Dodgers Should Manage Players, Not Their Looks

It was just a little item in the newspaper, on the same day 53,109 people were on their way to Dodger Stadium to see what this year’s Los Angeles Dodgers looked like.

According to the story, a number of Dodger players had called for a meeting with their new manager, Davey Johnson, on the eve of the 1999 baseball season’s opening game, to discuss some of Johnson’s new team rules.

(I nearly wrote that this meeting was held “behind closed doors,” because I know of so many people who have a habit of mentioning meetings that are held behind closed doors, as if meetings are frequently held behind open doors.)

What was this meeting about?

It was about how the team looks.

A few of the Dodger players, particularly a couple of the “veterans”--a veteran apparently being anybody in baseball who isn’t a rookie--did not seem to be thrilled with being given grooming instructions along with their instructions on when to bunt or to steal second base.

The manager reportedly compromised.

“There will be a minimal amount of facial hair allowed. A little more on the mustache,” Johnson was quoted.

“But . . . no earrings and no jewelry.”

Proving, once again, what I have always thought about managers, coaches and many authority figures.

They are power mad.

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Somebody explain to me why, in 1999, a grown man cannot have a grown beard and hit or throw a baseball.

Somebody explain to me why, in 1999, a grown man cannot wear a necklace or an earring and run from home plate to first base.

I am so tired of seeing adults being treated like children, by bullying management figures who continue to believe in some kind of obsolete regimentation and “discipline” that have absolutely nothing to do with an employee’s skills or labors.

Perhaps in a profession that requires carrying a gun, the public might feel more at ease when dealing with an individual who appears, well, for lack of a better word, trustworthy.

But a baseball player?

Dodger players are supposed to be better able to go to the World Series if they use a razor in the morning? Men in their mid-20s and even their late 30s, many of them husbands and parents of children, are threatened with having their paychecks docked or possibly even loss of playing time if they defy a superior’s order on how much hair his mustache can have?

Refresh my memory:

Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals wears a beard, right?

I seem to recall he can hit a baseball.

Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants wears an earring--true or false?

It seems to me he can play OK.

Imagine management making these players pay a fine every day, while they were producing runs for their teammates and packing in customers for their team’s owners, just because of the arbitrary “team rule” enforcement of a man whose job should entail nothing more than playing the players who can play and not playing the players who can’t play.

How would the Dodger manager like it if, before his being hired, the owner of the team, Rupert Murdoch, said he could have and keep the job on one condition--that Johnson agree to tattoo “WATCH FOX TV” on his right cheek and “TED TURNER STINKS” on his left?

Remember, the tattoos wouldn’t make the Dodger manager manage any better. Johnson would simply have to advertise Fox on his face because the boss said it’s a new team rule.

I would love to see what the Dodgers would do if Kevin Brown, a pitcher they owe more than $100 million, suddenly began coming to work with a diamond tiara underneath his Dodger cap.

“Take off that tiara!” Johnson would snap.

“Make me,” Brown could say.

“There are no tiaras in baseball,” the Dodger manager would insist to his player.

“Well, how about a ruby in my bellybutton?” Brown could inquire.

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Randy Johnson, a superstar, a pitcher who opposed the Dodgers on opening day, bears a distinct resemblance to Buffalo Bill. He has shoulder-length hair. But his job is to make batters strike out, not to make fans say: “What a clean-cut man!”

Look, I can’t picture Sandy Koufax with a goatee. I don’t see Jackie Robinson with dreadlocks.

But this is 1999, for pete’s sake.

I suppose Dodger management still remembers Abe Lincoln as “that hairy president.”

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: [email protected]