Picture Getting Clearer With Each Losing Day and Don Mattingly Needs to Go

David Blumenkrantz Tim Wallach
You don't need me hurling the "nice guys finish last" cliché anywhere near this post, but it's utterly unavoidable after the latest series of Dodger disappointments and I just can't help it. So apologies all around.
Yes, Don Mattingly is a good guy, ostensibly supported "to a man" in the clubhouse and universally loved in at least one major American city. He was a fine ballplayer. A great player, in fact.
The Dodger leader is also an unremarkable man, of above average intelligence and little imagination, who got his job primarily because of the insistence of his predecessor and the disinterest of the man writing the checks. Joe Torre had trained Mattingly in his image and wanted his promotion to skipper assured, while Frank McCourt was too busy with other problems to make a fuss. The outgoing "steward" didn't care a lick, actually, and the new thoroughly-more-together owners weren't going to charge in with a prominent firing right out of the gate.






























