how the post season works. It isn’t the same as the regular season. You don’t get to fatten up your record by beating the weaker teams. Weaknesses are exposed in the big spotlight. If you find yourself praying for Vincente Padilla to stay hot long enough to beat the likes of the Yankees and Phillies, you have already lost.
The best franchises look to overwhelm the competition. They don’t hide behind a strong regular season record and stand pat. Sure there is always next year, but realistically there is really only a short window wherein any team will be in position to win it all unless a lot of moves are made to keep them in position. Most of our young players are coming up on their arbitration years, meaning it will be harder to keep them together, and harder to add any pieces to our nucleus should we manage to do so.
We had a shot this year – a really great one. And we pissed it away. Moments like these are finite. Let them pass and often you find they never come back again.
I hope the 2009 Dodgers haunt you Frank McCourt. I hope you wake up in the middle of the night with visions of Matt Stairs stalking you. Maybe that is what it will take to get you to understand what the folks who buy all the tickets, foam fingers and kool-a-coos have to endure. More importantly, maybe that is what it will take to get you off your hands for 2010.
Umbrage
Sir, that’s one well thought out post, but a few things are glaringly inaccurate in your writing, and worth noting. Perhaps it’s your way of “going rogue”, but I know for fact that Wes Parker was dating, or the fiance of Greg’s teacher, not her husband. I suspect Greg’s surging hormones and dreamy eyes put the kibosh on all that! Either that or Marcia scored Wes some coke. Did you know Maureen McCormick claims her nickname used to be Hoover, like the vacuum? True. Insert George W. Bush reference here.
Anyway, your initial opus sure touched all the points that bring pain to me as well. Lots to discuss here, and a perfect tablesetter of all our future conversations. I especially like the way you eloquently point out the problem with McCourt’s ownership (sorry Jamie, I’m using McCourt’s to only discuss Frank – you’re old news, sister). Frank crows a good game, but he’s had ample opportunity to prove it, and hasn’t.
His supporters, or the brainwashed masses you allude to in your comment about nouveau fans experiencing Stockholm Syndrome due to an influx of Moneyballitis, will point to massive contracts to Manny, and generous money to Andruw Jones, Jason Schmidt and Juan Pierre as examples McCourt is our Steinbrenner. Not true. All you have to do is look around and see for yourself. A roster laden with inexpensive kids and bargain priced veterans, and a few expensive items. Well, if you say it like that, it sounds reasonable – but Fox, as you also mentioned (is there anything you didn’t mention?!), ponyed up serious scratch for a winner – though their motives, of course, were selfish. For years we’ve meandered someplace in the $100-115 mil area on payroll, while the big players have shot well past that and into absurd areas (see the Yankees).
As Dodger fans we’re supposed to understand McCourt isn’t the Steinbrenners, and we’re not even Boston, or the Mets. Afterall, MLB and Bud Selig put McCourt into the owner’s seat knowing at the time he didn’t have the cash flow to really own a large market team like the Dodgers. It took Fox to loan him the money to get it done. So we’re supposed to be happy with a good payroll, but no longer what serious large market teams put out. There’s no other explanation for why when CC Sabathia approached Ned last off-season and told him point blank, “I want to play for the Dodgers” that we didn’t sign him. Ask yourself, if you’re a doubting Thomas, what would either NY team, or Boston, do if CC came to them with this declaration.
The divorce is typical of the ridiculousness we fans have to face. While I can completely understand why neither Frank, nor Jamie, would want to look at one another anymore (I don’t want to look at either!), it’s quite convenient that this cash cow that is the LA Dodgers is now a championship contender, just needing that final push, and we’re sitting in idle as talk of this star or that going to other teams proliferates the geek talk. While no doubt Frank is fighting for his net worth right now, it’s perfect timing it happens during shopping season for Ned and his team. In true cynical fashion, I predict a mysterious reconciliation come March for Frank and Jamie – AFTER we missed every possible opportunity to get that pitching we need. Don’t fret, we might get Brett Tomko.
For the record, I’m being facetious, but if Frank and Jamie did get back together, I wouldn’t entirely be surprised.
At any rate, my point is it’s been a long time since Fox owned the Dodgers. Why is it that with such a great team, bustling attendance, increased ticket prices, increased parking fees, increased concession costs, increased merchandising costs, TV revenues, increased marketing and signage all over the stadium, revenue sharing, and on and on and on, our payroll is at the same point, or even less, than it was about a decade ago?
