We’re looking ahead. Baseball has to be played with a relaxed and confident attitude. Putting the uniform on should be fun. I want a team that’s aggressive, that wants to win, but I can’t be naive enough to think that as the manager I’m going to win any games. The players do it all and my job is to stay with them and motivate them, know their strengths and weaknesses, make each feel he’s a part of it and create a happy attitude by making sure I walk into that clubhouse each day with an enthusiastic and happy face.5
While Lasorda saw his motivational skills as key to his inevitable success as a manager, there was more to his approach than was evident at first glance. Lasorda, who knew the names of each of his players’ wives and children, was connected and generous. But he was also demanding. “I want everyone tugging on the same end of the rope,” he said. “I don’t see anything wrong in that. I’m close to my son. I love him. But I’m also capable of disciplining him, of giving him a whack if necessary.”6
In the main Lasorda said he was content if his players did their job as professionals. “You owe it to yourself and teammates to stay in shape” was how Lasorda explained his expectations to players on the first day of camp. Gathered at those earliest meetings were thirty-six roster players and fifteen nonroster invitees. Only a few veterans were missing—including pitcher Tommy John and outfield John Hale, who each had unresolved contract issues, and outfielder Glenn Burke and veteran catcher Ellie Rodriguez, who were ailing.7 At the same time Lasorda knew that teams had to have at least some rules, and there had to be some sort of limit to all the fun. After one sunny but frigid and windy day of early workouts, Lasorda told the team he had made a decision. Dressed formally in jacket and tie during a team dinner, Lasorda declared that, as a measure of respect to the traditional image of the Dodgers, players should keep their hair cut short. This was no mean request in wild and woolly 1977. Lasorda also imposed a few other cosmetic rules, concerning things such as signing autographs, and he enforced the rules in his own particular and somewhat roundabout and offhand way. Whenever a player inevitably wanted to test Lasorda’s resolve by refusing, say, to get a haircut, Lasorda would respond not by fining or suspending the player, as was widely the league norm. “Fine,” he would say, “but next time we’re on the road, don’t ask me if you can fly home on a day off. . . . [I]f you wanted something from me, you had to give something to me.”8
There were several intriguing by-products to Lasorda’s jolly, hands-on approach. On the one hand, a few Dodger players bristled at Lasorda’s approach. On the other hand, however, several other players who had been all but given up on, or who were branded as “problem players” or “damaged goods,” were suddenly more at ease, more eager to play and contribute, than they had been in some years. Reggie Smith, for example, had been called by his previous team, the St. Louis Cardinals, a “malingerer,” who often “jaked it” on the field. But in the spring of 1977, under Lasorda, Smith was suddenly a different player—“quiet,” “serious,” “reserved,” and an “astute student of the game,” according to Dodger beat reporters. In a story written two weeks into spring training, at a time when player grievances usually start to bubble to the surface, Smith had nothing but good things to say about his new manager and the new team atmosphere. “I’ll say one thing for [Lasorda],” said Smith. “While other managers tell you that with a break here and there we may win, he tells you we are going to win. And he means it. He’s even made me believe it. I’m going around saying Dodger blue.”9
After the distant reserve of Alston, most of the players at the Dodgers’ training camp in 1977 found Lasorda’s methods refreshing. Spring practice drills—ordinarily a tedious forced march—remained lively throughout camp, mostly thanks to Lasorda’s antics. Many veteran players took the extra drills that Lasorda offered. Early in spring training the new manager had announced a special session of instruction he would call “Lasorda University.” After regular practice Lasorda would hold up to three hours of extra drills for young players on topics ranging from the squeeze bunt to the double-play exchange and anything else under the sun. “I told all the guys,” Lasorda said, “if you enroll in Lasorda University, your tuition will be perspiration, determination, and inspiration. And if you are lucky enough to graduate, you’ll make more money than a professor at Harvard or Yale.” Sometimes classes ran so late that he had to have the stadium lights turned on. And while the players sometimes looked like they would collapse from sheer exhaustion, the sessions were well attended. At least one of the team’s hardened veterans remarked that the team was approaching training with more “enthusiasm” than usual. “It was kind of like we were all rookies again,” the player said.10
