Ted Green: What's going on with UCLA basketball?

What in the name of Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard, Lewis Alcindor, the Walton Gang , Nell and John Wooden Court and everything holy in Westwood did I just watch?

That was UCLA basketball?

Losing to Cal State Fullerton and now down 10 to Cal State Bakersfield in the opening half?

Goodness, gracious, sakes alive.

Who's next, Cal State . . . Channel Islands? San Marcos? Dominguez Hills?

If UCLA has an open date tomorrow, I hear Stanislaus is looking for a game.

But Bakersfield? The last time I even heard the name Bakersfield mentioned in public, John Steinbeck was writing about dust bowls in "The Grapes of Wrath."

Normally, any UCLA team going back half a century would eat a Cal State Bakersfield for breakfast. Certainly Bakersfield has plenty of Denny's.

But in case you haven't noticed, things are not normal in Howlandville, far from it.

If you respect the decades of sustained excellence that UCLA basketball stands for, it's almost unbearable to watch how far the mighty have fallen.

If you like movie trivia, Coach Ben Howland (pictured above) is aptly named Ben because I smell a rat.

Ted Green: Lamar Odom's marriage won't distract Lakers

As I was telling my good friend Lamar Odom the other day, a man is not complete until he’s married. 

Then he’s finished. Lamar didn’t listen. Really, who does in matters of the heart? So now, instead of L.O., they’re L-Khloe.

Now, I’m as big a fan of love as the next guy. For example, I love the Lakers, the Dodgers, SC football, UCLA basketball, Coach Wooden and chicken burritos. 

Hang on a moment -- my wife’s reading over my shoulder and wants to speak with me privately in the next room.

As I was saying, love is grand, but is being only the third-best Laker really a reason to marry only the third-hottest Kardashian?

Does "Keeping Up With the Odoms" really have the same ring to it? 

Yes, I did say ring.

Ted Green: Chad Billingsley is plagued by an ace-killing disease

Their 24-year-old so-called staff ace from Ohio has a plus arm and made the All-Star team this year.

Their 21-year-old from Oklahoma is an Ace in Waiting, but still too young to be counted on to front a pitching staff in the pressure of postseason.

And their 33-year-old lefty from the west San Fernando Valley is the de facto No. 1 right now -- their best, hottest and most dependable pitcher.

But after Wednesday night, the verdict is in. It's now painfully obvious the Dodgers are like a deck with 48 cards.

They don't have any aces.

Chad Billingsley is now plagued with One Bad Inning disease. He was rolling Wednesday, mowing the first 13 D-Backs until -- oops, there it is -- another 25-minute meltdown, a four-run Arizona fifth inning, and thanks for coming.

Ted Green: Why did Joe Torre use James McDonald?

So let me see if I have this right.

The Dodgers are desperately holding on to what precious little is left of their once-healthy nine-game lead. It's Aug. 25, the biggest game of the year to date. The Rockies are white-hot, closing to within three games the night before against the Giants on a dramatic walk-off grand slam in the 14th inning.  The Rockies have so much "Moe," as in momentum, the Three Stooges are jealous.

Once 15 games behind the Dodgers and dead last in the NL West, here they were, L.A. and Colorado, tied 4-4 in the 10th inning in a big potential momentum-turning type of game.

And Joe Torre brings in ... James McDonald?

Old McDonald, as in Ee i ee i ... NO?

McDonald isn't old, he's just 24, but he does need to go back to the farm.

He was no more ready for that kind of high-wire moment than Ronald McDonald.

When he came in to start the 10th, I promise this is true, I immediately turned to a colleague here in the sports department and said:

To borrow from Eric Gagne, only in reverse, Game Over.

Ted Green: Don't expect to see the same Vicente Padilla

He has a reputation for being a hothead and a headhunter, and I'm not talking about someone who works in corporate executive placement.

He's also been labeled a malcontent and bad teammate, and those were some of the more positive reviews.

Just this Monday, the Texas Rangers were willing to pay him $8 million to have the privilege to show him the door. They were so eager to get rid of him, they probably limo'd him to the airport themselves.

He has drilled opposing hitters for retaliation both real and imagined, and if you ask around opposing dugouts, he might be the most hated pitcher in the major leagues.

All of which leads me to the conclusion that Vicente Padilla will be a perfect little angel with the Dodgers.

Why? Because he has to be. He has no other choice.

Why? Because he has only six more weeks of guaranteed employment in baseball.

Ted Green: It's time for Joe Torre to yank Jonathan Broxton

I know he’s got a hall pass and lifetime immunity from the usual second guessing because of the success he had with the Yankees, but is anyone else who follows the Dodgers ready to ask Joe Torre how much longer he’s going to stay with Jonathan Broxton as his closer?

Right now Broxton couldn’t close a door if it was already padlocked shut.

Banks close, businesses close, even bars in New Orleans close, but for the past month now, Broxton hasn’t been able to close to save his 300-pound backside.

The coup de grace came Saturday night when, brought in to save a 3-1 lead in Arizona in the ninth, he gave up not one, but two bombs to center field, blowing yet another save in a game the Dodgers lost in extras an inning later.

