SportsHubLA

I want to go to Las Vegas with Frank McCourt.

I mean one day this Boston entrepreneur is counting parking receipts, the next day he’s buying the Dodgers with the bank’s money.

One day he’s stuck with Grady Little, the next he’s about to introduce Joe Torre.

Lucky? It’s a good thing the diminutive McCourt didn’t break a leg when 205 pounds of Joe Torre fell in his lap.

If the Dodgers were any luckier, they’d have to change their insignia to a shamrock.

Remember, bleeders of Dodger Blue, it was less than two weeks ago that, like it or not, they were married to Grady Little as their manager. As marriages go, he wasn’t quite the love of their life. Yeah, he’s about as nice a guy as you’ll ever meet, but they weren’t thrilled with his performance and didn’t like the way he lost control of his fractured clubhouse when the kids took on the vets in the newspapers. They cringed when the Dodgers collapsed like a broken beach chair in September, finishing next to last in their division, ahead of only the Bonds sideshow in San Francisco. Still, Grady was under contract for one more year for relative peanuts ($650,000) and since they were selling youth movement to their mostly non-discriminating fans, anyway, they could certainly get by with one more year of Little Ball, even with Little results.

Then suddenly, three Steinbrenners went into a Tampa, Florida room–fading King George and his two inheriting sons, Frank and Hank, or whoever they are– and after a few meetings of what I’m sure were pure baseball brilliance later, presto!, they made their Hall of Fame manager Torre disappear. Team Steinbrenner made him an offer he HAD to refuse, effectively FedEx’ing the highest profile managing candidate in captivity straight to Dodger Stadium.

Now as of October 30th, the day Grady Little ever so conveniently stepped down–Grady, here’s your 600 grrr, thanks for being such a good sport about it– we don’t know for certain that Torre will be named new skipper of the Dodgers… but it certainly does look like the writing’s on the wall.

It’s one of the great no brainers in recent memory: Popular manager who worked successfully in the biggest pressure cooker in sports; who worked for one of the biggest jerks in sports and survived for 12 years; respected by all, loved by many; who went to the postseason 12 times in 12 tries, which by my calculations is 100% of the time; who won 4 World Series titles partnering with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and some of the best gamers around, is suddenly available. And like Dodger ringmaster Tommy Lasorda, he’s even Italian?

And this is a hard choice?

We don’t know if Torre at age 67 is exactly the right man for the Dodgers mostly younger mix. That might have been the other Joe, the younger Joe Girardi, who is said to have actually been the Dodgers’ Plan A. Which makes Torre maybe the greatest Plan B, 2nd choice, fallback position in baseball history.

If/when hired, what Torre can do, what he should do, what he must do, is restore calm to the clubhouse and dignity to the dugout while restoring the Dodgers to the brand name they have always been since Hilda clanged her cowbell while the band played in Brooklyn.

How fitting, too, that the kid from Brooklyn, Joseph Paul Torre, should end up with Brooklyn’s own team, the Dodgers. Lately they’ve been Bums, alright, but not the lovable kind. Since Kirk Gibson went fist pump in ‘88, the Dodgers under Lasorda, Bill Russell, Glenn Hoffman, Davey Johnson, Jim Tracy and finally Grady Little have made a grand total of no World Series appearances. 20 years. That’s the longest draught in the National League West. Fall Classic? Try a Classic Fall. So unless you are still reminiscing about Koufax and Drysdale, or the Dodgers of Garvey, Cey and Lopes, Torre does not have a particularly tough act to follow. Or really any act at all.

Meantime, I read with some interest today a column in the L..A. Times that decried the Dodgers’ treatment of Little. How they left him twisting after the season, emasculating his power, undermining his authority and credibility, sending out signals that they weren’t happy with him, while leaving him employed but irreparably damaged.

It might be all true, but to that I say, “Oh, please.”

Baseball is a business. So is hiring managers. When Grady Little is your manager and suddenly Joe Torre is dangling on the branch like a fresh piece of fruit, you don’t comment how pretty the fruit is and how juicy it looks, then walk away hungry.

You pick the fruit and you enjoy it. Even if it’s the pits for Grady Little.

Torre has dropped out of the sky, a gift from heaven for a franchise stuck in .500 hell.

Frank McCourt was just lucky to be standing there when Torre landed.

I think the nearly 4 million Dodger fans who pour through those turnstiles every year, through thick and thin, are going to feel the same way.

Damn lucky.

If Joe Torre is your manager, wearing the crisp Dodger whites, even the $6 hot dogs and warm beer are gonna taste better.

Now if he can just bring A-Rod with him, Frank McCourt could turn out to be the luckiest man on the face of the earth since Lou Gehrig.

Ted Green is Senior Sports Producer for KTLA Prime News and a former sportswriter for the L.A. Times and National Sports Daily

Discuss:

---