Where Izzy?

And Dodger fans think I’m negative.

What do you get when you combine the league’s largest attendance with the league’s best shortstop?

Cesar Izturis in sixth place in the All-Star balloting.

What do you get when you combine some of the league’s most blindly loyal followers with one of its most blindingly skilled players?

Cesar Izturis receiving fewer votes than a guy who can’t catch, a guy who can’t hit and a guy who hasn’t walked normally for more than a month.

Something is wrong here, Dodger fans.

Hint: It could be you.

The Dodgers might have committed more errors than all but four other National League teams, but the biggest blunder of the season thus far has occurred outside their reach.

In the first update of All-Star voting conducted in stadiums and online, Cesar Izturis’ name has been bobbled, booted and flat-out butchered.

He leads the major leagues in hits, multi-hit games and hitting in close and late situations.

He ranks fourth in the league in batting and, surely, first in routinely spectacular fielding.

And yet he’s not even in the top five in punches and clicks.

“I’m shocked,” Izturis said.

The leader is the injured Nomar Garciaparra, who has spent as much time at shortstop this season as Mia Hamm.

“Is Garciaparra even playing?” Izturis said.

Second is David Eckstein, great guy with 16 fewer hits and a range of 16 fewer steps.

“It’s a shame,” Dodger Manager Jim Tracy said, speaking of the entire process. “It’s just a shame.”

Rafael Furcal, Jose Reyes and Clint Barmes are third, fourth and fifth, respectively.

Furcal is batting .229, Reyes has 14 fewer hits and Barmes has made twice as many errors.

“Whoever is overlooking Izturis is making a huge mistake,” Ned Yost, the Milwaukee Brewer manager, said before Friday’s game against the Dodgers. “The guy is top notch, as good as they get. But every year in these things, somebody gets overlooked, and this year it’s him.”

Maybe somebody gets overlooked in other towns, but not here.

Dodger fans are known for taking care of their own.

In 1980, Davey Lopes was batting .236 at the All-Star break, yet, because the game was in Dodger Stadium, he was the leading vote-getter.

In 1991, Darryl Strawberry was batting .229 at the All-Star break, but because he was this town’s new toy, he was a starter in the outfield.

On the strength of Dodger Nation alone, Izturis should be the All-Star starter.

Just look at St. Louis, where a smaller population area has thus far voted Cardinals into the top four in every infield position and catcher, plus two of the top four spots in the outfield.

They say St. Louis is the league’s best baseball town. So far this year, Los Angeles is close.

You would think that Izturis would give them plenty of reason to act like it.

He arrived here before the 2002 season in what may end up being one of the best trades in Dodger history -- Izturis and Paul Quantrill from the Toronto Blue Jays for Luke Prokopec and Chad Ricketts.

Dan Evans found him, Jim Tracy backed him, Tim Wallach and Manny Mota worked with him, and fans seemingly fell in love with him.

His lunging stops are ballet.

His sliding stops are ballroom.

He used to be a horrible switch-hitter. In one year, he improved 51 points from the left side.

He used to connect with all the force of a spitball out of a straw. He added five pounds of muscle this winter and now his bat is one of the loudest in the joint.

“He’s as good as any shortstop I’ve ever played with,” said Jeff Kent, who played with Omar Vizquel. “He has this calmness about him. He does all these great things with such ... patience.”

Kent leads all second basemen in balloting, but that’s as much about his play in Houston and San Francisco as his two months here.

Izturis is all L.A., all the time, even becoming a pregame attraction last year when he and Alex Cora would practice acrobatic double-play moves.

He is the perfect Dodger at the perfect time.

And he’s not even as worthy as Clint

Whatshisname?

“Maybe it’s all about the East Coast,” Izturis said. “Maybe they don’t see us out here. When we play, maybe fans are asleep.”

But this monster known as “the East Coast” didn’t keep Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart from winning the Heisman.

And “the East Coast” didn’t stop Eric Gagne from winning the Cy Young Award.

There is regional bias in all things sporting, certainly, but with 88% of the balloting being done online, Dodger fans of all sort have every chance to be heard.

Their silence is a strange as it is deafening.

“What are people watching?” one veteran scout asked. “He’s the best in the league, period.”

Maybe it’s because the last time fans voted one of their own into an All-Star starting position, in 1997, Mike Piazza was traded a year later, and they don’t want to fall in love and get burned again.

“But I just don’t see how in the heck you can keep Izzy off the ballot,” Tracy said.

Maybe it’s because fans still have trouble imagining Izturis without Cora.

“I miss him too, I just talked to him on the phone today,” Izturis said. “But it’s a business, you have to move on.”

Or maybe it’s because those Dodger fans, after years of cheering for one of baseball’s showpieces, have started taking their team’s popularity for granted.

Maybe they think that because they pack the stadium every night and cheer like heck for Izturis, everyone in the country surely understands their passion and his gifts.

Maybe this will make them realize, they’re wrong.

To many in the country, the Dodgers are the Seattle Mariners South. To many, Cesar Izturis is a nothing more than a nice little shortstop hidden in a ravine.

The voting ends June 30. You can either vote at the stadium or online, 25 votes per e-mail address.

Those participating might consider what Frank McCourt said when he bought the place, that

the Dodger brand has suffered and needs to be rebuilt.

From the groundswell up.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Short people

National League All-Star voting for shortstops (through May 31) and how the Dodgers’ Cesar Izturis stacks up statistically:

*--* PLAYER TEAM GMS AVG. HR RBI R FLD% VOTES 1. Nomar Garciaparra Chicago 14 157 0 4 6 966 235,899 2. David Eckstein St. Louis 52 300 2 15 29 966 212,209 3. Rafael Furcal Atlanta 52 229 3 21 27 962 212,160 4. Jose Reyes New York 54 278 3 21 29 963 189,929 5. Clint Barmes Colorado 52 330 7 33 38 951 183,338 PLAYER TEAM GMS AVG. HR RBI R FLD% VOTES 6. Cesar Izturis Dodgers 54 332 1 20 34 977 NA

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Source: Major League Baseball