It sucks to be right: My office mate and crony John Byrne and I have a line that we use every time the Dodgers are in a slump. If someone isn't hitting his weight, or if a player is coasting through the season, one of us will say, "...but at least he's great in the clubhouse". It's a line that has become imbedded in the subconscious of every Dodger fan since the local media hacks chased Gary Sheffield out of town; in spite of his numbers and his absolutely-hate-to-lose attitude, he was described by local sportswriters as a "cancer" on the team, and was traded to Atlanta in 2001 for Bryan Jordan and Odalis Perez. The Braves are about to win yet another division championship, while the Dodgers have a magic number of 3 before they get eliminated from the wild card race.

One of those hacks, Bill Plaschke, is having second thoughts about his instrumental role two years ago in running Gary Sheffield out of town. Since the trade is history, I prefer that he have second thoughts about his bullying Odalis Perez into starting on Monday, which turned into a predictable disaster when Perez couldn't grip the ball properly. Rather than harping on something that can't be undone, the media needs to look at its own role in this mess, and hopefully learn from it. An athlete, an actor, a politician, can be a loathsome creature, disagreeable to the core, and yet still possess some hard-to-define talent, an ability to make the world a better place, in spite of their personality. And nice guys sometimes finish last for a reason.