Elliott: Recalling Tommy Lasorda

Tommy Lasorda, a member of the National Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. and the Canadian Hall of Fame in St. Marys.

March 9, 2021

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

The first time I was alone with Tommy Lasorda the Los Angeles Dodgers manager yelled at me.

It was the workout day before Game 1 of the 1981 National League Division Series. I entered Lasorda’s office, where the manager was surrounded by about 15 to 20 writers. They were discussing injuries and where a couple of minor leaguers were going to play winter ball.

I was drawn to a wall that had dozens of framed pictures and also noticed a back wall with even more pictures of Lasorda posing with Hollywood celebrities. Admiring the gallery, it would be an understatement to say I was like a rube from Kingston. No, I was more like the guy from Punkeydoodles Corners, who wandered into downtown Toronto and got a sore neck from looking at the skyscrapers.

Now with the 2021 season about to start it will begin without seven Hall of Famers who passed within the last year. All gone since April 6, 2020: are Lou Brock, Whitey Ford, Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan, Phil Niekro, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton, Hank Aaron and Lasorda.

One wall of Lasorda’s office was strictly shots of Frank Sinatra and the Dodger manager. The second most popular poses featured comedian Don Rickles. There was a shot of Lasorda with Danny Kaye, who owned a piece of the Seattle Mariners but was always a Dodger fan. There were stars like Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, Ron Masak and Pat Henry, the comedian who introduced Lasorda to Sinatra. There was Hall of Famer Vin Scully and Lasorda.

Other pictures showed Lasorda with Presidents Ford, Reagan, Carter and the two Bushes. Prominent, was him with former general manager Al Campanis, his biggest booster. Lasorda had his picture taken with Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, manager Walter Alston, catcher Roy Campanella, pitcher Sandy Koufax, sluggers Hank Aaron and Ted Williams, UCLA hoops coach John Wooden and USC baseball coach Rod Dedeaux.

There were pictures of Lasorda and his wife, daughter and late son, Spunky. There was one of Sinatra kissing Lasorda’s mother. The manager had a shot of him lifting the 1988 World Series trophy in the clubhouse with general manager Fred Claire and Peter O’Malley standing by. Another showed him with veteran scribe Ken Gurnick, gripped in a Lasorda headlock. Plus, probably 100s of others.

We heard years later that rookie pitcher Rick Sutcliffe was left off the 1981 playoff roster. He stormed into Lasorda’s office, screamed, picked up a chair and threw it. Sutcliffe grabbed the chair again and was going to throw it at the side wall, which was strictly a tribute to Sinatra.

A second before the chair went airborne, Dusty Baker grabbed it. Baker looked at Sutcliffe and said, “I can talk to the manager and help you out here, but you throw this chair at Frank’s wall ... well ain’t nobody going to help you settling that debt.”

I was admiring the non-Sinatra wall -- trying to put names to faces “what was the name of that movie I saw him/her in?” when Lasorda yelled:

“HEY, DID YOU WANDER OFF THE TOUR?”

By this time, the other writers had left and I was alone with the manager. I apologized and explained I was here covering the Montreal Expos for a newspaper in Ottawa. The mention of Ottawa framed a different type of picture in Lasorda’s memory.

“I pitched in Ottawa in 1951 when I was with Montreal,” he said. “Ottawa was in the New York Giants system. They played in a football park (Lansdowne Park) with a short centre field fence, but it was deep down both lines.”

* * *

The 1997 Hall of Fame annual veterans voting block consisted of living Hall of Famers, plus previous J.G. Taylor Spink and Ford Frick winners. Like any Cooperstown election there were disagreements when Lasorda was elected. Did he belong? He had two World Series wins and loads of near misses. He sold the game, and he sold himself, lobbying to be selected.

We asked Tim Harkness, who lives in Courtice, Ont., and had spent four seasons in the majors – two each in the early 1960s with the Dodgers and the Mets – and was a teammate of Lasorda’s in the minors with the triple-A Montreal Royals of the International League in 1959.

Lasorda pitched parts of nine seasons with the Montreal Royals going 136-104, making 269 starts and pitching 2,167 innings in 406 starts.

The Royals were the first team to go to Havana after Fidel Castro ousted the government of Fuelgencio Batista on New Year’s Eve 1958. The Royals arrived the third week of April 1959 to play the Sugar Kings. They found parked cars riddled with bullets. Armed guards patrolled sidewalks and were stationed at each end of the dugout at Havana’s Pan-American Stadium.

With the Royals holding a three-run lead in the bottom of the ninth, the Sugar Kings loaded the bases, bringing up outfielder Tony Gonzalez, who later played for the Phillies.

“These guards, great big lugs, who had been in the jungle for months, are in our dugout with automatic weapons,” Harkness said. Gonzalez hit a ball deep to left. It was home-run distance easy, but the ball curved foul.

Players in the first base dugout who could see down the line sat back, relaxed. Whew close call. Except the crowd in right field and centre kept cheering and kept cheering. Harkness said they looked at the ump, an American. Suddenly he was signalling a homer. A grand-slam. Montreal loses. “The crowd intimidated him,” Harkness said.

