Something smells about Little leaving Dodgers

Grady Little says he has his own personal reasons for resigning as Dodgers manager, and here’s hoping none of them involve his health or the health of anyone in his family.

GM Ned Colletti says he spent a good deal of time encouraging Little to remain on the job -- Colletti apparently really good at multitasking -- talking at the same time to Joe Girardi and Joe Torre about taking Little’s job.

“I wanted Grady Little back,” Colletti says on a conference call, no one asking if Colletti is going to be Pinocchio this Halloween.

Colletti says that had Little told him Tuesday he was going to remain on the job, the job would still be Little’s.

There’s also a published report out there that says Colletti had a deal in place to hire Girardi last Friday, the Yankees matching it and taking Girardi away from the Dodgers -- saving Colletti the problem of making Little and Girardi baseball’s first co-managers.

Take Colletti at his word, all right, four weeks after he and Frank McCourt tell everyone Little will be back on the job -- and who knows, maybe there really is a dollar to be made by putting a tooth under a pillow.

Little says, “There’s a lot of belief I’ve been dealt an injustice here. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” but then he calls his resignation “a mutual resignation . . . just something that mutually happened, just something better for the organization.”

I wonder if it’s the Tipper Gore Lady holding up the cue cards.

Listen to Colletti and Little speak, and maybe there are personal reasons beyond baseball that have Little stepping down -- rendering Colletti’s encouragement useless.

But then maybe Little heard rumblings within baseball that Colletti was interested in hiring Girardi, as manager or manager-in-waiting.

Or maybe there was something in the fact the Dodgers had not given new contracts to Little’s coaches, leaving the door ajar for a new manager to bring in his own staff.

“It’s just something myself and family had talked about,” says Little, while declining to say whether the Dodgers have bought his silence with a contract buyout. “It’s not an easy decision, but it’s final. My plans are to play with my grandkids.”

No question that’s going to be more fun than spending time with the babies that occupy the Dodgers clubhouse, but all those years trying to make it to the big leagues, then the big chance in Boston, and heartbreak and another shot at redemption -- only to just walk away?

“I have my personal reasons,” Little says.

Colletti and Little deny a published report they had a blowup at season’s end, the same report also having them not talking to each other for weeks.

Take them at their word, I guess, until someone produces the facts to prove them liars.

No way, no how is the Boston Parking Lot Attendant involved in this coup, we’re being told, and until recently McCourt really did have property to sell you.

If image, and the importance the McCourts place on it were not so pervasive here, maybe the spoken word could be accepted as fact.

But as long as the McCourts have been here, it’s always been the spin that’s manufactured, the Tipper Gore Lady certainly earning her wages.

“I’m going to miss these calls like this,” Little says, the “believe it or believe it not” conference call coming to an end -- just as it should.

WHATEVER THE real story, Little is already old news, Dodgers fans thrilled for the most part with his departure, maybe the only chance they will ever have to pop open a bottle of champagne.

Dodgers fans never did embrace Little, which really doesn’t speak well of Dodgers fans.

He was a former catcher like a beloved Mike Scioscia, but he didn’t have favorite-son roots, or the experience of blocking home plate in Dodger Stadium when hired to replace Jim Tracy.

But he was as likable and as down-to-earth a person as any Dodgers fan would hope to have their kids meet in a sports setting.

Two years on the job, and how many great coaches and managers would be fired, never becoming great?

Little was also Forrest Gump and an easy sap to blame for all that continues to go wrong with what has become a second-rate organization.

Many of his managerial moves were second-guessed, fans buying the team’s annual hype that it was better than it was performing, thus, the manager must be to blame.

But try to win with Bill Mueller at third for a day or so, or without Jason Schmidt pitching, or Juan Pierre playing center field.

Torre won’t allow the clubhouse to rot, as it did this season, we’ll be told, Jeter and A-Rod always getting along and never any chemistry problems in New York -- the Yankees going seven straight seasons with the likes of Jeter & Co. not winning a World Series. Keep that up, and they become the Dodgers.

Little, meanwhile, leaves baseball never having a losing season in four years as a manager in Boston and L.A. with a .552 winning percentage.

Take Colletti at his word when he says “it’s not accurate” to say the Dodgers are ready to hire Torre -- and either he’s lying, relying on semantics or secretly trying to work a deal out to bring back Tracy.

In Torre, the Dodgers get a manager with a winning percentage of .539, losing records with the Mets and Cardinals, but a winner in Atlanta and four World Series rings while overseeing baseball’s top payroll with the Yankees.

Happy days are here again, or so we’ll be led to believe in the next day or two.

Or, as the Parking Lot Attendant told us three years ago this month, “We’re going to build on this. We’re going to take what we accomplished this season, we’re going to learn from it, we’re going to make wise decisions and we’re going to get better because that’s what the fans deserve.”

In the last three years, the Dodgers’ wise decisions have resulted in 241 wins and 245 losses.

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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.