Letters: Where did the Dodgers go?

The Dodgers have always been a team that succeeded through a team effort, one player picking up the club for a game, another for the next. So as we wave a fond farewell to Mannywood, why not, next season, welcome fans to Scottsdale in left, Mattstown in center and Ethier Heights in right? Or Loneyville down the first base line and Blake’s Corner along the third?

Marvin J. Wolf

Mar Vista Heights

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With apologies to Abbott and Costello, here’s the new Dodgers lineup:

Who’s on first; What’s on second; I don’t know’s on third; Why is in left field. Because is in center field. Tomorrow is pitching. Today is catching.

Frankly, I don’t care.

Oh, that’s our shortstop!

Joel Rapp

Los Angeles

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Two weekends ago, Dodger Stadium hosted its first swap meet.

Then at the trading deadline the Dodgers went out looking and brought back a spare tire, a retread, and other knickknacks.

Hope they made enough from the swap meet to afford the new players.

John Hendry

Van Nuys

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Yet again the Dodgers lose a run crossing home plate after another player is tagged out for the third out. Time after agonizing time the Dodgers have runners thrown out at third.

Any Little Leaguer knows this basic baserunning rule: Don’t make the first or third out at third base.

I guess the current crop of young Dodgers never played Little League or high school baseball. Kemp, Martin and Loney have repeatedly made these egregious baserunning gaffes.

I hereby volunteer to become the Dodgers’ baserunning coach. They sorely need one.

Jeff Drobman

Malibu

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Enjoyed T.J. Simers article about Larry Bowa, the only Dodger to apparently give a darn. I’ve already given up on Kemp, Loney, Blake and Martin, and just wish Ned Colletti had traded them all before the deadline. If Joe Torre would stop playing Mr. Nice and rip into his players more often, we might see a brief turnaround this year.

Roy Reel

Culver City

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Judging by the look of complete lack of interest on his face and his total disconnect from the team, Joe Torre has already given the Dodgers the answer about his future. He has checked out and the team has sensed it, there is no fire in the dugout and the players look defeated. Torre lost his passion in New York and a three-year vacation in Los Angeles has not helped.

Ed Yassa

Downey

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As we watched the Dodgers get swept by the Giants, you start to think about how the team and organization are not doing as well as expected. Then you see the Giant fans acting as if they won the World Series, waving brooms to celebrate the “sweep” as July turns to August!

When you see a Giants fan, ask them when they last won a World Series. And what city did they call home when they won? Answer: It was the year I was born, and I’m old!

Randy Elkins

Camarillo

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There’s no way Arizona catches us now. We’ve got fourth place locked up.

Patrick Drohan

Monrovia

For Pete’s sake

Bill Dwyre, two problems with your July 31 column on Pete Carroll:

1. Hoping that Coach Carroll is a “first and foremost a teacher.” Like 99% of everyone in sports at this level these days, Coach Carroll puts himself first and foremost. That doesn’t make him a bad guy, just common.

2. Mentioning Coach Wooden in the same paragraph and Pete Carroll.

Jeff Heister

Chatsworth

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Bill Dwyre delivers a perfect psychological profile of Pete Carroll: darting eyes ... fast talking ... always smiling ... impossible to dislike. These are the classic traits of a confidence artist. The only problem is Dwyre’s plan — Carroll would have never stayed at USC because that would have wasted the perfect con.

Rhys Thomas

Valley Glen

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It was Vince Lombardi who said that sports don’t build character, they reveal character.

Pete Carroll is a vivid example. Unfortunately, so is his successor.

And both reveal the hubris of the man who hired them.

Kip Dellinger

Santa Monica

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By doing what he did, Pete Carroll taught his students the exact lesson the rest of us have been learning from the politicians and from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America and Countrywide, etc., etc.

You can skirt the law, be successful, then fail stunningly, and still get millions of dollars in profits.

While the regular folks — the taxpayers, “Main Street,” and in USC’s case, the university community and the fans — get stuck with the bill.

“Failing upward.” That’s the way America seems to be working these days ….

It does not bode well for our future.

Daniel Fink

Los Angeles

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Who does Pete Carroll [“No looking back,” Aug. 6] think he is fooling saying that he “had no idea this would happen” in regard to the sanctions that the NCAA has levied against the USC athletic department after his convenient departure to the NFL? He then has the nerve to express anger toward the NCAA and accuse the NCAA of being “punitive rather than proactive.” Maybe if the organization he was running while at USC was more proactive, major rules would not have been broken leading to this whole mess.

James Angotti

Huntington Beach

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I get it now. The reason Pete Carroll didn’t know about the cheating is “because they didn’t want us to know.” So the lesson to be learned here is to recruit a better class of cheater, the kind that tells you they are cheating.

Bert Bergen

La Canada

Fighting on

How in the world can Chris Dufresne actually write that the USC Trojans “are in the mix for their third Associated Press title since 2002.”

Have you looked at their nonleague games? Hawai’i, Minnesota and Virginia will more likely make Steve Harvey’s Bottom Ten, and Notre Dame is coming off a .500 season with a new coach and QB. There are teams in the SEC who will play real top 20 teams weekly.

The Times has truly morphed into the Daily Trojan. To quote “Blazing Saddles”: “What in the wild, wild world of sports is a going on here?”

Gary J. Grayson

Ventura

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If T.J. Simers likes Lane Kiffin so much, the new Emperor of Exposition Blvd. must be even worse than we’ve heard. Go Bruins.

Shel Willens

Los Angeles

Big Leprechaun

Sadly, Shaquille O’Neal’s “most dominant” guise, like Shaq himself, always has been a figment of his own imagination. Now, in the last glimmering moments of a career that might have been truly dominant in the mold of Abdul-Jabbar, Chamberlain, Russell and a short list of other more dominant centers than he from the ‘60s and ‘70s, he is, plain and simple, a has-been trying to hold onto a dream that he might fill up the fingers of one hand with rings. It won’t happen.

He’s wrong that the Celtics are his best bet to do it. The Lakers are. But he burned too many bridges with Jerry Buss to rejoin Kobe, Phil & Co. for a shot at immortality. As a result, he will ultimately go down as a guy who could have measured up to the true greats of the game, but whose self-image proved to be his downfall, as it was bigger than his desire, drive and perhaps, even his talent.

Tony Crale

Whittier

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To quote Ving Rhames from “Pulp Fiction,” Shaquille O’Neal “has lost all of his L.A privileges.”

Greg Nersesyan

North Hollywood

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