COMMENTARY
By Michael Ventre
NBCSports.com contributor
updated 12:48 p.m. ET Dec. 20, 2005
 | Michael Ventre |
|
If you hear vendors at Dodger Stadium yelling, “Get yer baked beans!” in 2006, don’t be shocked. A whole new theme has been introduced at Chavez Ravine. Other items soon available at concession stands will include New England clam chowder and Boston cream pie. Dodger Dogs will be surreptitiously replaced by Fenway Franks. The mascot will be an amiable Boston terrier. Attendants will tell motorists where to “pahk” their cars. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck will buy season tickets. And fans will curse Harry Frazee and Bill Buckner.
If you guess that inhabitants of Boston have taken over Los Angeles, you’re close. All the Dodgers need now is to get beaten in a playoff game by Bucky Dent’s kid.
On Sunday, the Dodgers came to terms with Nomar Garciaparra. Though he was most recently a Chicago Cub, that is merely a technicality. Garciaparra is a member of the Red Sox through and through, and he has the stacks of negative press clippings to prove it.
The Garciaparra signing comes on the heels of two other Dodger acquisitions with a Boston flavor. The team hired Grady Little — he of the “You don’t look tired to me, Pedro” miscalculation in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS — to be their manager. Shortly after that, they signed third baseman Bill Mueller, a member of the 2004 World Series champions, to a two-year deal. And these moves weren’t just to give some company to Derek Lowe — the Game 4 starter for that Series — who was signed before the 2005 season.
 | FREE VIDEO |
| L.A. storyDec. 20: Nomar Garciaparra says he is filled with respect for the Dodgers uniform. NBC Sports |
|
The Dodgers also chatted with center fielder Johnny Damon, but that signing is unlikely to happen. He wants too much money over too many years to fit comfortably in owner Frank McCourt’s tiny wheelhouse. But just the fact that the Dodgers spent money on phone calls with Damon’s agent is evidence enough that they’re serious about putting together a winning team, and that they’re fixated on the Red Sox as a model.
McCourt is from Boston. He owns parking lots there. He wanted to buy the Red Sox once, but the team was instead sold to people with access to money rather than asphalt.
But McCourt is doing the next best thing to satisfy his craving for New England-style baseball. He’s snatching away pieces of the Red Sox like scavengers at a condemned stadium.
After McCourt stupidly fired manager Jim Tracy because he wasn’t on the same page with his then GM, Paul DePodesta, only to fire DePodesta shortly afterward, McCourt’s next move in next year’s reconstruction was to hire Ned Colletti from the Giants as general manager. Then, after a managerial search that included the name of every tobacco spitter who has ever prowled a dugout, Colletti hired Little, who had been the Cubs’ roving catching instructor.
The Little hire, as it turns out, was integral in the way this massive repair job is playing out. The Pedro blunder aside, Little was well-liked and well-respected among the Red Sox players. He’s a country fellow with a penchant for honesty and no room for bull. If he has a problem with a player, that player won’t have to hear about it second-hand.
With Little in the fold, it made it much easier for Colletti to sell Mueller on the Dodgers. And make no mistake, the Dodgers need selling these days. The McCourts — Frank and wife Jamie, who inexplicably has been given every important title in Dodger Stadium save for head groundskeeper — have made a mess of things, public relations wise. They have held such a tight grip on the franchise’s purse strings they deserve the nickname, “The Boston Stranglers.”
![]()
|
| Add Baseball headlines to your news reader: |
Top NBCSports.com stories |
