From Now on, He’ll Take Day at the Track Any Time

The breathless telephone call came late in the afternoon from Santa Anita PR guy, Mike Willman.

Salma Hayek was there, he said, and I’m sure it goes without saying whom she was looking for at the track.

I had a choice: Immediately leave for the Oak Tree at Santa Anita meet or stay at Angel Stadium and disappoint her.

At the time I didn’t know it, but I had already blown it. I should’ve made the drive to the women’s golf tournament in the desert, which tells you just how boring a night this turned out to be. At the very least the women have a bigger hitter in Michelle Wie than anybody in an Angel uniform these days.

She shoots a 65 while Garret Anderson and Vladimir Guerrero are just par for the course once again. (I will say this for Anderson: At least he has the personality of a professional golfer.)

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought Game 3 of the American League championship series was going to be a thriller, the fans going ape, or monkey, on umpire Doug Eddings, and the Angels feeding off the energy to win.

I didn’t even put in a interview request for Anderson, figuring that if he insists on being a dud, I’ll leave him to motivate himself -- while moving on to chat with Guerrero.

I never got the chance, though, because Willman called to say he was setting up a photo shoot for Salma and Rock Hard Ten, which got me to thinking I might have a better shot of getting something out the horse than Anderson or Guerrero.

I wanted to be there, though, when the Angels won, which explains right now why I’m so perplexed at what went wrong. Maybe the guys were put off from the start by the loud ovation for Josh Paul, worried that it might move Mike Scioscia to play the clown once again in this series.

Maybe they were counting on the umps to help, giving them one of those NBA-like make-up calls. Maybe they realized when the Sox scored three runs in the first, that they were finished -- the way Chone Figgins, Guerrero and Anderson are going.

Whatever, the Angels went flat -- the Ducks across the street scoring more than they did, and I thought it was a tough decision at the time whether to be here, or leave and join Salma.

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SOX MANAGER Ozzie Guillen was talking after the game about how overrated Notre Dame is, likening them to the Miami Dolphins. And I think everybody is pretty much in agreement that USC would clobber the Dolphins.

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THE DODGERS have dismissed John Olguin, the VP of public relations, and replaced him with Camille Johnston, who among other things had been the Midwest communications director for the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign.

Great -- a new spin-control expert to break in.

The announcement came from “Dodger Vice Chairman and President Jamie McCourt,” or better known on Page 2 as “Size 0.” In looking at Johnston’s resume, I’d imagine her political background and work as director of communications for Tipper Gore swung it for Size 0.

The fact that the woman who hired the woman who knows nothing about baseball knows nothing about baseball is in keeping with the McCourt in-over-your-head strategy for success that has worked so well already with the hiring of GM Paul DePodesta.

Johnston holds a degree in political science from UCLA, which should really help her in dealing with local sportswriters.

She worked recently for the publishing company that put out Pete Rose’s memoir, “My Prison Without Bars,” which she’ll understand better after working for the Dodgers.

A check of the Internet revealed some of her past work. When it was reported that Al Gore might be spending his last week in office vacationing in Aspen, Johnston “would neither confirm or deny reports.” That’s the kind of communication you’d expect from someone being hired by the McCourts.

Tipper and Johnston worked together on a story for USA Today disclosing Tipper’s treatment for depression, and according to Johnston’s published remarks, they were passing the manuscript “from my bra to hers, and back again.”

For some reason I don’t think we’ll be hearing the same thing when it comes to working closely with Jeff Kent.

I’ve lost count of the number of Dodger PR employees already let go by the McCourts in their flailing effort to control the media here, but in addition to Olguin, assistants Chris Gutierrez and Paul Gomez were added to the list.

Olguin was a 14-year Dodger employee and highly regarded by the media, which probably doomed him. “I’ll always be a Dodger fan and I wish them nothing but the best,” he said in offering a classy farewell.

The Dodgers also announced they will be ending their relationship with the crisis manager hired six months ago to make the McCourts look better -- even though her work isn’t done.

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I FIND it interesting that before the A’s rehired manager Ken Macha, there had been no overlap between the A’s and Dodgers in identifying managerial candidates. Was there some kind of pact between Oakland GM Billy Beane and DePodesta? Was that the reason the Dodgers expressed no interest in interviewing Orel Hershiser because Beane had?

Now that Macha has been hired, making Hershiser available, is he added to the Dodger list? Is Beane calling the shots in Oakland and Los Angeles?

I’d certainly feel a lot better if that were the case.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.