Entering the Dodgers manager’s office Tommy lasorda in the 1980s it was like walking into a small neighborhood Italian restaurant, the back room of a shady living room, the green room of a television studio, the hold of a ship in which sailors used profanity like watercolorists use paint , the confessional of a worn cathedral and sometimes, if you timed it correctly, actually a place to talk about baseball.
I would stand on the threshold of that room and have no idea what realm I would be entering. Lasorda sat behind his desk to the left of the open door, so he had to poke his head and turn left to see if the maestro was conducting today’s entertainment symphony.
Before seeing Lasorda, he saw the steaming pot of hot pasta on the hot plate of the apartment-sized refrigerator. Then you saw him dressed in his long boxer shorts, wiping the sauce off his chin with a towel between bites of pasta. The wood-paneled walls were covered almost floor-to-ceiling with catch-and-smile images and advertising portraits, like some kind of celestial map of Lasorda’s universe. Frank Sinatra, Al Campanis, Cary Grant, Mike Wallace, Hank Aaron, Roy Campanella, Monte Hall, Gregory Peck, Jesus Christ… not necessarily in that order.
Today I thought of that room when I heard that Tommy Lasorda passed away at the age of 93. Suddenly, in the context of a clinical, more corporate game, that room and Tommy himself seemed centuries apart, not just years away. It was the place where Lasorda not only met the press, but it was also where Lasorda did Lasorda.
It’s hard to imagine that many people could have had a fuller, happier baseball like Tommy’s. No nickname. Not “Mr. Lasorda”. Just say “Tommy” and you will know the subject. “Tommy”, as in the name of a child who still fits into the ninth decade of his life.
That such a room and manager could exist today is a matter of creative fiction. It only took one trip to the den to understand that any questions he asked the Dodgers manager were irrelevant. Lasorda did not respond so much to the questions as simply delivered his parlor act. His good friend Sinatra did not respond to requests.
Following in the footsteps of Casey Stengel, Earl Weaver, Billy Martin and their number idol, Leo Durocher, whose number 2 became Tommy’s number, Lasorda was the last famous manager. He hung from the stars, sold products to millions of people who cared no less about baseball, and embraced the camera like it was just another in a long list of family friends.
Lasorda is known as one of the best managers in history, not because he was an excellent strategist, baseball genius or innovator. Instead, a unique place in baseball history was washed as something more familiar to other sports: motivational. What he did with the 1988 Dodgers became legend by the power of faith. And then he did it again with the 2000 United States Olympic baseball team.
Lasorda often identifies as an ambassador for the sport, though that downplays what baseball meant to him. He was an enthusiastic acolyte. Let there be no doubt that in his inexhaustible sale of baseball Lasorda made sure to sell himself. But it was this game that was the very root of his passion.
Lasorda was the son of an Italian immigrant who barely spoke English and worked various manual jobs in the coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania. He was one of the five children of Sabatino and Carmella Lasorda. Four of them went into the restaurant business. Tommy went out of his way to support the restaurant business, as his famous belly proudly attests. There was a time when you could barely watch an hour of television without seeing Lasorda selling a weight loss program. It didn’t seem right, no more than Pavarotti launching a vegan diet and yoga program. Lasorda quickly returned to his proper form.
Walter Iooss Jr./ Sports Illustrated
His difficult upbringing prepared Lasorda for a life of struggle that led him to Hollywood. He started out pitching in class D for the Weavers of Connor (NC), led by a man who was born in 1903, John Lehman. Losorda spent 11 years alone at Triple A.
Pitching for the Schenectady Blue Jays one day in 1948, he pitched a complete 15-inning game with 25 strikeouts and 12 walks. It was estimated that he had made about 300 launches. He finished the game with a lead single.
He pitched briefly for the Dodgers in 1955 until one day in June the team sent the little southpaw back to the minors to make room on the roster for another southpaw: Sandy Koufax.
After 14 seasons he dedicated himself to training and then, in 1965 in Pocatello, Idaho, to directing. The concert tapped into all of Lasorda’s greatest talents. He filled people with confidence. It made them laugh. He came to the stadium every day expecting something wonderful to happen in a game that is built on the lessons of failure.
None of that changed, even when Lasorda stopped managing in 1996. He no longer had the support of that wood-paneled office of managers, so Lasorda made the world his office. I served on a veterans Hall of Fame committee with him, and he joked, he called me countryHe exaggerated his speech with profanity, told stories he had told hundreds of times before, and generally remained the same Lasorda who made him famous. Few people felt more comfortable in their own skin.
I think of that wood-paneled office as a kind of time capsule, not just the physical manifestation of all things Lasorda. It was a time when baseball had a place for storytelling (maybe even true), laughter, brooding, off-the-record conversations, and, when it comes to baseball managers, such a big personality that you could become a national celebrity.
Years after Sinatra’s death, someone got hold of his little leather phone book. Lasorda was on the same page as Jerry Lewis. The chairman of the board listed two numbers for Tommy: one for his residence and the other for that wood-paneled office. A direct line to the backstage of baseball.
Tommy watched the Dodgers win one more World Series before passing. Every October I would see him in his Dodgers jacket sitting somewhere near the field and think about the richness of his life in baseball. He spent 71 years with the Dodgers. Sabatino and Carmella’s son is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, won two World Series, won an Olympic gold medal, and has his portrait hanging in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. That someone could love what they did for so long is truly a baseball life well lived.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.