Green Is Finding His Rhythm Too as Dodgers Win

It is Sunday, just before dawn, in the hills up the road from Dodger Stadium.

Somewhere deep in Davey Johnson beat the rhythms of another loss, another disappointment, another day closer to the end.

He leans up in bed.

“Honey?” he says to wife Susan. “My heart is pounding so fast, I can see it.”

“Right,” she says sleepily.

“No,” he says. “I can see it.”

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He returned to work Thursday with a smile and a scalpel.

Four days in the hospital to treat an irregular heartbeat did nothing to Davey Johnson’s steady sense of humor, if not destiny.

“I thought about staying away another week or two,” he said, chuckling. “I’m sure some people around here probably wanted me to.”

He added: “They didn’t shock me because they were worried about blood clots in my brain. But I’m sure some people think I’ve got those already.”

He continued: “Give me a couple of days. If I make a couple of blunders, I can blame it on the medicine.”

The old baseball man shook hands with other old baseball men, patted backs, laughed some more. He’s fine now, and medicine and diet--no more wine, caffeine or chewing tobacco--should keep him that way.

Yet in some ways, Davey Johnson’s heart is still pounding so fast you can see it.

The stress that contributed to his hospital trip is still hanging from his worn smile, bouncing along the dugout steps, dragging behind him across every field.

What was true when he fell into a restless sleep Saturday night is true this morning.

His bosses have essentially ordered him to make the playoffs or be fired.

Insiders say this gives him two months to sharpen his dugout strategy, increase his clubhouse intensity, rediscover the fire that led his past teams to six playoff appearances.

And Johnson thought he was wearing monitors at Centinela.

“If we don’t win . . . I’m a big boy, I’ll take full responsibility,” Johnson said Thursday.

But is he physically and mentally ready for this?

And is the Dodger organization ready to help him by acquiring the starting pitcher it will take to close the gap?

The answer to the first question seems easy.

Johnson left the hospital Wednesday and was going to take one more day off.

“Then I woke up [Thursday] morning and he had left me a note that he was gone walking,” Susan said. “He walked for an hour. When he came back, he said he was ready to go back to work.”

Johnson walked, because it was the first time in a month that he had felt like it.

Three weeks ago, he first felt the pounding that once caused to him to faint when he managed in Baltimore.

He took some medication and didn’t complain again, even as the pounding continued.

“That’s part of the problem,” Susan said. “He never talks about his problems. He keeps them in. He wasn’t right for three weeks.”

When he awoke that Sunday morning and sat up in bed and felt faint, he knew this was a pounding that might not stop.

For the ensuing 24 hours, even as doctors filled him with medications, it continued.

If his heart never slowed to a regular rhythm, he would have to miss three more weeks while undergoing daily injections to the stomach.

The 24 hours became 30 hours.

“It was very scary,” Susan said. “Can you imagine all those shots?”

But Monday afternoon around 2, his heart finally slowed to a normal rhythm.

And, still attached to tubes and monitors, Johnson could finally think.

“You’re alone in that bed, and you’re thinking about the team, and how everybody says we’re underachievers, but . . . just look at us,” he said. “We’re not underachievers. Heck, last year we did some overachieving. We have some things that still need to be done here.”

Johnson said he thought about what critics have said, that he doesn’t bunt enough, or hit-and-run enough, or encourage his players to give themselves up to move along the runners.

He thought, is everybody watching the same team?

“This is a team, if we don’t hit the ball hard, really thump it, then . . . “ he said. “This team is not designed for . . . “

He didn’t finish the sentence, but it’s not hard to fill in the blanks.

Sometimes he feels like he’s being asked to convince a Jeep to behave like a Jaguar.

But Johnson said he returns to work ready to try.

His wife could see it in his eyes as he walked in the door from that walk.

“You can see he has a renewed dedication,” she said. “Sometimes you have to step back from these things to see them better.”

Johnson laughed.

He said it’s not the stress of the game that has hurt him, but the stress of losing.

He’s tired of it. It has been a decade since he’s missed the playoffs in consecutive years with the same team.

“I’m ready to go, to get back at it,” Johnson said. “There’s still a lot of fire in me, even if I don’t always show it. You look at Joe Torre, there’s a lot of fire in him, but it’s not coming out of his ears.”

He laughed again.

“But if I hit-and-run with the bases loaded, you know I’ve got a blood clot,” he said.

But seriously.

“If I become a casualty, so be it,” he said. “But I’d like a chance to stick around and make this organization great again. My hope is that there won’t be any panic.”

Or maybe, panic just enough to make a move by the July 31 trading deadline that could save the season.

The Dodgers say they are trying. To do anything less would be to ignore the hopes of a city, and the heartbeat of a manager.

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