Same Old Story: We Blew It Out of Proportion

On the brink of dissension or collapse, the Dodgers capped off one of their longest weeks in years by mending fences before their game Thursday and saving face during it.

Had they blown a five-run lead and not come back to win this game with the New York Mets, panic could have been just around the corner for a team that is desperately trying to get itself straightened out.

After humiliating a teammate and making a big deal of his being there, the Dodgers accepted that teammate Thursday and accused other people of making too big a deal of it.

Having refused to sit with, speak to or even play catch with someone who could become their starting third baseman during the September pennant race, Dodger players withdrew an appeal to management that Mike Busch be banished, and they promised, in Brett Butler’s words, to “pull for” their teammate “as long as Mike Busch has ‘Dodgers’ on the front of his uniform.”

So ends, at least temporarily, Buschmania.

Listening to Busch be cheered and Butler be booed by their own fans, the Dodgers went to extraordinary lengths to declare a truce, even displaying publicly, on their DiamondVision electronic scoreboard, selected highlights of Thursday’s impromptu news conference, at which players found someone other than themselves to blame.

Butler said, “A lot of it has been done by the press.”

Eric Karros called it: “Sensationalism at its best.”

Dodger fans, very few of whom were born yesterday, were not fooled. They continued to boo Butler as his words reverberated through the park, and later when the starting lineups were introduced. In the dugout, Butler flung a cup of water against a wall.

This entire affair is a direct result of Vice President Fred Claire’s wild miscalculation that Dodger players would place winning ahead of personal grudges.

Claire had restored Butler to the team, in spite of their own disagreements, for the general good of the ballclub. But he soon found that players were unwilling to accept Busch, regardless of how much he might help the club.

Thousands of Dodger fans who had gotten over the strike, who cared only about their team winning, clearly resented certain players who would not do the same.

Mike Piazza said he “never felt it was an issue for public consumption.”

This would be a valid point, provided baseball was played in an empty stadium. But when paying customers and TV cameras follow your every move, and a team’s new player is being called a “scab” and ostracized in full view of everyone, privacy is a luxury the Dodgers never had and never will. People have eyes. People have ears. How these players treated Busch was not an act of anyone’s imagination.

“We’re human. We make mistakes,” Karros said.

Exactly. As did Mike Busch.

Butler’s observation was that the players “felt initially that [Busch] would be a detriment,” but that was yesterday, and yesterday’s gone.

As for Busch, he said he and Butler sat down and “had a good talk.”

All he wanted to do was play baseball. And that he did, pinch-hitting in the sixth inning with the Dodgers leading the Mets, 4-0, and runners on first and second base.

Welcomed for the second night in a row with a standing ovation, Busch ripped a 1-1 pitch to left field off the third baseman’s glove for a single. He was robbed of an RBI, however, when Raul Mondesi was thrown out at home plate.

Upon returning to the dugout, Busch was met with the extended hand of Dave Hansen and a slap on the back from Billy Ashley. He had teammates at last.

Claire was unwise to have brought up Busch in the first place, flipping him into the Dodger midst like a firecracker. He anticipated neither the fragility of team morale nor the hostility of the fans, who want the Dodgers to start winning and stop whining.

Picking on some teammate, that’s sensationalism.

“If you don’t ask us any more questions about it, it will go away,” Karros said.

Fine. You guys lay off him. We’ll lay off you.