Tommy Lasorda

            Tom Lasorda, the former Dodgers manager, had a heart attack today. The news reports I have seen say Lasorda is resting in a hospital and I hope he recovers fully and quickly. I revere Walter Alston, the man who preceded Lasorda as the skipper of the boys in blue, but Lasorda is my favorite Dodgers manager.

            Loyally loud, Lasorda never got credit for his managerial skills. He got credit for lots of other stuff, both good and bad, but somehow never got credit for his ability to keep a clubhouse together. Lasorda played hunches and played them well. It was a hunch that led him to send a limping Kirk Gibson to the plate in game one of the World Series one year and that hunch won the Dodgers the title.

            Call it a World Championship hunch.

            Lasorda called me at the newspaper office one night when I was writing for the Oxnard Press-Courier because he didn’t like something he thought I wrote. He chewed me out pretty well, exceptionally well in fact. If I’d written the piece that upset him, I might have regretted writing the thing.

            Tom Lasorda is one of baseball’s great men, a Hall of Famer. He and Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully are the ultimate Dodgers. I hope both men are around as long as they wish to be because the Dodger universe is a better place with them.

            Get well soon, Tommy. Maybe the Big Dodger in the Sky doesn’t need you yet.

            Thanks for reading.