It’s a Case of Addition by Subtraction

The only thing Milton Bradley provides better than bad board-game metaphors is good baseball.

Yeah, I was fooled too.

I thought it would work. I thought he would lighten up. I thought he would grow up.

When I wrote the above sentence after the Dodgers’ trade for Milton Bradley on April 4, 2004, I thought the words would grow along the foundation of his new all-star home.

Instead, they have been smashed under the wheels of his ride out of town.

Yeah, I was fooled too.

Billy Beane, welcome to the club.

Bradley was traded to Beane’s Oakland Athletics on Tuesday in a move that will paint one of baseball’s youngest and brightest clubhouses a dark shade of dread.

Moneyball becomes Tick-tick-tick ball?

Along with utility player Antonio Perez, in exchange for minor league outfielder Andre Ethier, Bradley has been sent packing in a deal that elicits one overriding Dodger emotion.

Relief.

And we’re not talking about the bullpen.

To the organization, he had become one of those crooked Dodger Stadium seats.

To the players, he had become a bone spur.

To the fans, well, he is one of the only players in history whose move from right field to center field was applauded because it put more physical space between him and them.

Oakland, hide the water bottles and ball bags and crusty veterans.

The Dodgers need some jerks who can play.

Yes, I wrote that too, and I was wrong on two counts.

He was a bigger jerk than anyone imagined.

He was a worse player than anyone realized.

Don’t kid yourself, this would be different if Bradley, who had 10 home runs and 26 runs batted in after two months last summer, had not struggled with injury and ineffectiveness in the final four months.

If Bradley had shown any extended promise in his two years here -- he was only average in 2004 -- the Dodgers would have gagged Jeff Kent and ignored the police reports and made it work.

But in the end, Bradley showed little power and erratic fielding and was afflicted with the same dreaded condition as troubled sports stars Terrell Owens and Ron Artest.

He came down with a bad case of Isn’t Worth The Trouble.

“It’s very disappointing,” Dodger General Manager Ned Colletti said. “It’s more than disappointing, it’s sad. The kid’s got great talent. He was home. This could have been a match made in heaven.”

Also disappointing is that Colletti tried to sell the media on the fact that he tried to keep Bradley in a Dodger uniform.

“I was looking for a way to mediate,” Colletti said. “I was looking for ways to keep him.”

Yet in the next breath, Colletti admitted he never even spoke to Bradley until phoning him about the trade.

He also said he never talked to Kent, whom Bradley called a racist, the final straw in his Dodger career.

“I didn’t want to get into the situation with [Bradley] of he-said, he-said,” Colletti said. “I did all my work outside of Milton.”

C’mon, Ned, just because you’re “street smart” doesn’t make us lamp posts.

If you want to “mediate,” don’t you talk to the parties being mediated?

If you are going to “mediate” with troubled players during the season, you won’t include them in the discussions? Of course you will.

From the moment Bradley played the race card on Kent, owner Frank McCourt wanted Bradley gone. It was Colletti’s job to make that happen. He had no option. Why pretend otherwise?

This is a smart move. This is a forward move. And considering Colletti acquired something more than a duffel bag -- Ethier was a living, breathing Texas League player of the year -- I’d say it was a downright steal.

One thing Bradley hasn’t done is fight with teammates.

Yet another brilliant piece of my brilliant article.

Here’s one more.

If he is indeed the bad guy that the Cleveland Indians are painting him to be, well, as long as that same brush decorates the lineup card every day with his name in the third spot, the Dodgers will have to learn to live with it.

I was naive. The Dodgers were negligent.

They ignored several little tantrums until, at the end of the 2004 season, he threw a water bottle at the feet of fans and disgracefully tore off his uniform.

Then, in McCourt’s biggest rookie mistake, he stopped ignoring him and started ... embracing him?

Baseball suspended Bradley for five games, but the Dodgers allowed him to sit in an executive’s box during the suspension, then allowed him to roam the field to great cheers after the division-clinching victory over the San Francisco Giants.

Afterward, the Dodgers allowed him to return to the playoffs despite an obvious anger problem that could not be treated in those five days.

This leniency gave Bradley a sense of entitlement that he wore on his shrugging shoulders throughout last season.

He mostly played hard, but don’t dare question him when he didn’t. He was occasionally cheerful with reporters, but don’t dare judge him if he’s not.

He claimed to be a gamer, but then injured a finger and disappeared for two months, causing teammates to wonder. Then, when he returned, the tension between him and those teammates was a constant distraction.

Once, after a tough late-summer loss, he stalked across the clubhouse to speak with Kent, his body language filled with such anger, everyone turned and stared.

While the two men talked in front of Kent’s locker -- perhaps innocently -- the entire room waited for a fight to break out.

Kent became upset when he thought a camera was filming their encounter. Bradley stormed away shaking his head.

It was around this time that two Dodger veterans met in McCourt’s office to complain about Bradley. Soon thereafter, Bradley and Kent had their infamous argument over Bradley’s lack of hustle, Bradley popped off, and McCourt finally, privately, admitted his mistake.

A messy ending, but a good ending.

As for Ethier, in the recently completed Arizona Fall League, he won the Dernell Stenson Sportsmanship Award.

I don’t know what that means, but compared to 911 tapes, it sounds pretty good.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.