Evans Is Now Busy Protecting His Turf

Shawn Green may be devoid of his home run punch because of the pain in his right shoulder, but Dan Evans is fortunate that his right fielder isn’t the type to have tested his knockout power in another way.

For the first time in this tumultuous Dodger era under News Corp.’s ownership and Bob Daly’s chairmanship, we basically have a general manager calling his star player a liar.

Evans, of course, hasn’t quite put it that way.

It’s just that his ongoing insistence that Green hasn’t been hindered by the discomfort and that his absence of home run production can’t be blamed on one thing speaks for itself.

It is clearly at odds with Green’s reluctant admission that the condition has prevented him from finishing his swing and employing bottom-hand power.

It also has the distinct sound of a man intent on protecting his executive turf amid the renewed scrutiny of the club’s failure to acquire bona fide hitting help with this revelation that Evans and the club were aware of Green’s shoulder condition since spring training.

Amid the Dodgers’ game bid to become the first team to reach the playoffs while finishing last in its league in hitting, with the club still up for sale and only the wild card, perhaps, standing between employment and welfare, Evans’ reaction may have underscored a cold reality.

It now seems to be every man for himself at Dodger Stadium.

Cover your back, boys.

Since the buck has to stop somewhere, I put in a request Wednesday to ask Daly about that and his view of the Green revelation and his opinion on Evans’ reaction to it.

I wanted to know if he felt the Dodgers, especially in light of Green’s inability to generate the type of power that had produced 91 homers the last two years, had erred in using the new luxury tax as a salary cap instead of adding the needed electricity in support of baseball’s best pitching.

A spokesman, however, said the man who had once claimed he would always be available wouldn’t be.

Thus, the only certainty in all of this is that:

* Green seems to be headed for postseason surgery to repair his injured shoulder (it is too late to remove the bullet he absorbed from the club’s failure to reveal his condition);

* There seems to have been an inexplicable and mystifying breakdown as to the extent of what Evans knew about the condition and when he knew it (at least in Evans’ accounting);

* Manager Jim Tracy has been burdened with a greater expectation because of the public assumption that Green was healthy and capable of regaining his home run form and the insistence of Evans that the club is talented enough to win.

Well, no matter how September plays out, the other certainty is that this has been merely the latest addition to the unabated and oft-chronicled parade of embarrassing incidents and decisions since Peter O’Malley sold the team.

It is an amazing litany that started with the trading of Mike Piazza by News Corp. executive Chase Carey without the knowledge of club president Bob Graziano or then-general manager Fred Claire in the deal that brought Gary Sheffield (who promptly demanded and received $5 million to waive a no-trade clause that Carey was unaware he had).

It continued with the midnight firings of Claire and manager Bill Russell, embraced the appointment of Tom Lasorda as interim general manager and the subsequent trade of Paul Konerko for Jeff Shaw and included the firing of Graziano by Rick Welts, who was brought in by News Corp. to be the Dodger czar, among other duties.

Welts, however, wasn’t told that News Corp. chairman Peter Chernin was negotiating with old friend and mentor Daly to become Dodger chairman and 5% owner. Welts soon disappeared, and Daly subsequently rehired Graziano, as Chernin tried to say Graziano had never been fired.

Daly, of course, would inherit Kevin Malone and the $105-million Kevin Brown contract and if he thought this would be easier than the movie business, the same innocent fun he had when rooting for the Dodgers as a youngster in Brooklyn ... well, his ostensibly autonomous tenure as chairman hasn’t been any more stable than those few years immediately preceding it.

From the $77 million he approved for Darren Dreifort and Andy Ashby, to the tumultuous firings of Malone and Davey Johnson to that spring in which Sheffield carried out a daily, verbal assault on teammates and the chairman over his failure to get a new contract, it has continued to be one explosive situation after another.

It was also Daly’s decision to elevate Evans, the former Chicago White Sox administrator, as Malone’s successor without initiating a formal search, at a time when Billy Beane privately craved the opportunity and Commissioner Bud Selig seemed to look the other way because he knew, perhaps, Evans would be a good soldier under any financial restraints Daly and News Corp. imposed.

Well, it’s September 2003 and the offensively challenged Dodgers are in the thick of the wild-card race and maybe that should be at the top of Dan Evans’ resume and the bottom line on all of this except that we know it won’t be.

The decision by the respected Dave Wallace to work elsewhere, the firing of Jack Clark and the handling of the Shawn Green affair, among other developments, are clear illustrations indeed that it’s now every man for himself, and the post-O’Malley history illustrates there will be much more to talk about, even if the chairman won’t.