COMMENTARY

By Tim Dahlberg

updated 2:44 a.m. ET April 30, 2005

Fleece Blanket Night at Dodger Stadium sure seemed like a good idea. Some 54,387 fans turned out earlier this week, lured by a game with the Arizona Diamondbacks and the promise of a Dodger blue blanket celebrating past World Series championships.

Sure, the blankets celebrated titles in 1962 and 1966, years the Dodgers didn’t win. But at least they were warm.

The Dodgers passed them out anyway, along with a voucher for a new blanket with the corrected years of 1963 and 1965. Some of the originals, meanwhile, are already on sale on eBay.

The blankets aren’t the only thing Frank McCourt has been accused of botching since buying the Dodgers in a highly leveraged deal before last season.

The new owner upset holders of once prime seats by cramming new rows onto the field in front of them, letting go a popular radio announcer (no, not Vin Scully) and replacing images of Dodger icons such as Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale on the outfield walls with ads.

Much of last year’s feel-good team is no longer around, it’s hard to recognize the new guys without programs because names have been taken off their uniforms, and some of the beautiful people in the pricey new seats next to the field can’t see home plate.

Even the new selection of food was trashed in the Los Angeles Times this week by a writer who pointed out — correctly, of course — that Chinese food and baseball aren’t exactly a proper mix.

True Dodger fans should be aghast by now. They should, but something else is happening in Chavez Ravine that has their attention.

Amazingly, amid the changes and chaos, the Dodgers are winning.

Though the team has slumped in the past week, the Dodgers surprised even themselves by getting off to the best start in the majors this year, winning 12 of their first 14 games. That they did it with closer Eric Gagne on the disabled list and by coming back with late-inning rallies made it even sweeter.

Fans who began the season upset by the trade of Shawn Green to Arizona and the way Adrian Beltre was allowed to leave didn’t take long to warm to this new collection of talent, even if they had trouble figuring out who the players were.

Always a good draw, the Dodgers are doing even better this year. Going into the weekend, the team is averaging nearly 50,000 fans a home game, up about 20 percent from a year earlier.

McCourt might be the owner, but the architect of this team is a baby-faced general manager schooled in the ways of baseball first in Cleveland and then with “Money Ball” in Oakland.

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