Two news items last week seemed only tangentially related.

Mike Piazza announced his retirement.

Nomar Garciaparra went on the 60-day disabled list.

Actually, those stories have more than a little in common. The careers of both men, perhaps the end of the careers of both men, speak to one of the biggest issues the Los Angeles Dodgers have faced for a decade.

How to reconnect with their fans … by giving them a player to love.

Sure, go ahead and hit me over the head with the Dodgers’ attendance figures. More than 3 million tickets sold every season since 1996. More than 3.8 million last season.

So what?

I am convinced that interest in the Dodgers is a mile wide … and an inch deep. I am certain there is less interest in the Dodgers right this minute than at any time since they arrived here, in 1958. Just check out how many of those seats purchased by season-ticket holders (the ones the Dodgers count in their attendance every night) are conspicuously empty, game after game. A truly popular team doesn’t sell 40,000 tickets and get only 25,000 people through the gate.
I am confident you could spend a long time at any public place in Greater Los Angeles … before you could find one person who could name seven guys who started for the Dodgers last night. And nearly as long a time before you could find someone who could name seven Dodgers. At all.

This is a franchise that has been turning over its roster every few years since 1998. Which just happens to be the first season after Peter O’Malley sold the team to Fox — and Fox clowns traded away Mike Piazza in his prime.

Everything has been, basically, downhill for the Dodgers since then.

A franchise that always kept its home-grown stars suddenly developed a taste for mercenary ballplayers and carpet-bagger executives.

Look at whom the Dodgers got for Piazza (and Todd Zeile): Gary Sheffield, Bobby Bonilla, Charles Johnson, Jim Eisenreich and Manuel Barrios. Bad actors or guys at the back end of careers spent with another team.

It was a senseless, self-destructive move. A horrible trade, and one we all knew was horrible the moment it was made. Giving up Piazza, the centerpiece of two playoffs teams (1995, 1996), a sixth-year starter, the famous 62nd-round draft choice — and a guy coming off a 1997 season in which he hit 40 home runs, scored 104 times and drove in 124 runs while hitting .362 — for a bunch of names.

All Piazza did was go on to hit 250 home runs (of his 427 total) for teams that were not the Dodgers. The team for which he should have played his entire career.

The “reasons” given back in 1998? That Piazza would be too difficult/expensive to sign. This, from a team that already was selling 3 million tickets a year and played in the No. 2 media market in the country.

Yes, the New York Mets gave Piazza a seven-year, $91 million contract before the 1999 season — but Piazza went out and earned it.

The Dodgers wouldn’t keep their own guy, but they were to show no financial restraint in bringing in hired guns. They signed Kevin Brown for seven years and $105 million in 1999, Shawn Green for six years at $84 million in 2000, etc.

The Piazza deal was just the first in a series of moves that stripped the organization of home-grown talent. Hideo Nomo, whose entire non-Japan career had been in L.A., was shipped out a month later. A month after that, minor-leaguer Paul Konerko went away. A month after that, Ted Lilly was sent packing.

Since 1998, the Dodgers have had very little roster continuity. Last season, Olmedo Saenz was the longest-serving Dodger, and The Killer Tomato had been around only since 2004. Current longest-serving Dodger? Brad Penny, who came over in mid-2004 for Paul Lo Duca and Guillermo Mota, two more Dodgers products. Next-longest? Derek Lowe and the cuddly Jeff Kent.

Ack!

Finally, Dodgers management seemed to realize the constant roster churn was disorienting and disengaging their fan base. Perhaps it occurred to them when they had to change the big photos around the stadium before nearly every home stand.

Enter Nomar Garciaparra, in 2006. Nomar was as Dodger Blue as The Green Monster, but he at least grew up in Whittier and went to high school at Bellflower St. John Bosco. The Dodgers could play the song “Low Rider” by the group “War” each time Nomar went to the plate, pandering to their Latino fans — who almost certainly knew Garciaparra’s salad days were spent in Boston, not East L.A.

Nomar had a decent season, and the Dodgers, spooked by J.D. Drew’s surprise departure, signed him for two seasons and $18 million — and he almost immediately fell to pieces. He has been hurt or slumping almost nonstop since. Which is fairly predictable when you hook up with an injury-prone middle infielder on the back side of his career.

The Dodgers may finally have decided they need to keep their own guys, and promote them. They have a cadre of home-grown players now that includes Russell Martin, Matt Kemp, James Loney, Blake DeWitt, Jonathan Broxton, Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw. Though only Martin clearly is attractive, this minute as a “star.” Some of the others at least have a chance, though none seems likely to rival Mike Piazza any time soon.

This club needs to keep some players. It needs to market them. And retain them through their prime.

Mike Piazza should have retired as a Dodger. Nomar Garciaparra never should have been a Dodger.

Their disappearances last week remind us of just how screwed up the Dodgers franchise has been for a decade. If they don’t figure out things soon, a decade from now they may be hardly more relevant than the Clippers and Kings when it comes to the hearts and minds of Los Angeles sports fans.

Note: To see Piazza’s career statistics, click here. To see Garciaparra’s, click here.