No Need for Valentine to Enjoy Baseball’s Heart

The high points, low points and ticklish talking points of the weekend that was:

Look in closely at Bobby Valentine, and you do not see a clone of his mentor Tommy Lasorda so much as you see a lesser, darker model.

The paranoia, even as his New York Mets advance in the postseason.

The wincing egotism, with the national media stacked around him.

The terrible need to soak up every available morsel of attention and if need be steal it from the players, though Todd Pratt and Edgardo Alfonzo and the other great Mets are too enjoyable to be covered up forever.

Lasorda has some or all of these traits--just ask any Dodger official who ever crossed him or any great player shadowed by Lasorda’s profile--but he has others too, which can’t be said for Valentine.

Lasorda is loyal, he has great baseball history and instincts, and mostly he is comfortable within his own skin.

So even if we all have to take Bobby V. for another playoff round or two, we need more of the Mets enduring despite his theatrics, we have to see Pratt stepping in for Mike Piazza and yanking Matt Mantei’s fastball over the wall to clinch the series.

That was Mike Scioscia taking Dwight Gooden deep in the 1988 playoffs, deja vu. October echoes.

Baseball is fairly overbaked these days--all screeching home-run highlights, meaningless 30-30 clubs, starting pitchers who never see the fifth inning and almost everybody on the ballclub engaged in the shrieking, self-pitying Celebration of Me.

Basically, the Dodgers of 1999. Or Valentine, every season.

But, watching the October pressure-cooker, seeing Ramon Martinez re-materialize in the middle of a Fenway frenzy or Walt Weiss make the perfect, scrambling infield play or Bernie Williams glide to the wall or Greg Maddux and Kevin Millwood hoist themselves into relief appearances . . .

That’s why baseball still matters, why nothing seems important about the game until everything is momentously important about this one game.

THE BIG PICTURE

This doesn’t explain nearly all of it--Kurt Warner’s MVP run, I am not even going to try figuring that one--but here’s one unscientific theory about why the NFL is in chaos and every week brings us a spate of shockers:

Too many good young offensive minds are getting head coaching jobs too soon.

You could argue that this trend should help scoring, because the owners who do the hiring sure want the scoreboard lit; I say it hurts, because as soon as an Andy Reid or a Chris Palmer gets on the same wavelength as a top quarterback, he’s whisked off with millions of dollars to rebuild a new team, usually with a horrible quarterbacking situation.

I call it five degrees of offensive uncoordination:

1. Take Norv Turner away from Dallas and Troy Aikman, and the Cowboys go into a spiral. Move him to Washington before he’s ready to be a big-time head coach and before he has a quarterback, and it takes five years before the Redskins are percolating. . . .

2. Pluck Brian Billick too swiftly from Minnesota, and the Viking offense goes in the tank and it’s going to be years before the Baltimore Ravens acquire the talent to make a run. . . .

3. Reid never even was a coordinator in Green Bay, and Philadelphia obviously offers him a challenge he is not yet fully prepared to meet. . . .

4. When Palmer leaves Jacksonville for Cleveland, suddenly Mark Brunell and Coach Tom Coughlin are at odds. . . .

5. Which is similar to Pittsburgh and Kordell Stewart since Chan Gailey left, to take over Dallas, which hasn’t been the same since, well, Norv Turner took off.

WEEKEND TALKING POINTS

1. Laila Ali: Youngest daughter of the Greatest scored a 31-second knockout in her first fight. Match her up with Joe Frazier’s kid, dress them up in off-white garb, and you’ve got “the Thrilla in Vanilla.”

2. Al Davis, eligible NFL owner No. 1: OK, if the choice for luring a team to L.A. is him or Bill Bidwill, uh, we’ll take, uhhh, can we take some more time on this one?

3. Michael Ovitz: Did all the smooth things, made the rich old guys like him, but, in the end, what he said meant nothing. Sounds just like an agent to me.

4. Mighty Duck Ruslan Salei, marked man: His hit on Mike Modano was the worst Disney cheap shot since Eisner vs. Katzenberg. Noted scribe Wayne Gretzky wrote in a Canadian paper that it was “horrible to watch.”

5. UCLA defense holds: One yard better than last week; but that’s a big yard.

6. Georgia Tech quarterback Joe Hamilton: May become first to win Heisman Trophy by unanimous vote--of Tallahassee prosecutor’s office.

7. Florida State wide receiver Peter Warrick: Great speed, incredible moves, developing rap sheet. The total NFL draft package.

8. Defensive Tackle U: How come all the Trojans’ big, fast, powerful players play defense now?

9. “We’re finished,” say the Broncos: Sports Illustrated quoted several Denver players talking privately during a postgame dinner, but apparently withheld highly sensitive details about the creme brulee.

10. Latrell Sprewell: The best player nobody will ever understand.

LEADING QUESTIONS

Did you notice that the playoffs have been teeming with ex-Dodgers--the Martinez brothers, Piazza, Roger Cedeno, John Wetteland, Jose Offerman, Omar Daal--but there was hardly an ex-Angel to be seen?

Do Chili Davis and Darryl Strawberry count?

Does that mean that the Dodgers have produced better players and have been too dumb and too reckless to keep them? (That’s sad.)

Or does it mean that the Angels have had as many good players, have kept them, and still can’t win? (Sadder.)

Or maybe it means the Dodgers’ ex-players need to get away to flourish and that Angels players don’t flourish anywhere? (Saddest.)