The first six innings at Dodger Stadium were fairly normal Monday night ... as long as you don't count the sight of Manny Ramirez leveling Matt Kemp with a shoulder tackle in center field, just after Kemp had lunged to catch a fly ball suddenly caught in a freakish gust of wind.
The final innings? Just plain weird.
Unless you consider it normal for a general manager to call a manager in the dugout. (For the record, Ned Colletti's never done it before Monday night, but Los Angeles manager Joe Torre's taken "a number" of such calls over the years.)
Or normal for Thursday's starting pitcher for one team to be pulled into the dugout tunnel and told he's just been traded across the diamond ... and to then sit in his old team's clubhouse uncertain whom to root for.
"I really didn't want to see anybody lose tonight," said Jon Garland, erstwhile Diamondback and the newest Dodger, torn between the relationships he'd built over the past six months and the prospect of being in a pennant race with his hometown team.
Or normal for the other big acquisition to call his future GM before a trade goes down. Jim Thome lobbed Colletti a phone call while the Dodgers and White Sox were still putting that deal together, letting him know that he wasn't physically capable of playing first base but was eager to come to LA and willing to do anything else that needed to be done.
"I didn't call him," Colletti said. "He called me, just wanting to let me know where he was at and how he was feeling. That shows the class and dignity of Jim Thome, and it speaks to what we're getting."
Yep, just a normal night at the ballpark.
It was a night when the Dodgers blew a late lead, tossed away a game they could have won and gave back a half-game in the standings to the Giants and Rockies. (And yes, that was Colletti's July acquisition, George Sherrill, serving up the game-tying homer.)
Yet there were smiles in the clubhouse, because the upcoming impact of Colletti's transactions over the past two days could be immense.
The Dodgers, desperate for starting pitching for much of the past two months, now have a potential surplus of six quality starters.
"Garland is certainly someone who knows how to pitch and has done it in the heat of battle," Torre said. "Jon Garland is going to get the ball every five days. If we have six starters, so be it. With (Hiroki) Kuroda, I'm hoping everything goes well (in Tuesday night's scheduled rehab start in the minors). If it does, he'll pitch Sunday.
"If we have too many, I'd rather go in that direction."
In other words, Vicente Padilla had better be on his absolute best behavior the rest of the way, speaking only when spoken to and pitching without complaint when asked.
The Dodgers now also have a big, big left-handed bat on the bench. Thome has 564 home runs, 12th all-time, and 23 with 74 RBI this season, almost exclusively as a DH with the White Sox. He's accustomed to sitting and then hitting, and his presence in the dugout will give opposing managers something more to worry about.
(Oh, and if the Dodgers should make it to the World Series, guess who their DH would be in the American League park? Not that we're jumping ahead or anything.)
Additionally, whatever Thome provides with the bat -- no matter how extensive it is -- will be exceeded by what he contributes in the clubhouse. By all accounts, he's the walking definition of the term "good teammate," as both Manny Ramirez (who played with him in Cleveland) and Garland (who played with him in Chicago) will attest.
"He's one of the best teammates I've ever played with," Ramirez said. "I can't wait to see him."
Added Garland: "When I saw that (Thome was coming to the Dodgers as well) that actually made me feel a lot better. In my eyes he's probably one of the greatest guys to ever play this game. I can only say that for my era, when I've been playing, but what he brings to a team, as you guys and the Dodgers will see, it's amazing.
"His attitude, his energy, everything he brings to a team off the field is exactly what he's going to bring on the field."
The other significant part of this two day shopping frenzy: Colletti pulled off upgrades in three categories -- starting pitcher, late-game power threat and versatile bench player, in Ronnie Belliard -- without touching the core of the team with the National League's best record.
Now, that the deadline for post-season eligibility has passed, maybe he can relax for, oh, a day or so.
"We're going to take a breath here," Colletti said.
He's earned it.
(Contact Jim Alexander at jalexander(at)PE.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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Must credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
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