"Grady Little is our manager," insisted Dodgers spokesperson Camille Johnston, over the phone last Thursday.
And I guess if you adhere to a
Bill Clinton-being-deposed-about-
Monica-Lewinsky interpretation of the English language, she was dead right. At the moment she uttered the words, Grady Little was, technically speaking, the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Of course, I had heard from five different people who weren't using the Bill Clinton-being-deposed-about-Monica-Lewinsky English that in effect, the Dodgers had made the decision to fire Little and wanted to hire
Joe Girardi. The sources were adamant: Grady Little was, for all practical purposes, out as manager of the Dodgers. The problem was that all five sources, while all of the utmost reliability, were two or three degrees of separation from being in the smoke-filled room, and so I had called and left messages for Dodgers owner
Frank McCourt and general manager
Ned Colletti, seeking clarification or confirmation.
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Buster Olney