While the big kid from Georgia implodes game after game, blowing one save opportunity after another, and a nice chunk of the Dodgers’ division lead along with them, the team’s new eighth-inning setup man, George Sherill, continues to set ‘em up and knock ‘em down, as predictably dependable as Broxton is lethally awful.

Ted Green: Steroids in baseball are more than just a problem

Turned on the radio and heard a host say it's time for everyone on the List of 104 to "clear their consciences and purge their guilt."

Picked up the paper and read about the "stain" Manny Ramirez could bring to the Dodgers.

If Manny "stains" the Dodgers, then all of baseball is now discolored beyond recognition.

Memo to the moralizers: Stop the soap-box sanctimoniousness. Save your outrage.

The steroid "problem" in baseball isn't a problem. It's a culture, a way of life. It's how they roll.

The issue runs oceans deeper than Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. A-Rod is in the rearview mirror. It's way beyond Manny and Big Papi. And it far transcends names on some secret list from six years ago that is now being slowly leaked to the press like Chinese water torture.

From the fair number of people I know in and around the game who will talk but not be identified by name, the best guess is that more than 80% of all big leaguers, recent past and present, have used and, in many cases, are still using performance-enhancing drugs.

Eighty percent is a big number, one that is so embarrassing, the commissioner's office won't even entertain it. But is there any reason left to think otherwise? If so, I'd love to hear it. If the number of PED'ers is only 20%, as the game's officials and apologists claim, making 80% blameless, then why aren't so many more players coming forward, with vigorous aggressiveness, to say, to scream, to shout from the hilltops: Test me all you want, test me 10,000 times. I swear by everything dear to my heart, I'm clean!

Ted Green: There's still a doctor in the house

Years ago, more than I care to remember or admit, I was introduced to this soft-spoken man in his mid-40s who seemed quite odd in that he was both modest and Mitty-esque in his grandiose thinking.

He owned the L.A. Strings at the time, which was a tennis team in a fledgling minor league called World Team Tennis. The Strings were a back-page item, definitely not of philharmonic quality.

After we both did our due diligence on his new tennis endeavor, Dr. Jerry Buss paused to make sure he had my full attention.

"I'm going to own the Lakers one day," he told me, and I thought: Yeah, and I'm going to be the first man on Mars.

Just a few years later, he bought the Lakers. And within months, Magic Johnson had come to town. Now, after nine NBA titles and 15 appearances in the NBA Finals in a 30-year ownership run that should/must land him in the Basketball Hall of Fame, Jerry Buss is still full of surprises. And not a man you should ever underestimate.

The man with a PhD in chemistry from USC and a penchant for dating women who are so age inappropriate that other men get jealous played a high-stakes game of contract chicken with Lamar Odom and Lamar's peeps ... and darn it if the good doctor didn't win again.

Yeah, Lamar blinked first. Kenny Rogers would be proud. Odom knew when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

Ted Green: Selig needs to redeem himself for allowing steroid era

So we all know major leaguers did and still do drugs to get bigger, better and make more money, and to also cheat the game and ruin the record book, the holy grail of baseball.

Yeah, the boys have all their bases covered.

So now I have a question for both Deep Throat and for New York Times writer George S. Schmidt, who broke the story today that both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, those onetime Red Sox bookend power bats, revealing they are two of the names on the not-so-secret list of performance-enhancing abusers compiled by the commissioner's office in 2003.

First let me say Deep Throat is what I'm calling whoever is leaking these names to reporters like Schmidt of the Times.

Now the question: How do you decide, either you, Deep Throat, or in concert with your trusted writer and conduits to the world, the scoop-hungry press, which players to bust, which to call out, which names you make public?

Why just the big fish? Why was it A-Rod first, a story broken by Selena Roberts? And now Manny and Big Papi, info apparently slipped surreptitiously to Schmidt? Why just the superstars?

Is it because their names make the biggest splash? Is there some other agenda involved, something personal?

Ted Green: Michael Vick has every right to play in the NFL

Bonnie the floppy-eared Great Dane lived in our fraternity house at UCLA and sat outside lecture halls patiently waiting for me. I loved her with all my soul. At the end, she was wracked with displasia, and I didn't have the heart to drive her to the vet, so the vet came to our home

I cried inconsolably when, lying on her favorite blanket, she gently went to sleep with her head in my lap.

Later, Lucy the Border Collie rolled around with our kids in the snow in Chicago; Lucy was smarter than several of my previous news directors. And today, Sara the Old English Bulldogge sleeps in my bed. All our dogs have.

That's how we treat dogs in my neighborhood.

That said, no matter how much you love animals and no matter how disturbing and cruel his behavior was, it is unconscionable and indefensible to take the position that Michael Vick has somehow lost the right to play, and perhaps even thrive again, in the NFL.

As America's poster boy for animal cruelty, an example to all, he served nearly two years in a federal penitentiary. He did his time, according to our criminal justice system. He paid his debt. Therefore, he has every right to re-integrate into the work force and ply his chosen craft.

In other words, he has every right to play.

And while the NFL feels it must carefully manage its image in maybe the trickiest situation to come along in, like, forever, suspending Vick for four or five games to start the 2009 season is public relations and political correctness taken a little too far to the extreme.