Is that really doing all it takes to field a winner, as Frank always claims? Or is it creating the perception of trying, trying enough to keep the masses appeased and complacent, while shoving pocketfuls of money into the vault? Jim Duquette was saying on XM this week something that sounded interesting. He said that roughly for each 100k in attendance, an owner makes a million. Well, figure out then how much the Dodgers make then. It’s all silly money, to be sure, but if you have a horse that is almost across the finish line, give the sucker some good oats. We somehow can’t afford an ace? If that’s the case, then McCourt should be asked to sell the team, especially in light of his marital problems. Of course ethical Bud and the other owners wouldn’t think of that, as it’s “good for baseball” to have a charlatan as owner of large market LA. Strangely, no one feels the same when it comes to spending on the East side of our country. Just LA.
At any rate, this is good stuff. I loved your opening scud – you hit it right on the head, so much to comment on. You’re a fine writer, and much more than a Chad Fonville, that’s for sure. You’re at least a Matt Luke, Roger Cedeno or pre-coaching, Jheri curled Mariano Duncan. Check your facts though when referencing the Brady Bunch though, that’s where I’ll take umbrage with you.
Hey, wait a minute… I looked at your post early, but it seems as if you changed “married” to “shacking up”. Boy, you ARE good!
Why I’m bitter.
I was young and impressionable.
There was Leo Durocher with Herman Munster, and Wes Parker shacking up with Greg Brady’s teacher. I fell in love with that blue cursive insignia on the front of the uniforms, and the almost pornographic promise of a real-life Farmer John Dodger Dog – “Eastern-most in quality and Western-most in flavor”.
On the diamond there was The Infield. There was Dusty and Yeager, Mota and Sutton. Messersmith and Marshall. In the dugout was Walter Alston and then Tommy Lasorda. We were seemingly always in the World Series and we hated the Giants. Life was simple. It was seductive.
Being a Dodger fan even came with a proud history. A nice Jewish boy like me could not help but be fascinated by Sandy Koufax. We were the team of Jackie Robinson – aligning us with the good guys in the civil rights narrative. Being a Dodger fan also somehow connected me to Duke, Pee Wee, Gil – I learned of the boys of summer from the warm, nostalgic sepia toned voices of Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett. I’d been indoctrinated.
Hoodwinked. Bamboozled.
I didn’t land on Dodger Stadium. Dodger Stadium landed on me. But it felt good for a long, long time… so I bought it all hook, line and sinker.
Looking back, there was always a dark side. Some spoke of never forgiving the O’Malleys for tearing the heart out of Brooklyn. This was easy to forgive as it mirrored the move west made by my own family. Every now and then someone spoke bitterly about a poor Elysian Fields neighborhood destroyed in order to make room for a then state of the art stadium. I’d ignore these complaints as if they came from a Giant’s fan’s mouth. They were incongruous. The Dodgers were the good guys. End of debate.
Exactly when the bloom started coming off the rose, I cannot tell you. Perhaps it was the night Al Campanis had one too many before appearing on Nightline. Maybe Gibson’s ’88 home run was so epochal that it ushered in an era of darkness. Maybe God judged us unfavorably for trading Pedro Martinez for a guy who wore his socks funny. For all I know Jody Reed practiced the dark arts on us. I dunno. Maybe I simply grew up and started seeing the ugly side of things for what they were. I did not have a child’s ability to ignore inconvenient truths anymore.
The once history-laden franchise became leaden. Our scouting department (once the envy of baseball) began producing flawed players (though often incredibly impressive in one or two aspects of their game) and made a habit of cutting corners, forging birth certificates and drafting carelessly.
More disturbingly, the O’Malleys began to seem complacent. After 1988 it seemed that they were satisfied to field a team that was sorta kinda good enough – never getting that final piece again as they had with Kirk Gibson. Even with five consecutive flawed but talented rookies of the year and a roster full of young overachievers like Ismael Valdes, Darren Dreifort and Chan Ho Park – the front office failed to provide the proven talent needed to augment that inexpensive nucleus. In retrospect it was clear they were preparing for a sale – so we fans suffered.
Our suffering ought to have ended with the sale of the Dodgers. Orphan franchise gets adopted by loving new parents and all is well. But this story was being written by Charles Dickens and we were sent packing to Rupert Murdoch and Fox. I suppose they could have had good intentions for us. After all – they were willing to invest and wanted a winner. But they knew nothing about baseball yet still meddled in baseball decisions.
The nadir came when they bypassed our own GM to trade our franchise player for another team’s salary dump. Then needing to hire a new GM, they chose yes man Sheriff Kevin Malone – the only person desperate enough for the job that he was willing to attempt their absurd mandate – to try and buy a championship in a single mediocre free agent market. The payroll exploded. The team fizzled. Fox lost interest. Malone was fired.
