Dodgers Feel Urgency, Lack Idiocy

PHILADELPHIA -- Joe Torre met with the Dodgers for 12 minutes Tuesday in the visitors' weight room at Citizens Bank Park in an effort to convince his players they are Idiots.

It may not work. These are not the 2004 Red Sox.

Down 3-1 in the NLCS to the Phillies, the Dodgers will try to become the seventh team to come back from such a deficit in an LCS.

The kings of the comeback were the so-called "Idiots," who in 2004 wiped out the Yankees 3-0 lead in the ALCS -- sending Torre home for the winter.

Torre brought up that collapse in Tuesday's meeting, according to someone who was in the room.

"The only thing I try to do," Torre said later in an interview session, "is try to add perspective from the outside."

He can do that, but he can't transplant the heart of '04 Red Sox into this team.

The best he can do is point to a couple of the Idiots in his clubhouse.

"I don't want to talk about 2004," Manny Ramirez said Tuesday. "That's old."

OK, so don't go to Manny for the Knute Rockne moment.

That left it to Doug Mientkiewicz, not on the Dodgers' active roster but with the team, to make comparisons.

"Everybody expected some magical speech that we got in Boston," Mientkiewicz said. "We didn't really get a magical speech. We were too dumb to realize what we were up against. ... Sometimes knowledge, not having it, is a good thing.

"We were never accused of being very bright in Boston. This group, we've got some youth, we've got some guys that have some swagger."

But it's just not the same.

Who's the Johnny Damon, or David Ortiz, or Curt Schilling that can will the Dodgers to win?

There's not even a Kevin Millar, who would run from teammate to teammate during batting practice before Games 4, 5 and 6 of the 2004 ALCS, saying, "Don't let us win today!"

"We were never accused of being very bright in Boston. This group, we've got some youth, we've got some guys that have some swagger."
-- Doug Mientkiewicz on the difference between the 2009 Dodgers and 2004 Red Sox Meaning: Be careful, because if you open the door a crack, we'll bust it down.

And they did just that.

Who holds the battering ram now?

Ramirez?

"What can you do?," he said of the series standing. "The Phillies are playing better. So what can you do?"

Ramirez admitted Tuesday he didn't see Jimmy Rollins' game-winning hit in Monday's Game 4; having come out for defense, Manny chose a shower over watching the bottom of the ninth on TV.

"I slept like a baby," he said.

Asked if he felt pressure, Ramirez said, "Life is good."

Not exactly, "Don't let us win today!"

OK, so we've established that the Dodgers can't look to their best player to set the tone. And the second-best hitter, Andre Ethier, just kind of goes about his business.

Mientkiewicz pointed to Matt Kemp for swagger and Rafael Furcal for energy but admitted, "I don't think it's humanly possible to duplicate" the attitude of the 2004 Red Sox.

"The heart, the energy of this team is the young players," Ethier said. "And the veterans kind of shape it."

That young core has been tested some. When Ramirez was suspended for 50 games for violating baseball's drug policy, the Dodgers went 29-21 and extended their NL West lead from 6 1/2 games to 7 1/2. And when the lead shrunk to two after an Aug. 25 loss at second-place Colorado, L.A. won the final two games of the series.

"Every question this team's been forced to answer, we've answered," Mientkiewicz said. "We've had a lot of minor setbacks, so to speak, and we've always responded. That's why this group is so confident today."

Monday's loss and a 3-1 deficit in the NLCS -- that's a major setback.

Perhaps we're wrong. Perhaps the only thing keeping the Dodgers from being a World Series is the talented and gutsy club in Philadelphia.


Of the three previous teams that lost back-to-back LCS to the same opponent, two finally broke through -- the 1980 Royals and Phillies, who had been stymied by the Yankees and Dodgers, respectively, in 1977-78.

Then again, that was before the three-round division format.

The last team to lose consecutive LCS (to any opponent) was the 2000-01 Mariners.

No playoff games since then in Seattle.

And while the Dodgers are loaded with young talent, how long will their window stay open? Ramirez seems to be fading, the pitching staff lacks an ace (unless Clayton Kershaw claims the role that this week belongs to Vicente Padilla) and closer Jonathan Broxton is perceived as soft.

Then there's the impending divorce in the owning McCourt family, which could put a further squeeze on a franchise that has already shown it will depart with prospects as long as it doesn't have to add payroll.

Because the NL West is so mediocre, we can't say this is the Dodgers' last stand. But they are still seeking a defining moment.

"You're in postseason because you're tough-minded," Torre said. "We were tested a lot of times during the season. They showed up all the time.

"And I anticipate we'll have the same guys. It's not guaranteeing we're going to win, but it's guaranteeing that we're certainly not going to roll over."

Five years ago, to remind themselves of how close they were to ending their season, the "Idiots" brought something to the park every day to send home for the winter.

By the time they got to St. Louis, where Mientkiewicz caught the final out in a sweep, everything had been shipped.

These Dodgers seem like a team that will pack all at once.

Soon.