Perez’s Glue Story Sticks Out Like a Sore Thumb

The media and fans must come down hard on Dodger flake Odalis Perez, but not because he had a boo-boo on his finger requiring the team to start someone else in his place Wednesday night.

The guy said earlier he tried using glue to mend his cracked nail, which is pretty noble in my book, and anyone who has used Crazy Glue or something like it, knows there’s a very real possibility Perez is walking around right now with all the fingers on his left hand permanently stuck together.

Since most of the Dodgers make it a practice not to shake my hand, I can’t tell you for sure if that’s true or not.

But I do know what he said Wednesday night, and if he’s allowed to get away with it, there’s no telling the impact on local sports as we now know them.

“I don’t want to be out there and embarrass myself,” Perez said.

We’ve got sports such as figure skating built on the premise of doing exactly that. Do you think the Clippers could put a starting five on the floor if that was taken into consideration every night? How many UCLA players would board the airplane for Oklahoma this week if allowed to think like that? Imagine if fans started feeling the same way: would anyone ever go to a tennis match again?

I know it’s probably not much fun playing for the Choking Dogs at this time of the year. But more than 35,000 fans came to Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night, and at the very least they should know that every last player on the team is willing to go out there, as they did in another 2-0 flat-as-a-pancake loss to Arizona, and embarrass themselves one more time with everything on the line.

We start letting the Dodgers get away without being embarrassed, and pretty soon they’re going to go completely unnoticed like the Angels.

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NOW AS I understand it, the Dodgers had a chance to trade Perez earlier this season for the hitter they so desperately needed in Brian Giles, but elected not to because Perez meant so much to the team. These same people believed Fred McGriff was the hitter the team so desperately needed. And Rickety Henderson. And Robin Ventura. And Jeromy Burnitz.

Oh well, I guess if team executives knew how effective Wilson Alvarez was going to be down the stretch or really knew what they were doing, they’d have made that deal.

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HERE’S THE part I cannot understand. Bob Arum was sitting right there at ringside in Las Vegas, and he still maintains to this day, “I had it 8-4 in favor of Oscar De La Hoya. I have not changed my mind.”

Well, I’ve never heard anything so outlandish, so I called Don King, and checked in with the expert on outlandish.

“I don’t want to attack Bob,” King said. “He’s doing a good job of that himself. But I’m surprised he went as far as he did. I don’t really understand it. Bob did a remarkable job manufacturing a career for Oscar. How can he be angry when he has close to a million [pay-per-view] buys and an $11-million gate? I don’t understand. What is he talking about? Everything is good. I applaud him. He’s 72, chill, man. Be calm.”

So now we have King representing the voice of reason, and it’s Arum who has been saying some hair-raising things.

“I didn’t know Bob could get that angry,” King said. “Can you imagine if I was involved, and said something was fishy with a fight. They’d have had the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover resurrected and the Nevada Boxing Commission involved.”

Arum began softening his stance earlier this week as Times’ boxing writer Steve Springer reported, but what about that post-fight comment that “boxing is the garbage can of sports?”

“I was just quoting my friend, T.J.,” Arum said, and too bad he didn’t stick to the script the rest of the night.

“When you’re emotional, of course, you say things you regret,” Arum said. “I was too strident. I certainly regret I said some things. When it comes to promoting another fight in Nevada, there are going to have to be some significant changes, but I’m just talking about things to make boxing better in the future.”

The first thing he could do to help the future of boxing is accept the mandate of the three judges who agreed that De La Hoya disappeared in the final four rounds, allowing Shane Mosley to win.

“I’ve seen the tapes, too,” Arum said, “and I’ve not changed my mind.”

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TIM LEIWEKE, the Staples Center honcho who bid $7.2 million for the De La Hoya-Mosley fight only to lose it to Las Vegas and the MGM’s $6.8-million offer, might be in position now to take advantage of the rift between Arum and Las Vegas.

Leiweke and Arum settled their differences recently, and Leiweke was Arum’s ring-side guest for the Las Vegas fight. Leiweke gave Arum credit for making the fight as big as it was, and said, “they couldn’t have had this fight and the interest that it’s generated without the first meeting at Staples.

“And we probably have to be in the business of creating fights rather than following history because of the things that Las Vegas has to offer. But I still believe L.A. is a good boxing town, and we can do some meaningful things.”

A phone call to Arum to see what De La Hoya is going to do next might be a good start.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Rusty Dickson:

“Just wanted to drop you a line and let you know your article is stupid. You L.A. types are all the same. You think your city is so much better than San Diego. I find your arrogance nauseating. You can call our city ‘small’ all you want, but the last time I checked, we’re the ones with [the Chargers] in our city.”

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com.