The Los Angeles Dodgers and Grady Little: Was He Treated Fairly?

The baseball off-season is an unpredictable time. There are hirings, firings, and multiple blockbuster trades. No story is bigger this young offseason than the Joe Torre saga. On Thursday, November 1, Joe Torre signed on as the new manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. This happened just two days after former manager Grady Little resigned and about two weeks after Torre decided not to accept the Yankees’ offer. I decided to search the blogosphere this week about the controversial “resignation” of Grady Little and the hiring Torre (pictured right). The blog Blue Notes-A Dodger Blog contained a post called “Changes at the Skip,” by Andrew and Brian Kamenetzky, who are the hosts of this blog through the Los Angeles Times and are contributing writers to ESPN. The post discusses the “resignation” of Grady Little and the Dodgers team next season. The second blog, entitled ESPN the Magazine Insider Blog by Buster Olney contains a post entitled “Dodgers Left Little Twisting in the Wind,” which chronicles how the Dodgers treated manager Grady Little during his resignation. The controversy surrounding this past week’s events in Los Angeles led me to comment on these posts.

Comment on “Changes at the Skip” Post

I agree that it appears as though Grady Little was treated poorly in his so-called “resignation” from the Dodgers. It seems as though he was forced out because two days later they hired Joe Torre. If Little really left on his own accord, wouldn’t it have taken the Dodgers longer to find their new manager? Right away the Dodgers were cleared by MLB from having to interview minority candidates, and it is not entirely believable that this was because they already have enough minorities in high ranking front office positions. Instead, it seems as though the Dodgers were just trying bypass this tedious part of MLB’s interviewing process, because they already had Joe Torre. I support the statement that this occurrence “doesn’t do Little particularly right, nor the front office particularly honorable.” Grady Little is classy, and he would never do anything that would show disrespect to the Dodgers organization, and this is why he says that the choice to leave was his. However, he first said that the choice to leave was “mutual” between him and the Dodgers. If it was indeed mutual, which is how he put it first off, before switching to it being his desire, paints the picture that the Dodgers also wanted him to leave. This is not the way General Manager Ned Colletti has been describing it, putting the entire onus on Little, who still had one more year left on his contract. The numbers have not been released, but Little, who led the Dodgers to the playoffs in 2006, hopefully got compensated well for this “mutual resignation.”

Comment on “Dodgers Left Little Twisting in the Wind” Post

Now that the dust has settled and the Dodgers have officially introduced Joe Torre as their manager, it makes the injustices that Grady Little seemed to have endured in his exit even more apparent. The fact that just two days after Grady resigned, the Dodgers hired Torre makes it clear that they had obviously been talking to possible managerial candidates before their current skipper left. That is incredibly disrespectful towards Little, and I agree with the comment by Steve Dilbeck in that “Little’s indifference may have pushed him out the door.” Grady Little (pictured left) was not going to campaign to change the minds of the Dodgers once they had their sights set on Torre. However, the Dodgers were in denial from the beginning that any managerial changes were in the works, which made it appear even more as if Little was treated poorly. The fact that Dodgers spokesperson Camille Johnston kept insisting that Little was indeed the Dodgers’ manager, despite the fact that talks were obviously happening with other candidates makes the team appear dishonest. Also, the fact that neither General Manager Grady Little nor owner Frank McCourt returned phone calls about the issue makes the team look guiltier because they did not tell their side of the story. Apparently Grady Little was also not kept in the loop by management because his friends say that he had “no clue in recent days about what the Dodgers plans were, and he was left twisting in the wind, waiting for someone to tell him something.” The idea that the Dodgers left their own manager in the dark about his future is incredibly unprofessional. Overall, it seems as though the Dodgers may need to do some clean-up in terms of their image after the occurrences of last week because, yes, now they do have the man they want in Joe Torre, but the way that they handled Grady Little leaves a lot to be desired.