In today's N.Y. Times:
November 8, 2005
On Baseball
Dysfunctional Dodgers Are Far From Camelot
By MURRAY CHASS
ONCE, in the land of the angels - that would not be the Angels of Anaheim - a proud and successful baseball team played at Chavez Ravine. Owned by the O'Malley family, the Dodgers were a first-class outfit.
Although the family patriarch, Walter O'Malley, had deserted the borough of Brooklyn and was reviled there, he prospered in Los Angeles. The Dodgers did not win every season, but they finished on top 13 times in 40 years and won the World Series on five occasions.
The team that Walter built, however, began crumbling at the core under Peter, Walter's son, and Peter decided he wasn't having fun anymore. He had lost favor with Bud Selig, or King Bud, who shunned him in major matters, and he put the Dodgers on the market. They would never be the same.
Rupert Murdoch and then Frank McCourt turned the once-stable O'Malley kingdom into the Dysfunctional Dodgers. After winning nothing in the six years of the Murdoch reign, they finished first in McCourt's first year, but then McCourt's general manager shredded the gang of warriors, and the Dodgers won 22 fewer contests in 2005 than they did the previous season.
Today, McCourt seeks a new general manager, but he has already bungled his search. Changing general mangers became a popular sport this off-season, and most of the positions have been filled. McCourt waited until four weeks after the end of the season to fire Paul DePodesta and was instantly behind in his search for a replacement.
On the other hand, if there's one thing McCourt has done well, it has been to fire people. About a dozen high-level team executives or baseball operations staffers have departed in the 21 months since McCourt and his wife, Jamie, bought the Dodgers. One former employee estimated that over all, 75 to 100 people had left the Dodgers during that period.
Of the first 14 executives, other than the McCourts, listed in the team's 2005 media guide, McCourt hired and fired three of them - DePodesta; Lon Rosen, who was the team's executive vice president and chief marketing officer; and Gary Miereanu, vice president for communications.
"As much as I'd like to speak to you, I can't," said Rosen, who lasted about a year. "I have an agreement with the organization that I won't."
More recently, the club fired John Olguin, the public relations director for five years, whose employment went back to the O'Malley regime, and two of his aides.
The Dodgers keep shuffling these people because they don't feel the right message is getting to the public. But what sort of message is McCourt sending to the public when he gives a general manager a five-year contract, then fires him two years later?
In one of her early acts with the Dodgers, Camille Johnston, hired recently as senior vice president for communications, urged that this column not be written until I could speak with McCourt, who has not returned phone calls. McCourt would not be speaking, Johnston said, until the Dodgers hired a general manager.
That the Dodgers have to hire yet another general manager raises questions. In the O'Malleys' 40 years in Los Angeles, the Dodgers had three general managers - Buzzie Bavasi, Al Campanis and Fred Claire. The new general manager will be the fourth in the eight years under Murdoch and McCourt, after Kevin Malone, Dan Evans and DePodesta.
Malone was especially destructive, shedding people whose jobs he wanted to fill with his own people.
Among those he jettisoned were Mike Scioscia, a Dodgers coach; Ron Roenicke and Mickey Hatcher, minor league managers; and Gary Sutherland and Eddie Bane, two of the team's top professional scouts. All now work for the Angels, who may yet become the more popular team in Los Angeles, geographically correct or not.
McCourt should not be saddled with those bad acts. It should also be understood that when McCourt bought the team, he was faced with the large expenditures to which Murdoch's Fox organization had committed.
He had to reduce expenses and increase revenue. But giving a general manager a five-year contract, then firing him after two years, isn't a recommended way of reducing costs.
The Dodgers are expected to name a general manager this week, perhaps at the general managers meetings in Indian Wells, Calif., but their pool of candidates was reduced because some had no interest in the job. That development doesn't speak well for the Dodgers.
The possibility was raised here last week, not entirely seriously, that with Tommy Lasorda exerting influence as a special adviser to the McCourts, Bobby Valentine could wind up as manager and general manager. A few baseball people said such a development would not surprise them.
Some others suggested that the Dodgers could hire Jim Bowden, the presumably lame-duck Washington Nationals general manager, who is also a Lasorda favorite. Bowden, they said, would have no problem with Valentine as manager.
Bowden would be a smart move. What a change that would be.
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