Well, this might be the smartest thing the McCourts have done since they bought the Dodgers. Even if it was essentially a no-brainer.

If your managerial chair is vacant — even if you have to spin that chair really fast to create the vacancy — of course you're going to want to fill it with the most decorated manager of his era. This is particularly true if that vacant chair is in one of the nation's two largest media markets and the manager is coming from the other one.

And so the Dodgers, after several days of intense speculation, managed not to mess things up. On Thursday, they did indeed hire Joe Torre to replace Grady Little.

Smart move for them.

Risky move for Torre.

Torre's hiring immediately ratchets up expectations. It should. After all, this is a guy who spent 12 years with the Yankees, made the playoffs all 12, and won the World Series four times.

What have the Dodgers done in those 12 years? Well, they did win a playoff game in 2004.

Beyond that, they've watched the Angels make the postseason four of the last six years (and win the World Series once), they've watched L.A. become a Lakers town first and foremost, and they've gotten in quite a few more October rounds of golf than their more successful baseball peers.

And so they've turned to Torre. This isn't so much a hiring as a rescue mission.

Torre will clearly be asked to drag the Dodgers out of their recent pit of mediocrity. His record says he knows how to do that.

He'll be asked to close the great generation gap in the clubhouse, the one exposed so publicly as the team slid out of playoff contention this year. His successor in New York says he knows how to do that.

"Joe had a way of easing the clubhouse that I thought as really important," noted new Yankees manager Joe Girardi in a Thursday interview on XM Satellite Radio.

Oh, and he'll be asked to deflect criticism that the McCourts are far more interested in maximizing Dodgers revenue than victories.

They probably didn't talk about that one much during the interview process, but in painting Torre as The Solution, the front office is also doing a very neat job of placing the expectations for the next three years on Torre's back.

"We will again have a Hall of Fame-caliber manager," Frank McCourt said in the news release announcing Torre's hiring. "Joe's dedication, desire and ability will help lead the Dodgers to our ultimate goal — a World Championship."

And, hey, if not, you know who's to blame, right?

Torre, of course, is no stranger to the heat of expectations. When you work for the family firm of Steinbrenner and Sons, there's the World Championship, there's losing, and there's nothing in between.

But with the Yankees, Torre had the comfort of knowing the Steinbrenners backed those expectations with an open wallet, that he was never going to lose simply because the team was outspent. Last year, according to USA Today, the Yankees payroll was $189,634,045. The next highest figure belonged to some team in Boston — the Carmine Hose, or something like that — and they were more than $46 million behind. (To put that in perspective, you could have funded the Pittsburgh Pirates — or any one of three other teams — with the difference, with at least $8 million left over.)

The Dodgers? Well, on the USA Today list, they were sixth in total payroll. Another site, Sports City, puts the Yankees payroll just under $213 million and the Dodgers just over $107 million. (Of course, there can be a huge gulf between dollars spent and production for those dollars; just ask last year's highest-paid Dodger, Jason Schmidt.)

Still, if you follow the money, you come to the risk for Torre.

He's been really good at handling highly skilled, highly paid teams. The team he takes over is less skilled, certainly less compensated, and if he comes in expecting the Dodgers to open the checkbook and give him an A-Rod or a Clemens just because he needs one, he could be in for a bit of a surprise.

And if he can't succeed on those terms, that very distinguished résumé he assembled in New York might be tarnished a bit. Why, somebody might say he was a little lucky, that he could only win when he had the best talent. And we already have someone in town with a reputation like that, don't we, Phil?

None of this is to say the Torre hiring is anything but excellent. In terms of his ability to deal with players, the media, and whatever else managerial life might throw at him, it's hard to imagine anyone who consistently projects a more calming, self-assured presence.

But before we declare this the dawn of a championship era for the Dodgers, let's see what they give him to work with, OK?

— Contact Star columnist David Lassen at dlassen@VenturaCountyStar.com.