Tommy

With spring training beginning this week I thought I’d start off with a baseball story. This one is about Tommy Lasorda, legendary manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Tommy was a celebrity, often a guest on Johnny Carson. He was a star. One of the things I liked about about LaSorda was, and they don’t do this anymore but in his day, managers and umpires would get into face-in-face rhubarbs. But with Lasorda, most of the time when he went out to confront an umpire, he knew the call was probably correct. He also knew that with all his ranting and raving no one would be able to hear what he was saying. So this is what you’d often get.

“I’m telling you, Mister Umpire, next time when we’re all in Vero Beach for spring training I want you to bring Trixie and the kids and I INSIST you come by and we’ll have a barbecue and sit by then pool. Then he’d turn his face toward the dugout and say “AND ANOTHER THING, I think you’re the best umpire in the whole league.”

“Now throw me out.”

Then the ump would play his part, throw him out with flair, and rant on “And I WILL come over next time and I’m gonna bring the steaks and I don’t wanna hear one more word from you about it!”

By now the crowd is delirious, the players fired up and Tommy? He gave the place a good show and endeared himself to an old friend and occasional adversary, the umpire.

Before being a manager, Lasorda was a coach. One of his jobs was to help orient rookies and minor leaguers to the big league. One story he’d tell them was about when he was a student at a parochial boys school in Brooklyn. To get boys to volunteer to be crossing guards, they were promised that at the end of the school year, if the boy hadn’t missed a day or screwed up, he would be treated to a Dodgers game.

Tommy’s blood ran Dodger blue even then. He signed up and never missed a day and didn’t screw up, not enough for it to matter despite the rain, snow and the bullies.

The fateful day comes. The game was all a blur to Lasorda, but after the game the boys were allowed to pick out a player to approach for an autograph.

“Excuse me, Mister,” Tommy said shyly, “Can I have your …”

“Out of my way kid, Beat it,” the player said bumping his way past.

Tommy couldn’t believe it. “Here I am, he recalled, “never having the courage to approach a ballplayer let alone speak to one…”

Lasorda noted the number on the player’s back, like one would a hit-and-run driver, and wrote it down. When he got home he checked the number to the name on his scorecard.

It was Buster Maynard, a modestly talented Dodgers outfielder.

Eight years or so go by. Lasorda is now a promising rookie for the Dodgers pitching in a spring training game. Up to the plate steps this grizzled veteran. Tommy looks in, then looks in a little closer. It was the same man! Four straight fastballs, each one aimed at the button on the hitter’s cap, sending Buster Maynard into the dirt. Unheard of in an exhibition game.

After the game in the clubhouse, Lasorda had a visiter. It’s Buster Maynard.

“Listen, kid, have I even met you before?”

“No,” said Lasorda.

“Did I ever do anything to you?” asked a still perplexed Maynard.

“No, not really.”

“Then why were you trying to take my head off out there?”

“YOU never game me your autograph!”

Lasorda wraps up the story with this moral. “When a kid comes up and asks, always give him your autograph. Because in baseball, you never know.”