The manager of the Royals was 6-foot-4 Clay Bryant, who, incensed, leapt off the dugout bench and cocked a fist to punch the air in disgust. Just as he threw his punch, a soldier stuck his head around the dugout post.

Down went the guard as if felled by Mike Tyson. Stunned, the guard jumped up. Screaming in Spanish, he pointed his gun at Bryant and the rest of the Montreal dugout.

“I was beside the post,” Harkness said. “The guard had his gun pointed at me. All he knew was that he’d been hit and he was ready to spray the dugout. I froze.

“All of a sudden from the other end of the dugout comes Tommy running, talking in Spanish, telling the guy it was an accident, how Bryant was upset at the ump,” Harkness said. “Tommy was the only guy in the dugout who spoke Spanish. Finally, the guard calmed down. We were upset at the call, but it could have been worse ... if not for Tommy.

A dominant triple-A pitcher, Lasorda became a fair manager, a dominant major-league talker, story-teller, motivator and first man out of the dugout after a walk-off win. Bobby Cox, Cito Gaston, Tom Kelly, Tony La Russa and the like would turn and shake the hands of their coaches. He wasn’t perfect.

“Does Lasorda belong in the Hall of Fame?” Harkness repeated. “Yes, he saved my life and a bunch of other guys, too.”

* * *

While the manager in the other dugout didn’t always like Lasorda and his “Born to be a Dodger,” and his bleeding Dodger blue talk, there is no doubt that Lasorda was a hall-of-fame character.

People raved about Lasorda’s ability to tell a story or a joke and have the room howling. But for several years, I’d never seen it. Then one night Tracy Ringolsby (a pal and fellow scribe) and I returned from dinner at the 1999 GMs meetings Laguna Niguel, Calif. Lasorda was entertaining a crowd of scouts. He was on.

Turned out scout Gary Hughes, on his way to winning five World Series rings, who may have had a cocktail, was headed to his college reunion and wanted some fresh material. And Lasorda was the go-to guy in these situations.

“I got one,” Lasorda would say. “So one night we’re in Cincinnati ...”

Lasorda would finish the joke and have 20 people laughing. It would settle down and Lasorda would say, “I got another one ...” That’s when Hughes, who was scribbling furiously, would look up and say “Tommy, I missed the punch line.”

Lasorda repeated it. Everyone laughed again.

Then Hughes says, “no, no, no, not that joke Tommy ... the one before it.”

So Lasorda winds the clock back two punchlines.

More laughter.

* * *

Following the Professional Scouts Association first fundraiser which attracted a Hall of Fame crowd in Beverley Hills, a two-car convoy is headed to China Town. Blue Jays scouts Wayne Morgan (Kindersley, Sask.) and Don Welke, plus former GM Pat Gillick, Wayne Norton (Port Moody, BC), Lasorda, myself and others arrive at Paul’s Kitchen.

We never ordered. Yet, tray upon tray of food arrived. It was as if someone said, “Ah, we’ll try one of everything.” Seated beside Morgan, I asked him what the tiny plate beside the main dish was for. Lasorda overheard and answered, “Oh you just go like this.” He poured sauce into the dish, dabbed a piece of chicken a couple of times and appeared to pop it into his mouth.

I did the same and ate mine soaked in some fiery hot sauce. I looked up and Lasorda’s chicken was back on his plate. I gasped, asking for a Diet Coke and a waiter plunked down a six pack. Two Diet Cokes later I could resume my meal.

“Watch this,” a scout said as we got up to leave, “you know why Tommy’s nickname is Crime? Because Crime doesn’t pay.”

We walked out of the restaurant without paying a cent as Lasorda called over his shoulder: “Give me a call when you need tickets.”

But Lasorda didn’t always have the last laugh.

Lasorda once had Expos mascot Youppi removed from the third base dugout at Olympic Stadium and eventually had him ejected.

At the 1999 GM meetings, Blue Jays manager Jim Fregosi was holding court in a hotel lobby with a group of four scouts, all former major leaguers and Lasorda. When there was a break, the conversation unfolded like this:

Lasorda: “You know Jimmy, I never remember facing you much.”

Fregosi: “No, Tommy, that’s because I was in the majors ... YOU were pitching in the minors.”

That was the same GM meetings when Blue Jays GM Gord Ash had just dealt Shawn Green to the Dodgers for Raul Mondesi after Green refused to sign a long-term deal with the Jays. Fregosi and I were seated in two lobby chairs, when Lasorda approached, stuck out his hand, and said, “Sorry Jimmy that we stole your best player, but he was born to wear Dodger blue.”

Fregosi leapt from the chair and yelled, “The kid grew up in Tustin, an hour from your park and he grew up an Angels fan. He was standing on the tarp ready to jump on the field when Donnie Moore gave up the home run to Dave Henderson in 1986.”

The California Angels were a strike away from eliminating the Boston Red Sox and reaching the World Series for the first time. Moore gave up the homer to Henderson in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series. Boston then won Games 6 and 7 to take the series.

* * *

Last time I saw Lasorda: We were talking outside the elevator at the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown four years ago. A lady complimented Lasorda on how well he looked.

“I keep moving, that way the good Lord can’t find me,” said Lasorda, who passed Jan. 7, 2021.