With Answers Come Questions

All the thoughts, all the insults, all the questions, all the stunned observations of the most stunning bloodletting in Dodger history, they all come down to one.

Why?

Why, when Los Angeles awakened Monday morning, was its favorite sports team was being run by a rookie general manager, a rookie manager and unmitigated chaos?

Peter Chernin and Chase Carey, Fox’s co-chief operating officers, agreed to answer that Monday in an interview after the firing of general manager Fred Claire and manager Bill Russell.

Why would Fox fire the two most important baseball people in the organization with 88 games remaining when they could not immediately replace them with people who had done those jobs before?

They said Fox did not do it.

They said that, while they have veto power, the idea and execution belong to that accountant named Bob Graziano, a guy who wouldn’t know a cutoff man if he hit him over the head with a calculator.

(OK, Fox didn’t say that last part, I did.)

“Bob is not a puppet, he is not just pretending. These are his decisions,” Chernin told the Times from their New York offices.

Added Carey, from the same offices: “Of course, we wouldn’t approve of anything suicidal, but short of that, it’s his business to run.”

Carey said he didn’t learn of firing plans until Friday.

Chernin said he wasn’t told until Sunday, shortly before Graziano, the Fox-installed club president, made the announcement.

Considering the Dodgers are just one small piece in the enormous jigsaw of businesses run by Chernin and Carey, the position is actually believable.

It makes sense that Graziano, knowing how Fox does business, knowing he must keep the Dodgers close to both the Angels and San Diego Padres in the standings and headlines, might find it necessary to sell out nearly anything to save his soul.

Including a Dodger season.

OK, so I understand why Graziano would do it. Brownie points.

Which brings up the next question.

Why would Fox not veto it?

If this wasn’t suicide on the 1998 season. . . .

“The team has not lived up to expectations. . . . This is an opportunity to put a charge in the rest of the season,” Carey said. “Bob’s rationale is that this will rally the club and drive it forward. . . . We thought his reasons made sense.”

Added Chernin: “How can you say that making a change in the middle of the season is giving up on the season? That’s difficult to understand. To me, giving up would be just going along and not doing anything.”

Even if it was like a football team, trailing by three touchdowns late in the first half, firing both the quarterback and coach on the spot? Replacing them with people who have never played quarterback or coached? And expecting the fans to stick around for the rest of the game?

“Chase and I feel strongly, the single best way to sell tickets is to win,” Chernin said, later adding, “we think what people care more about than anything is winning.”

So they think this move will help the Dodgers win. Fair enough. Surely others feel the same way.

And despite another embarrassment Monday, that might initially be the case. Baseball teams often respond to rash moves with a rash of victories.

But what happens next month?

No offense to Tom Lasorda, a Dodger icon whose player-evaluation skills and salesmanship seem perfectly suited for his new job as general manager.

But he’s never done it before, and it may take him the rest of the season to adjust, and by then, well, Graziano is still so uncertain of Lasorda’s health that they placed an “interim” title before his name.

And no offense to Glenn Hoffman, a big-league bench player for most of nine seasons, who was named manager.

But he has had losing records in parts of five minor-league seasons, including only 27 wins in 68 games at Albuquerque this year. This winter, among all the candidates who will apply to manage this storied team, he might not even rank in the top 10.

One can only wonder, how long before some of the team’s veterans with guaranteed contracts will realize that these moves are the equivalent of giving up on the season and simply give up too?

How long before Hoffman challenges one of these veterans, who will only laugh at the insecurity of his position?

How long before Lasorda runs down from his office to rescue Hoffman and becomes the manager himself?

“I never thought it would come this quick,” Hoffman admitted Monday of his new job.

Neither did we. Both his ascension and the Dodger tumble into the world inhabited by every other team.

Actually, no. This latest move is far more outlandish than any front office execution by any other team in recent history.

And to think the Dodgers did it on the day of the death of former club executive Al Campanis, the man who wrote the book entitled, “The Dodger Way.”

“Peripheral events,” is how Graziano classified Campanis’ death Monday, when asked whether he considered delaying his announce

ment one day out of respect for Campanis.

Peripheral events?

That is how it is with the Dodgers now. That is what they are calling the loss of a legend.

Peripheral events. Is this what their longtime fans have also become?

“This could be a case of a backlog of changes, made all at once,” Chernin said. “We respect the Dodger tradition. . . . We would like to enter a period of calm.”

In the meantime, in a sport of numbers, Southland baseball followers can still be comforted with one.

It is 1-714-634-2000.

Angel ticket information. Call soon. Somebody in this town still has a clue.