A Green Day for Blue

We’ve been to this party before. We remember dancing and celebrating last winter when the Dodgers bought baseball’s best pitcher.

We also remember the hangover. It was a whopper that lasted all summer, our head throbbing with the realization that the Dodgers won six fewer games with Kevin Brown than without him.

So we hope their new right fielder will excuse us if we don’t spray champagne into that boyish face just yet.

But it’s OK today to smile, if for no other reason than the Dodgers are a little more balanced, a little less combustible, a little bit better.

Raul Mondesi has been traded as part of a deal for Shawn Green.

A problem has been traded for a solution.

“Bleep Davey” has been traded for “I Love L.A.”

A good move all the way around, for everybody involved, with the possible exception of the guy who must inform Mondesi that his new national anthem is not “Oh, Bleeping Canada.”

No such outbursts are expected from Green, a Tustin kid who reportedly even shows up at the ballpark on time.

“He was raised to understand that if a coach tells you to jump, you say ‘How high?’ ” said his father Ira, who runs the Baseball Academy in Santa Ana. “I was old school.”

His son, who will be 27 on Wednesday, is not just old school, but new baseball.

He runs hard, hits into the corners, and doesn’t complain. Not to mention, an average of 39 homers and 112 RBIs in his only two seasons with more than 135 games.

All that, and he’s left-handed.

Because of that, the Dodgers didn’t acquire only one star Monday, but two.

Joining Green in the long-term Dodger future is now Eric Karros.

It has been written here that Karros needed to be traded for that left-handed power hitter. Call off the dogs. That power hitter is here.

Karros will now get the chance to spend the rest of his Dodger days in the peace that comes with having all the cameras pointed at new blood.

Gary Sheffield batting third, Green fourth, Karros fifth. All’s well that ends . . . well, not quite.

Green, who was traded here because the Blue Jays cannot spend the money that the Dodgers ultimately can, does have problems.

He is not a second baseman.

He is not a veteran pinch-hitter or platoon outfielder.

He is not a left-handed reliever who can replace Pedro Borbon Jr., who went to Toronto as the other Dodger in the deal.

If you believe Davey Johnson, the Dodgers still need all of those things.

“I’d still like to see a little more flexibility,” Johnson said. “We lost an integral part of our bullpen. We need help on the bench and up the middle.

“Those are things championship clubs do.”

And so it will be up to Kevin Malone to do them.

After swinging wildly during much of his first season, Malone began his second with a nice at-bat.

The Blue Jays wanted talented young Onan Masaoka instead of Borbon, and Malone refused.

The Blue Jays also talked about Eric Gagne and Adrian Beltre, two young Dodgers who should not be traded under any circumstances during this restocking stage, and Malone held firm.

“We just have to stop giving away our kids,” Malone said. “We have to start building on what we have.”

And it is hoped Malone will now build on what he has just done, paying attention to the little things that will give Johnson the sort of lineup he manages best, ending the embarrassment.

Heck, not once Monday did Malone claim that Green would take the Dodgers to the World Series, which qualifies as a start.

“I’ve learned, we’ve all learned,” he said.

And if not, well, there’s always Bob Daly.

The new Dodger chairman told the story of how Jeff Moorad, agent for Green, Mondesi and Karros, casually tried to convince him to trade for Green before signing him to a long-term deal.

This would have meant Green would have been a free agent after next season, with all the pressure of Dodgerdom falling on Daly’s shoulders to re-sign him.

“We were on the eighth floor when he said this, and I told him, ‘I would sooner jump out that window than not sign him before we trade for him,’ ” Daly said.

That business sense, combined with his love for the Dodgers, was the biggest factor in making his first Dodger deal work. Some have fairly wondered whether Daly’s acquisition of Dodger control was pure movie fiction, but his pre-trade talks with Green were real.

“I wanted to know that he wanted to be a Dodger,” Daly said. “We do not want any more players who don’t want to be Dodgers. Shawn convinced me he did.”

This is, of course, what ultimately doomed Mondesi here after six mostly good years.

OK, class, all together now, Raul Mondesi will hit 35 home runs with 105 RBIs and 40 stolen bases in his first year for the Blue Jays.

One more time, all together now, it does not matter.

Some problem players are known as cancers, but Mondesi affected the Dodgers on a higher level.

He was asbestos. He caused the cancers.

Teammates saw him get away with disrespecting management and thought they could do the same.

Teammates saw him show up in the clubhouse late, and with a bunch of buddies, and wondered why they couldn’t come in late with their own posses.

Mondesi would spend the winter complaining that he wasn’t being treated like a star, then he would show up at training camp looking like a cow.

We should not forget the joy that Mondesi brought Dodger fans with those sprints into the right-field corner, those ninth-inning home runs, that continual hustle.

We also should not forget that Mondesi is gone because he no longer wanted to be here.

And perhaps it is worth focusing on their new right fielder’s most memorable trip to Dodger Stadium.

Yep, Shawn Green was in the stands on that October night in 1988 when Kirk Gibson hit his homer.

But, nope, he was walking out of the stadium when Gibson hit it.

He rushed back inside after hearing that Gibson was limping to the plate, and made it just in time to see Gibson limping across home plate with the winning run.

Shawn Green was 15 years old then.

Today, he is the Dodgers’ first regular left-handed power hitter since . . . well, let’s just not talk about that right now.

We can wait. We’ve been to this party before.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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* RANDY HARVEY: Raul Mondesi, who got too much too soon, didn’t adjust to fame and fortune. Page 2