(’tis a day of mourning for many)

From the AP’s Jeff Wilson :

Thomas Gregory Arthur, the baseball stadium concessionaire whose foot-long Nathan’s knockoff came up short and became the beloved Dodger Dog, has died. He was 84.

Arthur died of a heart attack on June 8 in St. Louis, his son Steve said Tuesday.

The former New Yorker came up with a foot-long hot dog – borrowed from his favorite Nathan’s dogs – to put excitement into the ballpark menu when the team moved from the Coliseum to Dodger Stadium in 1962.

“He called it the foot-long dog, but it was actually only 10 inches. It was before truth in advertising, but he decided to call them Dodger Dogs,” his son said.

“It was our staple,” his son said, adding, “100 percent of the people who came to the ballpark had a Dodger Dog. It was pretty popular. Vincent Price was a big baseball fan and he put it in his cook book back then.”

As noted in an earlier post, the weiners so beloved by Mr. Price are now under the control of the Hormel company.

In other Dodger news, LA have sent former Met Jae Seo and catcher Dioner Navarro to Tampa Bay in exchange for P Mark Hendrickson (above) and C Toby Hall. You can color Dodger Thoughts’ Jon Wiseman less-than-blown-away.

The fear about acquiring Seo was that his 2005 performance was a fluke. There should be an even greater fear that Mark Hendrickson’s 2006 performance is the same.

In the meantime, trading catcher Dioner Navarro for catcher Toby Hall is a clear damning of Navarro’s future by the Dodgers. Though he perhaps will give Dodger manager Grady Little the confidence to rest Russell Martin an extra day each week, Toby Hall isn’t a win-now or win-for-the-future player. No backup catcher is. Maybe Navarro deserves that evaluation, but I think there’s considerable doubt, considering how much time he has to develop.

On top of it all, the Dodgers have taken on additional salary (although they are getting some cash from Tampa Bay) and are throwing in a player to be named later. The transaction just doesn’t make sense to me.

Dodger general manager Ned Colletti’s best work on the pitching staff have been the acquisitions of players who didn’t look that hot – Aaron Sele and Takashi Saito. The favorable return was unlikely, but investment was appropriate. He seems to do better when staying away from the flavor of the month, which is all Hendrickson appears to be.