Ned Colletti

Was it the best trade Ned Colletti ever made? "I shouldn't be answering that," the Dodgers' general manager said. Certainly the deal for Manny Ramirez was a pretty good one. A minor league pitcher and a bench player for a future Hall of Fame member whose salary was being paid by the other team? Who wouldn't make that deal? Over time, however, that may pale in comparison to the first trade Colletti made as a general manager, the one that made Andre Ethier a Dodger. Come to think of it, it might be a better trade right now. At 27, Ethier is a decade younger than Ramirez.

The Dodgers bolstered their bench for the final stretch of the season and perhaps the postseason by acquiring utility man Ronnie Belliard in a trade with the Washington Nationals in exchange for two minor league players. The Nationals received 22-year-old Class-A pitcher Luis Garcia and a player to be named. Belliard, 34, is expected to be at Dodger Stadium today for the first game of a four-game series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. To be eligible for postseason play, a player must be on his team's 25-man roster by tonight at 9. Players on the disabled list -- the Dodgers have six, including Hiroki Kuroda -- can be replaced by anyone on the club's 40-man roster.

Welcome back, Lakers fans. We rejoin this Dodgers season, already in progress. You haven't missed much, and you're back just in time for what could be a crucial month. The Dodgers are a bad team, in a bad division. They should be buried by now. They're not, thanks to the generous insistence of the Arizona Diamondbacks in turning a one-team race into a five-team race. The National League West is there for the Dodgers' taking. That could be a bad thing.

If Ned Colletti says a third baseman from Cleveland, whom Indians fans didn't particularly like, makes the Dodgers better -- that's good enough for me. The Dodgers wouldn't have him working as general manager, now would they, if he didn't know what he was doing. And based on everything Colletti knows about baseball, he said, "Casey Blake is a solid player." "And did you think Andruw Jones was a solid player?" I wondered. "Yeah," Colletti said. "Did you?" "No," I said, his .

The Dodgers get one of the best hitters in baseball in Manny Ramirez and the Red Sox will still pay his salary, so it really was a no-brainer, which explains why Ned Colletti was able to make the deal. A few days ago, after the Angels finally took some advice and added more power with Mark Teixeira, Page 2 suggested that the Dodgers had become a joke. The Dodgers responded by trading for a clown, Manny being Manny, albeit a show-stopper who entertains like almost no other in baseball.

To those who shake their heads at Ned Colletti while uttering the names of Andruw Jones and Jason Schmidt, the embattled Dodgers general manager can now offer a hearty retort. Manny Ramirez is batting .615 with two homers and five runs batted in three games since the Dodgers acquired him last week from the Boston Red Sox, and Casey Blake is hitting .364 with one homer and two RBIs in nine games since coming over in a trade from Cleveland.

If only for a few minutes, Ned Colletti looked relaxed. The Dodgers' general manager had learned that his team would face the Chicago Cubs in the National League division series. The visiting clubhouse at AT&T Park in San Francisco was clearing out on Sunday, as players rushed out of the showers, dressed quickly and dashed through the back door to the team bus. Colletti wasn't in a hurry.

Ned Colletti will return as the Dodgers' general manager next season, club owner Frank McCourt said Wednesday. McCourt had declined to discuss the issue all season, even after the Dodgers clinched the National League West championship. However, after the Dodgers lost in the National League Championship Series, McCourt said Colletti would be back. The Dodgers won a playoff series for the first time in 20 years, reaching the playoffs for the second time in three years under Colletti.

Ned Colletti normally lives and dies with every ball, strike, bloop and blast during Dodgers games. For three days while the team was in Florida, though, he ducked over to Las Vegas. Keno? Poker? Dice? More like Kemp, Abreu and Brazoban. Colletti didn't get away from baseball. The Dodgers' general manager watched his parent club on television, then went to the ballpark to watch prospects play triple-A games.

Jason Schmidt's busted shoulder is a dud for the Dodgers, but a dream for anyone possessing both calculator and cynicism. Any time a baseball team's highest-paid player finishes his season on an operating table in June, the numbers are as crooked as the scar. Think about it. He made $15.7 million per win. He made $713,815 per strikeout. He made $3,327 per pitch.