When the Dodgers moved in 1958 from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, they brought a lot of great names with them, delicious names with an East Coast flavor.

Not just names like Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. The names of their executives were even better: Walter O'Malley was the owner. Fresco Thompson was in charge of the minor league teams. Billy DeLury was the traveling secretary. But perhaps the best name of all belonged to the general manager: Buzzie Bavasi.

Bavasi, who died Thursday at 93, was GM of the Dodgers from 1951 to 1968, overseeing a remarkable time for the ballclub. The Dodgers won their first World Series — and only in Brooklyn — in 1955. After the team moved, West, Bavasi helped shepherd it to three more titles, in 1959, '63 and '65.

He later became part owner and president of the expansion San Diego Padres and after that vice president of the California Angels.

In the days before free agency for players, Bavasi was known as one of the shrewdest general managers in the game. His ability to keep a tight rein on salaries is legendary.

Bavasi often detailed how he would bring in a player to talk contract, long before agents entered the picture, and draw up a phony contract with a low salary for a star player and leave it on his desk.

He would then excuse himself from the office for a few minutes and invariably while he was alone, the player would peek at the contract and ask for less money than the star when Bavasi re-entered the room.

After Maury Wills' MVP season in 1962 when he stole a record 104 bases, he came to Bavasi seeking a special contract incentive to go with his $80,000 salary.

"Maury asked if there was any way he could get $5,000 more and suggested if he made the All-Star team, I would give him a $5,000 bonus," Bavasi said in an MLB.com story. "I thought about it for a second and said, That's a good idea, Maury. But if you don't make the All-Star team, I'll take $5,000 back.' Maury signed for $80,000."

Bavasi had a soft side to him as well, however. Former Dodger Don Zimmer told the New York Daily News that one time Bavasi wanted to find a way to give Hodges a raise from his $25,000 salary without the rest of the team finding out about it.

Hodges had asked for $27,000, so Bavasi put five folded pieces of paper in a hat, according to Zimmer, and said to Hodges: "Pick one of them and I promise the least you'll get is the same $25,000." Hodges picked one and saw it had $27,000 written on it. What he didn't know until years later, Zimmer said, was that all five slips had the same amount written on them.

Koufax and Drysdale staged a 1966 joint holdout, seeking three-year, $500,000 contracts. The holdout dragged on through most of spring training before the two finally settled for one-year deals, Koufax for $130,000 and Drysdale for $105,000. The pitchers became the first to break the $100,000 barrier, but Bavasi kept them from getting their multiyear contracts.

Bavasi's biggest blunder, however, may have been with the Angels, when he refused to re-sign Nolan Ryan, letting him go to Houston after the 1979 season. Bavasi said the Angels could replace Ryan, who had gone 16-14 that year, by getting "a couple of 8-7 pitchers to replace him."

Bavasi was not above admitting his mistakes, however. The Associated Press recalled in its obituary of the executive that when Ryan pitched his sixth no-hitter in 1990, Bavasi wrote him and said, "Nolan, some time ago I made it public that I made a mistake. You don't have to rub it in."

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Now, some wheeling and dealing from the week just past:

• The Ventura College men's basketball scandal seems to me to be a tempest in a teapot.

The Ventura County Community College District's investigation of alleged in-state tuition discounts given to out-of-state players, which led to coach Greg Winslow's resignation, is an intensely local story.

By that I mean it's a story that's intensely important in the city of Ventura and very little elsewhere. I truly believe very few people in the rest of the county care about this controversy.

I am constantly amazed at how all-important the people involved with the basketball programs at this school see them as being. You would think instead of a simple California community college, this was some four-year Division I school.

It's the lack of perspective that has caused the problems in the first place and they won't be truly solved until Ventura College understands its place and function in the world.

• The impressive victory Big Brown earned in Saturday's Kentucky Derby, giving him perhaps a very good chance at winning the Triple Crown, is very much dampened by the injury to Eight Belles immediately afterward, which caused the filly to have to be euthanized on the track.

I'm far from being a member of PETA, but I am starting to wonder if we've bred race horses to the point of brittleness.

The week before the race, NBC's Mike Battaglia talked about trainer Larry Jones' decision to start Eight Belles in the Derby instead of the all-filly Kentucky Oaks on Friday. Hearing Battaglia's quote now is a little eerie.

"She would've been the favorite in the Oaks," Battaglia said, "but (Jones) elected to go in the Derby. And if she wins, it's probably going to be at a big price, but I can't blame him at all for taking this shot."

The "big price" Battaglia was talking about, of course, was the difference in prize money between winning the Kentucky Oaks and whatever Eight Belles would have won for the Derby.

But it turned out that the price was far greater than anyone imagined.

• Game 7 of the Boston Celtics' series against the Atlanta Hawks was finally what most of us figured the first four games would be like.

• Tiger Woods won't be in The Players Championship this weekend at Sawgrass, but golf's "fifth major" will still be its usual hoot. NBC uses 10 cameras on that island green at the 17th alone.

• Papa John's Pizza must have thought it was a good idea at the time.

It handed out T-shirts with LeBron James' Cleveland uniform number 23 and the word "Crybaby" after James complained about hard fouls and Washington's Brendan Haywood called him a crybaby.

Now Papa John's has apologized and will offer Cleveland residents a large one-topping pizza on Thursday for 23 cents. The company will also donate $10,000 to the Cavaliers Youth Fund.

Who's crying now?

— Jim Carlisle is a staff writer for The Star. E-mail address: jcarlisle@VenturaCountyStar.com.