No Safety in Foxhole

Forget the five-year plan that Dodger Chairman Bob Daly recently gave his partners at Fox. If Daly doesn’t choose the right general manager to succeed Kevin Malone, he may need a 10-year plan.

The fate of the Dodgers in the next decade rests on the choice.

The attempt to reestablish the stability and reputation of a once-proud organization now paying $98 million for a mediocre team with no immediate replacements in the farm system is at stake. Perhaps even the willingness of the phantom executives at Fox to continue underwriting an effort that has produced more ridicule than ratings could be on the line.

What is needed here is an experienced general manager with a track record and the strength and security to put a stranglehold on this shaky organization and retrofit it from the ground up.

What is needed here, for example, is a John Hart, currently general manager of the Cleveland Indians, or a Billy Beane, currently general manager of the Oakland Athletics, or a Steve Phillips, currently general manager of the New York Mets.

No, Malone wasn’t fired Tuesday. You didn’t miss an announcement while watching U.S. gymnasts fall off the high bar and balance beam.

The cart is being put ahead of the horse for a simple reason.

It is as preposterous to think the Dodgers will retain Malone now as it is to think they will retain Davey Johnson as manager.

Johnson was criticized by Daly and Malone for his style and strategy in midseason. The manager isn’t going to change. Are they going to bring him back so that he can be fired during the first losing streak in April?

Malone, by contrast, seemed likely to survive his two-year record of roster and payroll malfunctions.

Now, however, it has been revealed that he has defied Daly and club President Bob Graziano--who have insisted that no decision on Johnson’s status would be made until after the season--by discussing the managerial job with Kevin Kennedy, openly courting Kennedy on occasion in ballpark luxury suites.

Can Daly and the Dodgers tolerate insubordination on top of that two-year performance chart?

Do they swallow Malone’s denials?

It is understandable how the chairman has been reluctant to blow out both his manager and general manager only two years after they were hired, forcing the organization to start from scratch again with new staffs in the clubhouse and front office--but what have the Dodgers accomplished in the two years that starting over would be so grievous?

Wouldn’t it be better to replace the captain before the ship lists even more dangerously?

The problem, of course, is that it’s more easily recommended than accomplished. Expansion has thinned out the general managers of stature, as well as the pitching, and the best are signed to long-term contracts.

Then again, Los Angeles is still Los Angeles, and while the Dodgers are still the Dodgers in name only, the task here could be viewed as an intriguing challenge to an executive confident enough and secure enough to tell Daly and the fans that untangling the web will require time.

Hart, for instance, might feel he has done everything with the Indians except win a World Series. His team plays to sellouts and is bidding for a sixth consecutive playoff appearance. It could be time for a new frontier.

Beane has helped build the A’s into a team that may contend for years, but the franchise’s instability might influence him to accept a position where the finances weren’t so restrictive.

Phillips has the Mets headed for a second consecutive playoff appearance but is a free agent. His contract ends this season, and he may have had enough of the difficult New York market and a tenuous relationship with Manager Bobby Valentine.

Two years ago, before Malone’s hiring, it was recommended here that the Dodgers show landmark courage and bring back Dave Stewart as general manager.

Stewart, a former Dodger pitcher who is now assistant general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, remains a passionate and articulate proposition, a man certain to be a GM some day, but the current Dodger situation--with the payroll and farm problems and the roster inflexibility--is so complex that it would seem to demand a tested GM with an experienced staff.

Malone, of course, inherited much of the mess, but it has been exacerbated during his tenure, and now he seems to have spit at Daly’s edict. He denied contacting Kennedy, but then he also denied contacting Tom Kelly regarding the Dodgers’ managerial position before the hiring of Johnson only to have Kelly confirm that Malone had indeed called without first getting the Minnesota Twins’ permission.

Trust is a front-office essential, but that would now seem to be as big a Dodger void as those fourth and fifth vacancies in the club’s rotation.