Using a Dodger Symbol to Drum Up Excitement

We have about 50 days until the Dodgers’ expensive pitchers and crummy catchers report to spring training.

Unable to contain my excitement, and looking forward to sitting around the clubhouse and swapping yuks with Kevin Brown, I called the Dodgers Wednesday to learn the reporting date.

Nobody was home.

No sweat. I’ve talked to Kevin Malone before, so I can deal with that.

But I do have some suggestions to pass along when someone shows up.

I’d go to one of those baseball cap stores in a mall and have someone embroider the word “manager” on Jim Tracy’s cap so that when he gets to Vero Beach people know who he is.

*

FUNNY THING, NOW that I think about it, I was told one of the reasons the Dodgers didn’t like former manager Davey Johnson was because he spent the winter in Florida and did nothing to promote the team in L.A.

Once the Dodgers elevated Tracy, he went to Florida and disappeared. Or, maybe he’s here and I just don’t recognize him.

*

NOW THE OFF-SEASON is supposed to be a time when a team makes moves to fire up the fans and intensify the anticipation. Bob Daly’s only qualification for running the Dodgers was supposed to be his experience as a Dodger fan, but as a fan, I wonder how happy he’d be with this team.

So far, the Dodgers have gotten rid of the winningest active manager in baseball history and dumped Todd Hundley, the team’s second-most productive hitter per at-bat. They have been replaced by Tracy the Ghost and Andy Ashby, a sub-.500 pitcher, who did his best work against the Dodgers.

What’s there to be excited about? Dodger expectations are dead, and Carlos Perez hasn’t even taken the mound.

*

THIS BRINGS ME to Tom Lasorda, as alive as any 73-year-old master of bull can be, recently selected honorary coach of the year by the U.S. Olympic Committee, and just the breath of hot air these Dodger corpses need.

I mean, you saw how the players reacted to Lasorda after he returned to Dodger Stadium on the heels of a monumental Olympic upset, winning the baseball gold medal for the United States.

They shunned him. They remained glued to the bench. As Dodgers they owed him more--as Americans maybe even more. But they acted as if they didn’t want anything to do with all that Dodger-in-the-sky, bleeding-blue nonsense. They made it clear they wanted to be left alone.

That’s exactly the way Johnson managed, of course, the players collected their millions, and some fans started to stay home. Who cares about a team that doesn’t care?

*

SO FAR, THE Dodgers have done nothing to convince anyone this season will be different, and they’re running out of blockbuster options capable of exciting the masses. Unless they have some last-minute Johnny Damon trick to change perceptions, I say they need Lasorda and the enthusiasm he brings to the park.

He’s a show unto himself, and for all the bluster and rah-rah-sis-boom-bah, he’s the best living example of Dodger pride and tradition.

He’d kick the players in the butt behind the scenes, tell them a bunch of baloney about how he’s in their corner like no one else and bedazzle the media with stories about how he has gone 4-0 in pregame Rose Bowl speeches. He’d wave to the kids, have his picture taken with granny--the lifetime Dodger fan--and defend Tracy when he makes one of those rookie manager blunders.

Put the guy in a uniform, put him in the dugout and put some life back into this team.

Lasorda wouldn’t allow these guys to be complacent. He’d poke, he’d prod, he’d make them accountable, intent again on proving he could raise the dead.

*

LASORDA WOULD MAKE the present-day Dodgers miserable, and I like that. Fresh off an unbelievable win for his country, every one of the Dodgers should have been hugging the great hugger, and now this would be their punishment. They’d have to listen to his stories--all that schmaltz, and in a 162-game season, there’s no bench long enough to avoid him.

He’s healthy, he said, likening himself to a car given the Earl Scheib treatment. “Don’t know what’s under the hood, but I look great,” he said.

More than anything here, we’re talking about a motivator, who is motivated to sit in the dugout again and help make the Dodgers successful.

“I could do that,” Lasorda says, “but they don’t want that.”

The Dodgers haven’t even brought it up.

“No, it doesn’t hurt me,” he says, but his reluctance to go quietly into the front office betrays the fire that still burns within.

Bobby Valentine, a friend who recognizes Lasorda’s renewed vigor after the Olympics, recently offered him a chance to return to baseball as an assistant coach with the Mets. And as much as Lasorda wants to be back in the fray--after 51 years with the Dodgers--he said he couldn’t leave.

He understands he’s done as a manager, his work certified as excellent in the Hall of Fame, but if the team wanted, he knows there’s a place for him in the dugout--maybe like Manny Mota, who works without title, but in uniform.

The Dodgers have shown no interest, saying only he can help in other ways--the old corporate shove to the side. Their fear, of course, is that his commanding presence might overshadow Tracy--and everyone else in the organization.

“That’s probably what they’re afraid of, but I don’t know,” said Lasorda, measuring his words. “I just know I feel great, I can still help, and I don’t want to go off and play golf. But it’s whatever they want--I’ll do it.”

I don’t expect the Dodger brass to suddenly become smart, but at the very least I hope he’s sent to spring training--so he can point out Tracy to me.

*

JOSEF MASOPUST WAS selected as Czechoslovakia’s soccer player of the century. That’s as good as it gets in a sports week as slow as this, and besides, I ran out of space because Lasorda just wouldn’t shut up.

*

TODAY’S LAST WORD comes in an e-mail from Michael Wehn:

“Why can’t it be Monday every day so I don’t have to read your garbage.”

You’d rather have Dennis Miller every night?

*

T.J. Simers can be reached at his e-mail address: t.j.simers@latimes.com