Everyone needed a break
Manager Joe Torre's record for the first half of the season is a mixed bag.
The good: If you look close enough, you'll spot a faint halo over Torre's cap that intimidates The Times' piranhas (er, scribes). He handles pitchers well, plays "little ball" and surrounds himself with good baseball people.
The bad: Changes course about as fast as an aircraft carrier. For example, popular Blake DeWitt stopped hitting over a month ago, yet Torre refuses to play potential slugger Andy LaRoche at third.
The ugly: Everyone in the stands, everyone in baseball, everyone on the planet knows Andruw Jones is finished. He can't hit the fastball, he can't hit the curve . . . he can't hit. Yet Torre not only plays him every day, he bats him smack dab in the middle of the order, even the day after poor Andruw struck out five times.
Let's hope the All-Star break gives Joe a chance to mend his ways.
Skip Usen
Santa Monica
Ross Newhan asserts that the Dodgers are continually mediocre because they no longer emphasize pitching, speed and defense as outlined in "The Dodger Way to Play Baseball," yet as I write this the Dodgers have given up the fewest runs of any National League team and rank second in the NL in stolen bases and are still under .500. The real reasons for the Dodgers' current malaise are their far-below-average on-base percentage and almost total lack of power.
What the Dodgers need more than anything else is for Andruw Jones or Matt Kemp or Nomar or somebody to start hitting the ball out of the park, not the same old cliches about "pitching, speed and defense."
Andy Goodstein
Los Angeles
Fred Claire was the first Dodgers general manager who wasn't a real baseball man who learned his craft on the field. He was a sportswriter and Peter O'Malley's pal. Those were not Branch Rickey's qualifications for the job.
Claire immediately won the Series in '88 with Al Campanis' team and a great trade with Oakland (Alfredo Griffin, Jay Howell) and it made him look like a genius, but it's the last championship the Dodgers won. If the Bums don't make the World Series this October they will equal the record for Dodgers futility that goes back to the drought of 1921-40 in Brooklyn, 20 years without an appearance in the Fall Classic.
As for Tommy Lasorda, he's the guy who said Pedro Martinez was too small to start and John Wetteland couldn't close on Broadway.
