Please, Put Stars Back in Chavez Ravine

An open letter to Peter O’Malley, president, Los Angeles Dodgers. Dear Peter:

First of all, let me say you have always been one of my favorite owners.

I like your style. Like your father before you, you stay out of the locker rooms, off the field and leave the running of the ballclub to those you pay to do it. I never saw Walter O’Malley in a locker room and I never saw you there, either.

I never heard either of you criticize a player. You never knock the product.

You keep a ballpark so spotless, it’s a pleasure to spend an evening there. You can eat off the floors, you can take the whole family and its importance to the community cannot be denied.

I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that.

Peter, it’s about that team in the foreground that keeps cluttering up that ballpark.

Do you honestly intend to keep foisting that band of nobodies on a community that supports you the way L.A. does? These guys are not has-beens, they’re never-weres and never-will-be’s.

Peter, do you know when I was a kid growing up, only one team in the big leagues ever drew a million fans? The New York Yankees. For everyone else, 600,000 a year was a good season.

You draw that many by Mother’s Day.

No one ever even dreamed a team would draw 3 million, which yours does just by opening the doors.

All the fans really want in return is a competitive team. A pennant now and then is nice, but not even necessary.

You have an implied contract with the community that the present cast of characters in Dodger uniforms falls far short of fulfilling.

This team looks like the old St. Louis Browns, who once drew 80,000 people for a whole year (1934). You get that many on a weekend against the Atlanta Braves.

How can you put that band of Triple-A players on the field and represent them as the Dodgers?

How can the team of Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Jim Gilliam, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella be reduced to being the butt of jokes, the third biggest collection of losers in the game?

No one can accuse you of being cheap. The Dodger payroll is the highest in the game, an average of $580,000 a man. But, Peter--for this bunch?!

You probably have to applaud management’s effort in baseball to hold the line against escalating player cost. Baseball always wants to turn the clock back. Baseball yearns for 1910.

But, it won’t work. Once the camel is out of the tent, you never get him back in. Big salaries and team-jumping players are with us as long as television is.

You see, Peter, baseball itself can’t afford to have a wretched team in Los Angeles.

You may have noticed dramatically in the past decade how basketball is one up on your game in this regard. It has a vested interest in keeping a representative franchise in Los Angeles.

Basketball helped put Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in L.A.

Baseball can’t give you Eric Davis or Wade Boggs, but I’ll bet they sure wished you had taken Tim Raines or Jack Morris.

You can say what you will about George Steinbrenner, but he keeps a representative team in Yankee Stadium. He has thrown money to the four winds, but there are Stars in his lineup, not throwaways.

I think, Peter, that, however reluctantly, you have to re-examine your stance on free agentry. If you don’t, it looks as if it will be well into the 21st Century before the Dodgers look like Dodgers again.

The rules of baseball have changed to the point where you can’t do it the old-fashioned up-through-the-system way any more.

Collusion, if such it be, is only a temporary stopgap. How long do you think George Steinbrenner is going to pass up on a Jack Morris? Steinbrenner wants winners and he understands the star system very well.

I know you’ve had a few bad experiences. Dave Goltz and Don Stanhouse come to mind but, hey, you win a few, you lose a few.

It’s nice to have all home-grown products, but just keep in mind the Yankees got Babe Ruth in what was the equivalent of free agentry in 1920 (a broke owner who wanted to bankroll a Broadway show). Think what that meant to baseball history.

When in Rome, do what the Romans do.

When in baseball, well, do what George Steinbrenner does.

A little more selectively, perhaps, but George’s payroll is less than yours.

To be sure, this does not include the ballplayers stashed around the country who are still being paid while out of baseball--but you know something about that, too, right?

I do not know whether you should have gotten Tim Raines over the winter. Probably. But you probably should have gotten Andre Dawson. And you certainly ought to have gotten Jack Morris if you could.

I think you have to ask yourself what your father would have done in today’s market. Walter O’Malley was a stubborn man, but he could change with the times. If he couldn’t, the Dodgers would still be in Brooklyn drawing a million-one a season.

I’m as worried about inflation as the next guy. But, as Walter O’Malley once said when someone offered him a big bundle of money for his superstars, “Hey! I can’t play a bag of money on second base!”

Neither can you. You might have been able to play Johnny Ray there, though. The Angels are.

Never in the history of the game have proven players been out there for the taking as they have in the past decade. Never has it been as hard to develop a player from scratch--and hold onto him.

Baseball needs a star lineup in L.A. It’s 1987, not 1910. That’s as long gone as the bustle.

I know it’s easy to spend somebody else’s money. But if we wanted Triple-A ball, we’d move to Albuquerque.

There’s no charge for this advice. Just one of our many services to our Times subscribers. As Fearless Frank Finch used to say, “Keep the faith.”