Frankly, Team’s Quite Offensive

Tom Lasorda needs more advice on running the Dodgers the way he needs a scoop of hot fudge in his Ultra Slim Fast.

Nevertheless, the look on the manager’s face in the Dodger dugout the other day was the look of a man totally fed up.

Tuesday night’s getaway-night giveaway at Atlanta was simply the latest horror story for Team Tom.

After his team turned a series at Cincinnati into all the material Mel Allen needed for next week’s episode of “Baseball’s Blunders and Bloopers,� Lasorda didn’t even want to leave the dugout. He lingered there until it was practically time for the bus to leave for the airport.

Next day, Lasorda called a mandatory practice--on a game day. He hardly ever does that. And, considering the number of players on this team older than 30, practice is the last thing Lasorda would think they would need.

Same goes for motivation, but that didn’t prevent the Tomster from preaching to his players about the importance of professionalism. About taking pride in one’s work. About maintaining mental and physical concentration.

It was sound advice, considering the way some of the Dodgers’ bodies were on the diamond while their heads were still in their on-deck circles, if you get the drift.

We were treated, among other things, to Kal Daniels nonchalanting a fly to left field, Jose Offerman using his legs for a croquet wicket and Juan Samuel pulling the old “I got it!� “No, I got it!� with Offerman on an infield pop.

We heard one explanation that Samuel said something in Espanol that sounded like something else in English, which, translated any way you like it, still scores the Dodgers an E for effort.

We saw Brett Butler and Daniels, outfielders, make two errors apiece in consecutive games. Daniels, we can understand; he couldn’t catch a beach ball if he grew a third arm. But the day Butler makes two errors is the day the Dodgers had better start threatening Rawlings and Mizuno with lawsuits.

As though this team hadn’t had enough on its collective mind, there was the complaint lodged by relief pitcher Tim Crews after an 11-1 embarrassment on national TV.

(Tim Crews is not to be confused with Tom Cruise, although both have given us hits “Far and Away.�)

After permitting Cincinnati seven runs and nine hits in three innings, with a wild pitch and a walk thrown in for bad measure, at whom was Crews angry? At himself? At the opponents? At the teammates who had so much difficulty catching the ball?

No, he was angry at the official scorer, whose ruling of a batted ball as a hit rather than an error made Cincinnati’s runs earned rather than unearned. Decisions such as this, Crews charged, could cost a pitcher his job, or even his career.

No, giving up seven runs and nine hits in three innings could cost a pitcher his job. Eleven victories in 5 1/2 seasons could cost a pitcher his career.

Yeah, damn those official scorers, anyway. They can kill you in those 10-run losses.

Well, at least Crews didn’t whiff four times in four at-bats, commit two errors in the outfield and then stand in front of the team bench orchestrating the behavior of the crowd.

No, that charming contribution to This Week in Dodger Baseball belonged to maestro Kalvoski Daniels, to whom the club is continually grateful for that .225 batting average and eight RBIs he had amassed by mid-June.

Gosh, makes you want to stuff those All-Star ballot boxes with write-ins, doesn’t he?

Lasorda’s comment on Daniels’ stunt was: “No comment.� Never before in all his verbosity has Lasorda uttered words that spoke such volumes.

Look, the Dodgers are only human and, as such, fallible, but this is no time for them to be adding insults to injuries. They got by on pure hustle for a few weeks after Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis got hurt, but they accomplish nothing by mocking others for their mistakes.

Nobody was responsible for the Dodgers’ 9-8 defeat Tuesday but the Dodgers. Their play was poor enough in itself, but wasting Eric Karros’ heroic ninth-inning home run was sinful. Somebody go look--Lasorda might still be sitting in the dugout, trying to decide what to do next.

Lasorda has been running his own store long enough not to need anybody to tell him where to stack his cans.

One point, though: When the Dodgers won in 1988, they did one thing that they didn’t do in 1986, 1987 and 1989, when they finished in the second division. They put a good defensive team on the field.

These days, the only thing certain Dodgers are defensive about is their reputations.