Go ... go ... go ...

A Kurt Streeter column in Monday’s L.A. Times tried to make the case for Maury Wills to get into the baseball Hall of Fame. Wills, the spark plug of the Dodgers teams of the early ’60s, was a career .281 hitter but his renown came from his 586 stolen bases — especially the then-record 104 he swiped in 1962.

With all due respect Streeter’s argument, I don’t think Wills had a Hall-of-Fame career.

That being said, I grew up in L.A. in the ’60s, saw my first major league game in 1963, and I can tell you, nothing was more exciting for a young fan than the sight of Wills on first base.

Throw after throw from the pitcher trying to hold Wills close to the base, while 50,000 people chanted “Go! … Go! … Go!” (on their own — no electronic prompting needed). Finally a pitch, a dash to second, a safe sign and a roar.

Sandy Koufax and Wills were the heart of the early-60s Dodger teams.

As Streeter notes, Wills had a tough time post-career, flopping as a manager in Seattle and battling addiction — along with the bitterness of feeling he was dissed by baseball by being left out of the Hall of Fame and dissed by the Dodgers by not having his No. 30 retired.

Streeter says Wills at 75 — is that possible? — is wiser and happier now. I hope so. On his Hall-of-Fame credentials, Steeter and I disagree. But we can agree on this: To Dodgers fans in the early '60s, he was something very special.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/dodgers/la-sp-streeter18-2008aug18,0,7674790.column

Getting what they deserve

An Associated Press account of Manny Ramirez’s third game as a Dodger included the following information: “Ramirez ran out a grounder behind third base at full speed.”

The AP reporter deemed it worthy of note that Ramirez had hustled on a play — something that Derek Jeter, for one, has done on every grounder or flyball he’s ever hit in his career.

For this modicum of caring, Ramirez was cheered by the Los Angeles crowd, which might seem a bit excessive. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
For that matter, so is truth.

In the last weeks of Ramirez’s tenure in Boston, anyone with eyes could see that Manny — wanting out of a contract that paid him a paltry $20 million a year — had turned Red Sox saboteur, not running out ground balls, not bothering to swing in a key at-bat against the Yankees, pulling himself out of the lineup with phantom injuries.

Not only had his manager and longtime protector, Terry Francona, turned against him, so had his fellow players.

“When you quit on your team, that’s the worst thing you can do,” one Red Sox player said. “He had to go after that.” Another called Ramirez’s actions “a disgrace.”

Yet his new manager, smilin’ Joe Torre, said, “Over the years I have never heard anything negative about him from his teammates. That’s usually a particularly good sign.”

On the other hand, slapping a teammate in the dugout — as Ramirez did recently to Kevin Youklis — or in a fit of pique knocking over a 64-year-old traveling secretary — as he did to Jack McCormick — isn’t a particularly good sign.

But as Ramirez is hitting .467 with five home runs in 12 games, everyone bleeding Dodger blue is happy to drink the Kool-Aid.

Turn to the West, cup your hears and you can probably hear the Dodger Stadium chant: Manny is a team player. Manny plays hard. Manny is misunderstood.

On his way out of Boston, Ramirez said the Red Sox didn’t deserve him. He was dead wrong. The Red Sox covered and made excuses for their petulant hitting star for years, and when he turned on them, they deserved him, all right.

And when it turns ugly in L.A., his new enablers, the Dodgers, will have richly deserved him as well.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.