WHEN THE DODGERS replaced the Yankees as the team with the highest payroll this year, they also assumed the great expectations that come with spending that kind of money in America’s national pastime.
But a little over a month into the season, the only thing that Dodgers and the Yankees have in common is an abnormal rash of injuries to stars that have put too any multi-million-dollar players on the Disabled List.
Playing with subs and journeyman players, though, the Yankees are in first place in their America League division. The Dodgers, with most of their injured stars back in the lineup, occupy last place in their National League division.
Understandably, fans and sportswriters have begun calling for the firing of Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, once a star with the Yankees but with no real connection to the Los Angeles team and a contract that expires this season.
It is a monumental disappointment. The Dodgers were sold last year for a record $2.2 million, ridding Los Angeles of the previously owner who was widely despised.
Heightening the disillusionment was that the team first celebrated the Jackie Robinson film “42,” and now has been upstaged by that Hollywood motion picture being the only positive thing you can associate with the Dodgers.
The situation is so bad that a leading national writer with Fox even predicts that Mattingly will be sacked as early as this Thursday.
It has raised the subject of who will replace Mattingly, with the usual names popping up, but importantly they are names that reflect on noticeable shortcoming for the times.
None of those names are of Hispanics.
And yet these are Dodgers who hold themselves up as the model for racial inclusion. They are the team that broke baseball’s color barrier with Jackie Robinson in 1947. They are among the first teams that began a widespread recruitment in Latin America, even opening the first baseball camp for that purpose in the Dominican Republic.
But the expected firing of Don Mattingly opens a tremendous opportunity for the Dodgers to make another historic statement in the hiring of a Latino manager.
Ozzie Guillen heads the list of experienced Latino managers who are available. He managed the Miami Marlins last season, and he won a World Series in 2005 with the Chicago White Sox.
Of couse, diehard Latino fans say the Dodgers have perfect Hispanic former player who comes to each game and who would be the ideal Latino Dodger manager.
Former pitching great Fernando Valenzuela, who thrilled Dodger fans with Fernandomania a generation ago, is one of the team’s Spanish-speaking radio announcers.
As such, he is intimately familiar with the team’s players and knows their strengths and limitations. He also has coaching experience, having been he pitching coach for the Mexican national team in the World Baseball Classic.
Earlier this year, passing Fernando in the press box, I asked him the question, though at the time it was completely academic as the season had just begun.
“Ever think about managing?” I asked him in Spanish.
“Vez en cuando,” he said. From time to time.
The Dodgers have their next manager in house, if they’re anywhere as smart as they are rich.
They insist they are staying with Mattingly but for how long?
Fernando has no managing experience. You can hear them saying when that moment does come.
That’s true. But then that’s the same amount that Don Mattingly had when they gave him the job.
Will they discriminate in their thinking in hiring a new manager who is Latino and bleeds real Dodger blue?