MCCOURT KNOWS THE PLAN.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Frank McCourt is a genius.

The Dodgers owner must laugh when he hears the things people with puny, normal-size, conformist brains say about him.

They say he has turned a proud franchise into a laughingstock. They say he has made mistakes from which the club will need years to recover. They say he is presiding over the early days of a World Series drought on the order of the Red Sox, White Sox, Angels or the Cubs.

He must think, exactly.

Because the man is a visionary.

Since I'm not as smart as McCourt, it took me this long to figure out what he and Jamie were up to with all of this frantic firing and hiring and philosophical zig-zagging. Now I've figured out the plan, seen method in the madness.

McCourt looks around the baseball world and sees the sports equivalent of ``The Producers,'' a business in which nothing succeeds like failure, an industry in which lovable losers cry all the way to the bank.

Everywhere he looks, he sees fans buying White Sox caps, Red Sox caps, Angels caps. He knows how much more popular those teams' championships were (in 2005, 2004 and 2002) because they were so long coming (88 years, 86 years, 41 years).

He notices the public's long-standing love affair with the Cubs, who are three years away from an even century since their last championship, proving that a title drought pays off even while it's still going. And he wants the Dodgers to be loved too.

Any idiot can build a winner. The Marlins won the World Series in their fifth season, the Diamondbacks won the World Series in their fourth.

It takes a clever man, and the woman behind him, to build a loser. By which I mean not just a once-in-a-while, fly-by-night loser but a loser you can count on.

Frank is that man, Jamie that woman. They have begun the process of turning the club's old-school commitment to what Tom Lasorda would call the fruits of victory (which is so 1988) into an appreciation for the benefits of bumbling.

Fire the perfectly good general manager left over from the Rupert Murdoch years? Hire a new general manager who'll do things completely differently? Fire the manager when it turns out he can't see eye to eye with the GM? Fire the GM a couple of weeks after that? Go into free-agent negotiating season with nobody in charge?

This is how you lay the groundwork for generation-after-generation failure. The kind of failure on which traditions are built.

Before long the McCourts will be lolling in merchandise revenue. They'll be able to afford more broken-down free agents and failed No. 1 draft choices than they know what to do with.

Consider the loot that's available to a team that plays its baseball cards wrong and plays its marketing cards right.

The last time I was at Wrigley Field, there were funny T-shirts for sale proclaiming: ``Chicago Cubs, World Series Champions, 1908.'' At the San Francisco Giants' old, chilly, windy ballpark, they used to entice fans to stay to the end of extra-inning night games by handing out little buttons called the ``Croix de Candlestick'' that bore the Latin words for: ''I Came, I Saw, I Survived.'' In the New York Mets' lamentable early years, Jimmy Breslin cracked the best-seller lists with a book titled ``Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?'' Joe Garagiola and Bob Uecker made broadcasting careers out of jokes about their mediocrity on the field.

People love people, and promotions departments, who can laugh at their own foibles.

And now the Red Sox and White Sox are getting rich off baseball fans' hunger for lovable losers who make good.

Before a lovable loser makes good, of course, the team has to become a lovable loser. And before a team becomes a lovable loser, it stands to reason, it has to be a confirmed loser.

When McCourt bought the Dodgers from Fox, he had a choice to make. He could try to continue the trend that had seen the Dodgers post four over-.500 seasons in a row, or he could try to continue a trend that had seen the Dodgers go 15 years without a pennant.

After the setback of 2004 (the Dodgers won 93 games and the division title), McCourt got his plan on track in 2005 (the Dodgers lost 91 games and finished fourth). If he can keep this going, he can look forward to millions of dollars in T-shirts, buttons and books celebrating Dodgers futility.

It won't be long before the Dodgers are mentioned in the same breath as the Red Sox and White Sox. They have to keep this going for only another 70 years or so.

The sad part for Frank McCourt is that true genius rarely is recognized in its own time. Maybe, around 2075, he'll get the credit he deserves.

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Photo:

(color) Dodgers owner Frank McCourt's got a plan for success. It just might take awhile before it comes to fruition.

Getty Images