Idiots Write About Sports

Upon hearing the news that the Dodgers hired Grady Little as their new manager, I took it upon myself to get my hands on a draft of Bill Plaschke’s inevitable reaction column before it hit the streets. Here it is, obtained at great personal risk and not insignificant expense:

This Grady Is a Grade-A
—-
By Bill Plaschke

Look into his eyes, and you can see a baseball diamond. Stare at his face, and you can practically see foul lines stretching from the smile lines around his mouth.

Listen to him talk, and you could swear it was Nancy Bea Heafley on the Dodger Stadium organ, pounding out a rousing rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Smell him — go on, smell him — and you smell a crisp fall night brimming with championship baseball.

Baseball — that’s what you see, hear, and smell when you see, hear, and smell Grady Little. And the sight, sound, and smell of him putting on that Dodger Blue uniform means that baseball is coming back to Chavez Ravine.

Baseball, and not that awful game of Pong Paul DePodesta and his computer-toting band of nerds made us watch these past two seasons.

Give Ned Colletti credit and Frank McCourt credit. McCourt said he wanted to bring a Dodger back to manage his ballclub.

He brought in a man who has seen several games at Dodger Stadium.

Colletti said he wanted to hire a manager with big league experience.

He hired a manager with two seasons of experience — nearly a third as much as DePodesta’s uninspired first choice, Terry Collins.

But, most of all, give Ned Colletti and Frank McCourt credit for this — they are not Paul DePodesta.

Who is a nerd.

Grady Little knows all about the dangers of nerds. He had managed the Boston Red Sox to two winning seasons. He had done everything management asked him to do.

But he was run out of town by a bunch of number-crunching bean-counters who had never played this game, all because he didn’t follow their computer-generated plans.

They had numbers saying that Pedro Martinez couldn’t be trusted after 100 pitches. Grady Little had his gut.

Did his gut mislead him? Absolutely.

But did he lose the way a Baseball Man should, using the wisdom you get from years spent on a diamond and not in a computer lab? You betcha.

And now he’s going to use that gut of his to deliver something to Los Angeles that the eggheads in Boston have never enjoyed — a World Series. Except for 2004. Which they won largely by using philosophies that I routinely rail against. Which I shouldn’t mention since it kind of makes me look like a know-nothing boob.

So forget I did.

The Dodgers will benefit from Grady Little’s gut. And his heart. And his spleen. And his gall bladder. And he’ll use those tools — plus a little thing called baseball smarts — to figure out a problem too complex for computer-using nerds to solve: how to restore the glory of Dodger Blue.

That’s a glory that includes a Dusty and a Reggie and a Tommy.

And now a Grady.

You see a Paul in that bunch? I don’t think so.

Listen to how Tommy Lasorda, the last great Dodger manager, describes his successor.

“Grady?” baseball’s greatest ambassador said Tuesday when he heard of the hire. “I love him. I never understood why Fred Sanford thought he was so lazy.”

Listen to what Jeff Kent, the most beloved man to ever play second base for the Dodgers, said when asked what he thought of his new skipper.

“Get out of my goddamn way, Plaschke,” he said.

Which is his way of saying that “Character is important.” And Grady Little understands that character is something you find on winning ball clubs, not on a computer screen. Unlike someone I could mention.

All right — his name is “Paul DePodesta.”

Will the Dodgers struggle under Little at first? Possibly.

Does he have a mess of a roster thrown together by you-know-who dragging him down? Indubitably.

But can Dodger fans finally head out to the most beautiful ballpark in the most vibrant city in the country finally enjoy the winning tradition that they have come to expect after so many sunny summer days in that beautiful ballpark in that vibrant city?

Um… what was the question again?

The point is, you don’t have to like the decision to hire Grady Little. You don’t have to like the direction Frank McCourt is taking the team. You don’t have to believe in Ned Colletti and his old school ways.

But you must hate Paul DePodesta. I command it!

From a little man to a Little man, the Dodgers have turned a corner. This Grady choice is a great-y choice.

Brilliant!

Ha, beautiful. Now, without looking, which came from the fake article and which came from Plaschke's real article?

"There was an ex-manager out there who was fired because he trusted instinct over statistic. Going with his gut, his gut failed him, as he left a tiring Pedro Martinez on the mound to face the New York Yankees in the eighth inning with a 5-2 lead."

or...

"They had numbers saying that Pedro Martinez couldn’t be trusted after 100 pitches. Grady Little had his gut."

Oh, I know, Hotblack -- the similarities are very disturbing to me.

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