GREEN DAZE

I don't know why I still care but I had some strange emotional reaction when Shawn Green was traded by the Diamondbacks to the Mets. The one-time Dodgers' poster boy was dumped like moldy pastrami by the D-Backs in a salary-dumping waiver deal. Maybe it's because he was Jewish; maybe because he wasn't Gary Sheffield, but I loved to watch Shawnnie play with the Dodgers. He was like a gazelle. He made it all seem so effortless (perhaps because he didn't really care). I often wondered what was inside his head. Was he thinking about atonement? About the steroid cocktail he may or may not have been taking? About the hot babe sitting behind the first-base dugout.

By 2004, in spite of his eroding skills (body breaking down, perhaps phasing out the 'roids), the emotion he showed during the Dodgers' Western Division pennant clinching run showed me something about Green. That he cared about the Dodgers, that he cared about L.A. Much has been made about Paul LoDuca being the "heart and soul" of the team. I was always in the minority -- I always thought he was a punk-ass little biyatch (high-rolling gamblers and teenaged sluts in every National League team probably feel the same way right about now, as well as his soon-to-be ex-wife). Green, to me, symbolized all that was right about Dodger baseball in an era when Fox sucked the life out of the team. Particularly because they were able to dump Raul Mondesi to get him. In fact, I always wanted to market Shawn Green Dodger yarmulkes in Dodger blue, with the "LA" in front and Shawn's number just behind the skull. Not meant to be, I guess.

And now he's bounced to the Mets, less than two years after he was bouced by the Dodgers in another salary dump, a fading superstar playing out the string. Baseball is a cruel game. But there is a bright side. At least he didn't go the Yankees.