A Vote for Stewart, Lopes to Run the Dodgers

Call it a landmark opportunity, even with all the turmoil and turnover, of which there is certain to be more before the Dodgers complete the 1998 season.

An opportunity for Tom Lasorda and Bob Graziano and Peter O’Malley and the phantoms at Fox to make a significant impact on club and community.

Consider: The cultural diversity of the Dodger clubhouse has been a subject of conversation--and occasional controversy--for several seasons.

O’Malley, the former owner, current board chairman and longtime exponent of global baseball, insists that the team on the field should reflect the diversity of the city.

That noble philosophy, however, isn’t reflected in the baseball operations side of the front office. Ralph Avila, who heads the Dominican operation and at this point seems to be interim general manager Lasorda’s top confidant, is a vice president, but there are no African Americans or other minorities represented in that front-office department.

Here’s the opportunity:

If Lasorda is operating under a genuine mandate to identify a permanent general manager--the cynical view, of course, is that he will identify himself--then why not try to hire Dave Stewart, the pitching coach and assistant general manager of the San Diego Padres?

A Dodger originally, Stewart is African American, but this is not about tokenism.

He is intense, intelligent and a community activist, the sponsor of ongoing charity programs in his hometown of Oakland, where he enjoyed his greatest pitching success as ace of the dynastic Athletics, and Toronto, where he also pitched. He agreed to come out of the Padre front office this year to light a fire under a pitching staff that has been an important factor in that team’s division dominance, but he continues to spend several hours a day in the executive wing when the Padres are at home. His main assignment: overseeing an expanding Latin American operation, particularly in Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

Stewart would be a catch.

He is going to be a major league general manager at some point.

Why not where his professional career started, either as a Lasorda assistant for a couple of years or the main man this winter?

Why not part of a dynamic duo, in fact?

Stewart as general manager and former Dodger Davey Lopes as manager, if Glenn Hoffman doesn’t work out?

Wouldn’t that Stewart/Lopes competitive toughness rub off on the team on the field?

Hasn’t it in San Diego, where the similarly intense and intelligent Lopes is a coach on Manager Bruce Bochy’s staff?

It’s an opportunity, as people at Fox like to say, to merge some innovative forward thinking with the best of Dodger tradition.

Stewart, however, said he and Lopes “just don’t see it happening.” Don’t see it happening for this reason, he suggested:

If the Dodgers, who like to hype their link to Jackie Robinson, haven’t already opened the baseball operations wing of the front office to minorities, why would that change?

“Davey and I were talking about it the other day,” Stewart said. “We think it would be real, real tough. I mean, we just don’t see any black people in their baseball operations office. Avila is the only minority, and they’ve had plenty enough people, myself included, go through the organization before now and it hasn’t happened.

“It’s not just the Dodgers. The situation is the same in a lot of organizations, but that hasn’t made me pessimistic. My long-range goal is to be a general manager, and I’m confident it will happen. I think I’m ready now. . . . I think I could handle it. I’ve turned just about everything I’ve done into something positive that has made the people involved in it proud.”

Stewart has to be cautious. His focus is getting the Padres to October, but the Dodgers are obviously attractive, and he would be willing to serve a front office apprenticeship, as he did under Sandy Alderson and Billy Beane in Oakland and continues to do under Larry Lucchino, Kevin Towers and Fred Uhlman Jr. in San Diego.

“I learned to play baseball there and have always been proud to say I played for the Dodgers,” he said, having learned the split-finger from Sandy Koufax, the pitch that would contribute to four consecutive seasons of 20 or more wins.

That he didn’t find that consistent success in Los Angeles . . . well, neither did Rick Sutcliffe or John Wetteland or Pedro Martinez, among others. Lasorda, with all of his eight rookies of the year, often said he couldn’t run a developmental camp in a major market,

If a young player could play from Day 1, fine. If not, he was destined for an uncertain role.

With Stewart, Wetteland and Martinez, for example, the Dodgers couldn’t decide if they should be starters or relievers.

Montreal Expo Manager Felipe Alou, who benefited from the indecision by acquiring Wetteland and Martinez, was asked about Lasorda becoming general manager and took a little shot at his evaluation skills.

“Well, he didn’t like Pedro Martinez and he got rid of John Wetteland,” Alou told Serge Touchette of the Journal de Montreal.

Those trades were made by former general manager Fred Claire in consultation with Lasorda. Claire took responsibility, but Lasorda had a vote.

Stewart was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1983, having gone 15 days without pitching at one point and having a dugout confrontation with Lasorda at another when lifted for a pinch-hitter while pitching well in an infrequent opportunity.

Of their relationship now, Stewart said, “We speak on a friendly basis, but I’m not sure how Tommy really feels about it.”

Who can be sure?

If the hard-working, well-liked Mark Cresse, one of Lasorda’s guys, can be fired after 22 years as a coach, it illustrates the uneasy, don’t-turn-your-back atmosphere currently gripping an organization that dismisses Bill Russell after 32 years and Claire after 30.

A little edge is fine. Dave Stewart and Davey Lopes displayed it on the field, where it belongs.