USA TODAY International Edition
Dodgers’ Series drought, explained
As World Series droughts go, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 29-year absence hasn’t inspired the lore or engendered sympathy like other franchises’ misfortune.
There’s no clear line of demarcation featuring a billy goat or an interfering fan. Then again, the Chicago Cubs never traded Ernie Banks, either.
Nonetheless, when Game 1 arrives Tuesday at Dodger Stadium, that will end the longest World Series drought in franchise history — yes, even surpassing the 26 years between the 1890 Brooklyn Bridegrooms and 1916 Brooklyn Robins.
A look at the low points, plot twists and baseball wounds — often self-inflicted — that kept one of baseball’s flagship franchises off its biggest stage.
THE HANGOVER
Those 1988 Dodgers of Kirk Gibson, Orel Hershiser and little else seemed like something of a baseball miracle, slaying the star-studded New York Mets and mighty Oakland Athletics. Going back-toback? Heck, even Hershiser foresaw what was coming in accepting his Cy Young Award over the winter. “It’s hard to repeat, just period, because of injuries,” Hershiser said. “I wouldn’t predict us to repeat.”
Hershiser’s physical downfall wouldn’t come until years later, but the club’s regression dogged him: He nearly matched his epic 1988 season: 256 innings and a 2.31 ERA (compared to 2.26 and 267) but that got him a 15-15 record, instead of 23-8. Gibson’s leg injuries were real: He played in 71 games and hit nine homers, one year after hitting 25 in his MVP season. At 82-78, the Dodgers missed the playoffs, but surely it’d be just a speed bump. Right?
1992
That which went sour in ’89 bottomed out in 1992. The Dodgers’ 63-99 campaign remains their worst by winning percentage since 1912. Rookie Eric Karros’ 20 home runs led the club. Hometown star Darryl Strawberry’s production dropped from 28 homers and 99 RBI in 1991 to five and 25 in 43 games; he wouldn’t play 100 games again until 1998, with the New York Yankees.
The L.A. riots in April and May provided a grim backdrop for the city, diverting eyes from the terrible team rather than the team providing a diversion from reality. They finished 35 games behind the Atlanta Braves, rendering almost invisible a meaningless September home run, the first hit by a catching prospect named Mike Piazza.
FOX AND PIAZZA
Ah, Piazza. His franchise-record 35 home runs in 1993 gave him rock-star status in L.A., and as the second in a chain of five consecutive NL Rookie of the Year honorees, he allowed Dodgers fans to believe they’d returned to the halcyon days of the 1970s and early ’80s.
But in March 1998, Peter O’Malley ended nearly a half-century of family ownership when he sold the Dodgers to Fox for a baseball-record $311 million. Meanwhile, Piazza ventured into his walk year with a prodigious .334 career average, .974 OPS and, at 28, 168 career home runs.
Surely Fox, which negotiated billion-dollar deals with regularity, couldn’t mess up a simple $100 million extension, right? Um.
“I’m not going to lie and say I’m not concerned about this, that I’m not confused and disappointed by the whole thing, because I am,” Piazza told the Los Angeles Times on opening day, some three weeks after Fox gained control of the club. “I’m mad that this has dragged into the season. I’m not going to use this as an excuse if things aren’t going well. But how can I not think about this?”
Two months later, a Hall of Fame talent was gone in a blockbuster
deal brokered by TV execs, not baseball people. Despite lavish spending, the Dodgers never made the playoffs under Fox. And Piazza walked right into Cooperstown — wearing a Mets hat.
BOSTON WRONG
The Piazza deal marked an abrupt shift to corporate ownership, and a group whose primary purpose for buying the Dodgers was to lock down long-term TV rights. Come 2004, Fox wanted out, and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig jumped at the chance to mollify one of baseball’s crucial corporate partners.
Enter Frank McCourt — a Bostonian
deemed too cash-poor to seriously bid on the Red Sox and Angels but next man up when the Dodgers came on the market. MLB OK’d the heavily-leveraged sale to McCourt, who claimed he’d remake the Dodgers into a modern juggernaut via newfangled analytics, and hired Moneyball protagonist Paul DePodesta as his general manager a year later.
The Dodgers would make the playoffs four times under McCourt, but he and wife Jamie eventually became what L.A. thought they were — grifting tourists who enriched themselves off the club — and then left the franchise bankrupt amid a tabloid-caliber divorce.
A cliché even seasoned Angelenos couldn’t believe — the couple bought $74 million worth of homes and spent $10,000 a month on a hairstylist — left the Dodger Stadium seats empty and the major league product lagging far behind the hated Giants to the north. After a year spent in MLB foster care after Selig seized the club, the sale to hedge fund bro Mark Walter seemed a relief.
MATT STAIRS
OK, so there was some baseball played in the McCourt era, and in 2008, the Dodgers nearly made the World Series — until a 40year-old with a beer-league swing interceded.
They were five outs from tying the NLCS at 2-2 when the Philadelphia Phillies’ Shane Victorino ripped a two-run, Game 4-tying home run. Two batters later, it was Matt Stairs driving the dagger, a two-run shot off closer Jonathan Broxton.
Not that they could see this coming.
“I’m not going to lie . ... I try to hit home runs and that’s it,” Stairs said in an epic news conference after his mammoth blast well up the Dodger Stadium bleachers.
THE MATTINGLY YEARS
This year’s club won its fifth consecutive division title, three of those under manager Don Mattingly, who thanklessly shepherded the club through the end of the McCourt era and into a brighter future.
But his October work was not stellar, as on more than one occasion he let ace Clayton Kershaw to die on the vine as he tired, like a manager trying to send a message to the front office that the bullpen provided was insufficient. That’s a move better left for April, of course.
Gifted a 1-2 starting punch of Kershaw and Zack Greinke, Mattingly’s Dodgers lost three of four postseason series, leading to an awkward exit in 2015 and the dawn of the Dave Roberts era.