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If the Dodgers blow this lead, all the heat should come down on manager Joe Torre and star Manny Ramirez.

The Dodgers are not a bad hitting team. They lead the National League in team batting average and on-base percentage. Normally, that’s a sure formula for winning baseball. And when Manny’s driving in runs, it is.

The Dodgers are third in the NL in scoring, with 603 runs. But they’re 10th in slugging percentage and their 103 home runs are thirteenth in the league. All other things being equal, when Manny is hitting, they win. When he’s not hitting, they have problems.

Right now, they have problems.

Which brings us to Torre. By the end of his 13-year tenure in New York, a lot of fans and most of the media had come to the conclusion that while he was great at maintaining calm in the clubhouse, he was terrible at motivating the troops in the biggest games. He also established that he is a master mishandler of bullpens, overusing effective pitchers and destroying the confidence of those who were having rough patches. His overuse of Mariano Rivera is usually given as one of the principal reasons the team didn’t win another World Series after they won four in five years ending in 2000.

But it took a long time for people to spot the holes in Torre’s armor. For most of his time in the Bronx, pretty much everyone but a few cranky writers thought he was the best manager the town has seen since Casey Stengel.

On the Left Coast, he still seems to be viewed as the greatest manager since Mr. Feelgood himself, Tommy LaSorda. After all, he arrived, then Manny arrived and the Dodgers went to the playoffs.

But now he has to do something to get the attention of his team — and, more important, of his superstar left fielder.

So far, there’s no sign that Torre has done anything to light a fire under Manny. Last year, the manager at least demanded that Manny trim his dreadlocks when he arrived from Boston. This year, the famous locks are trailing down his back, untrimmed probably since last year. Torre, it seems, would rather that Manny be happy with his hair than say anything that might upset the mercurial slugger.

Right now, nobody’s blaming Torre for that. But if things continue to go badly in Colorado and if that once huge lead continues to erode like a sand castle in a hurricane, somebody’s going to bring it up.

And if they don’t, they should.

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