The point is not that the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend finally fired Paul DePodesta, a young and personable fellow who was in way over his head as both a general manager and public face of the organization.
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| Signing Derek Lowe was one of the few decent moves by Paul DePodesta. (Getty Images) |
Did the Dodgers lose more games in the past month? Did DePodesta fail to consummate a trade or land a key free agent?
If he wasn't the Dodgers' man, then why did the club waste an entire month of planning for 2006 by failing to make this decision immediately after the '05 season ended?
The point is, while there can be no doubt DePodesta drove this franchise straight into the ditch, it's owner Frank McCourt who handed the keys to a young and previously unlicensed driver.
And it's McCourt, who is in way over his head as both an owner and a trustee for what once was one of baseball's jewel franchises, who remains as puppet-master.
If, on Halloween, we could lift a metaphor from the crypt -- and we saw Tommy Lasorda while we were down there, bending McCourt's ear -- the Dodgers have long since passed from the spooky to the creepy to the gory.
It was less than a month ago that McCourt publicly sided with DePodesta in his showdown with manager Jim Tracy.
Since then, under DePodesta's watch, the Dodgers have interviewed as managerial candidates Terry Collins (director of the Dodgers farm system), Alan Trammell (fired Detroit manager), Jerry Royster (manager of the Dodgers' Triple-A Las Vegas team), Torey Lovullo (manager of Cleveland's Double-A Akron club) and Ron Wotus (San Francisco bench coach).
Also under DePodesta's watch, the Dodgers conducted their annual three-day organizational meetings -- an exhaustive, end-of-the-season review and planning session each club holds to analyze and update scouting reports on every player in its system and determine what moves the franchise should make over the winter.
What a thorough and staggering waste of everybody's time over these past few weeks.
Because as things turn out, whoever the Dodgers hire as GM now will need to spend time reviewing everything the club just did in its organizational meetings.
Because all of those hours spent interviewing managerial candidates were about as productive for both sides -- the club and the poor fellows who wasted their time flying or driving to Los Angeles -- as a hamster running on its tiny wheel.