So we endured years in the wilderness as new GM Dan Evans was left with the thankless task of running a team with virtually no payroll space to make moves, few players with any trade value, and nothing much of value in the minors. Long term contracts to the likes of Todd Hundley ensured that it would take years to clean up the mess. But slowly and methodically he rebuilt the roster, the farm team and the scouting department into good health. But lacking support from the ownership his teams were left to twist in the wind. Again.. we fans had waited patiently for the franchise to heal from its many self-inflicted wounds. We focused on the better days around the corner and were stoic as teams that had the potential to contend were wasted. When we needed a big bat we got Jeromy Burnitz and a ticket out of the playoffs in the first round. Like any good Dickens novel we were about to be sent off again to another dysfunctional situation. Fox was preparing to sell. Enter Frank McCourt.
Frank McCourt was one of us. A dumbass baseball fan who thought he knew baseball better than the pros. The prevailing fad in baseball at the time was Moneyball and sabermetrics. Baseball executives loved the idea of winning on the cheap and a new generation of egghead fans spurred on by the echo chamber of the internet suddenly developed a mass case of Stockholm Syndrome and spents all sorts of energy analyzing their team’s payroll flexibility and obsessing on prospects. Never mind that it wasn’t their money (or maybe it was, as baseball owners like McCourt were busily raising prices for tickets, parking, etc…) and most of the prospects fetishized never cracked a big league roster. These fans encouraged Frank McCourt to run the Dodgers as a medium market team. He was more than happy to oblige.
It should also be noted that Frank McCourt was a Boston native fan who bought the Dodgers only after failing to purchase his beloved Red Sox. Like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo he set out to remake us into the object of his desire – firing the resourceful Dan Evans in favor of Paul Depodesta and his laptop – the Robin to Billy Beane’s Batman and most importantly – a guy who clearly reminded McCourt of Boston’s wunderkind Theo Epstein.
In short order,Paul Depodesta gutted a first place team and inexplicably began yet another rebuilding. His team had to be made to reflect his philosophy – the fact that the team he inherited was already winning was of no consequence. We fans deserved a payoff for our patience, but we were to be denied it in order for the boy genius to prove that he could shock the world with little more than Hee Seop Choi and baling wire. Like Lucy with her football he forced fans like me to do our best Charlie Brown impression as we fell head over ass – yet another rebuilding caused by yet more self-inflicted wounds.
A dismal 71 win season followed and McCourt fwas forced to fire his pet Theo clone to avoid being run out-of-town himself. This time Ned Colletti was hired as clean up man. Which brings us to the last few years, as once again we see the emergence of a potential contender (perhaps the best team since the Garvey/Cey/Lopes Dodgers of my youth) – but virtually no commitment from ownership to get over the hump. You need look no further than the post season just completed a few weeks ago. Our biggest deficit was starting pitching. The two teams that outlasted us had aces that they’d added via free agency or trade for 3009….players we likely could have had (in the case of CC Sabathia- a player who actually waited for us to make an offer for weeks before signing with NY). The Yankees and Phillies wanted a championship and were willing to do what it took to get one. Frank McCourt wanted one too – but he wanted it with minimal investment on his part.
And now we head into this hot stove season. While the fans of the Yankees and Phillies have visions of sugar plums in their heads, we’re all left to wonder if our owner will allow us to pursue even a second tier pitcher. And the announcement of McCourt’s impending divorce on the eve of the NL Championship series was one hell of a buzzkill causing us to have to worry about the next Dickensian turn of events.
So am I bitter? As Sarah Palin would say, you betchya. As long and pathetic as all of the above has been, I haven’t scratched the surface of all of the thousand little deaths I’ve died as a Dodger fan. The big homers to Barry Bonds. Karate kicks. Beaten up water coolers. The closing of Dodgertown at Vero Beach, Daryl Strawberry, Gary Sheffield, the great disappointment that was Paul LoDuca. The dismal fate of Eric Gagne. The phantom appearances of Billy Ashley, Angel Pena and Edwin “Joel” Guzman. The utter predictability of Adrian Beltre and the fall of Raul Mondesi. Sure I’m bitter – I’ve earned my place on this particular couch.
In his introductory post my friend Dodger Fan in New York promises brilliance. I’m sure he’ll deliver as I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy his writing on this subject for years. I’m less of a home run hitter than he is – perhaps more of a Chad Fonville type. Hopefully I can deliver a timely hit now and then . If you’ve made it this far reading this, chances are strong you’ve suffered too. You deserve our best effort and a place where you can feel safe from the next big letdown.
We’re here for you. We understand.
The Oracle
Freudy
Dodger Therapy 
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