Towers No Sheriff, but His Prediction Was Arresting

All of you who believed the Dodgers would be one game under .500 and in third place in the National League West on June 9, raise your hands.

I see one hand there in the back. Your name, sir?

“Kevin Towers.”

That’s the San Diego Padre general manager who reacted to L.A. counterpart Kevin Malone’s optimism--delusions of grandeur?--by declaring even before spring training that the Dodgers were no better than the third-best team in the division. Now that it appears Towers is correct for at least the first quarter of the season, I asked him Wednesday if he was in the least bit surprised.

“No,” he said. “The Dodgers have a very talented ballclub, but they’ve been very talented for the last three years, and it hasn’t happened for them. Why is it going to change now?”

Good question.

A better question: Despite the addition since the middle of last season of all-stars Gary Sheffield, Jeff Shaw, Devon White, Kevin Brown and Todd Hundley, as well as Manager Davey Johnson, why isn’t it changing?

“If I knew the cause, I wouldn’t comment on it because I don’t want it to change,” Towers said. “Not that I know the cause. But I’ve got some ideas.”

One reason he was reluctant to comment further is because the Padres are farther back in the standings than the Dodgers.

“I’m not pleased with where we’re at, either,” he said. “We’re in a transition period, but our plan was to remain competitive in the interim. We’re not as competitive as I thought we’d be.

“But, unlike a general manager in our division whose name I won’t mention, I never said we were going to blow through the division and play in the World Series against the New York Yankees.”

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Johnson said a week ago that he was on the verge of snapping. I’ve got a suggestion for him. Snap. . . .

He shouldn’t go as far, though, as the fan who streaked across the outfield in the eighth inning Tuesday night wearing only a Dodger jersey. . . .

Well, it is “Think Blue Week.” . . .

And you thought Mike Piazza was a bad defensive catcher. . . .

The worst part of Piazza’s game was his arm. In 1997, his last full season with the Dodgers, he threw out 34 of 146 baserunners (23.3%) trying to steal. . . .

Hundley had thrown out seven of 57 (12.3%) through Tuesday night. That’s the night the Texas Rangers stole six bases against him, one short of the number stolen against him in a game by the St. Louis Cardinals a couple of weeks ago. . . .

In Hundley’s defense, Piazza’s too, Dodger pitchers haven’t been adept in recent seasons at holding runners on base. But seven of 57? . . .

As for handling pitchers, the Dodgers’ earned-run average in 1997 with Piazza catching was 3.62. . . .

Going into Brown’s start Wednesday night, the Dodger ERA was 4.36. . . .

The National League should have suspended Chan Ho Park for 10 days, costing him two starts, for going after Tim Belcher with spikes up. . . .

The Yankees have a Rocket. The Dodgers have a Rockette. . . .

Give Angel General Manager Bill Bavasi credit for giving players a forum to voice their complaints against Manager Terry Collins. . . .

Considering his handling of the Tony Phillips drug bust a couple of seasons ago, Bavasi is a master of crisis management. . . .

Now if he can just learn how to make a deal to help the Angels before the trading deadline. . . .

Although three witnesses came forward to support Drayton McLane’s version of his conversation with Latino television executives last week, that doesn’t excuse Commissioner Bud Selig for clearing the Houston Astro owner of making racist remarks without talking to the accusers. . . .

Selig and others who know McLane said he’s incapable of making racist remarks because they know he’s not a racist. But anyone who knew Al Campanis would have said the same thing about him if they hadn’t heard him interviewed on “Nightline.” . . .

Houston Chronicle columnist John Lopez writes that if McLane believes Latinos have difficulty understanding the numbers in baseball, he will find out differently when he begins negotiating Jose Lima’s contract next winter. . . .

The title of the movie “Field of Dreams” in Hong Kong was “Imaginary Dead Ballplayers in a Cornfield.”

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While wondering if Mike Modano still believes the Stanley Cup finals will be anticlimactic, I was thinking: You should watch Lisa Leslie vs. Yolanda Griffith tonight even if you think you don’t like women’s basketball, that streaker covered more ground than some Dodger outfielders, it looked as if things couldn’t get worse for the Dodgers before Barry Bonds returned.

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.