Lasorda never let doubt break into the confidence he expressed in his team’s chances in the 1977 season. But, as Lasorda University revealed, the new manager couldn’t help but take on projects—small incremental tweaks intended to improve his team’s chances over the long season. For instance, he took special interest in catcher Steve Yeager, a strong defensive specialist who had hit an anemic .214 in 1976. The new manager instructed his third base coach, Jim Gilliam, to work on Yeager’s swing. Lasorda insisted that, with work, the catcher could hit at least thirty points higher. He also focused on Bill Russell, bringing in specialist coach Maury Wills to work on the shortstop’s footwork and loudly suggesting in the press that he could, with effort, raise his steal total from fifteen in 1976 to forty in 1977. Lasorda also instructed Gilliam to work with Russell on hitting to the opposite field, making the shortstop less vulnerable to left-handed pitching. With Steve Garvey, meanwhile, Lasorda offered instruction on making the throw to second base on a bunt. Garvey, an All-Star, Gold Glover, and former MVP whose arm was suspect at best, took Lasorda’s suggestion to heart, running the drill fifty times a day through spring. With his outfielders Lasorda worked on hitting the cutoff man. And so on. “I don’t call it spring training,” Lasorda said to a reporter as spring wore on. “It’s a refinement-of-capabilities camp. . . . [And] I’ll tell you one thing,” Lasorda emphasized with a jab of his finger, “this team is going to be prepared physically and mentally. If you just wanted them to get in good condition, you could hire a gym teacher.”11
Still, behind the bluster Lasorda must have been nervous, knowing full well the vast expectations that fell on his shoulders and realizing he’d have only one chance to prove himself to demanding fans and media, to the Dodgers’ upper management, to his players. He knew he needed his team to reach the World Series or he’d be considered a disappointment. And because of these pressures, Lasorda’s mind continued chewing on several burning questions through the spring: What could he do to light a fire under what had been, to that point, an underachieving team? How could he keep pushing his young players to be better than they thought they could be? What more could he do to help the Dodgers reach their full potential? Meanwhile, on a more practical level, Lasorda struggled to decide whom to bat in the number-two spot in the lineup. Would he put Rick Monday in the slot and hope the center fielder would break through, in power-dampening Dodger Stadium, with an endless barrage of line-drive doubles to the power alleys? Or would he bat the speedier contact hitter Bill Russell second, hoping the one-two battery of middle infielders would generate enough early run production to keep the pressure on his pitchers to a minimum? The issue remained an open question, with Lasorda musing about it to anyone who would listen right up until the start of spring-training games, when he finally chose Russell.
Through all of it, with all the pressure and expectation for the team to win, Lasorda seemed to be having the time of his life. “I can’t believe they’re paying me to do this,” he said over and over during spring training to anyone who would listen.
If the early exhibition season revealed something else about Tom Lasorda, it was that he seriously hated to lose, even in the meaningless games of spring training. The Dodgers played their first spring exhibition game of 1977 on March 11, beating the Boston Red Sox, 7–5. It was a typically slopp
y Florida League game that went back and forth before being decided on a ninth-inning Reggie Smith home run. Bill Russell batted in the two slot and went two for four. Rick Monday, batting sixth and playing center field, was one for four. On March 12 Lasorda’s squad took a close one against the Atlanta Braves in the typical fashion of the Dodgers of old: a 1–0 shutout win. Though Tommy John started the game and pitched three solid scoreless innings, Lasorda also worked several of his younger pitching prospects—Rick Sutcliffe and Rex Hudson. The team lost its first spring game on March 13 against the Braves, 5–3, when right-handed reliever Mike Garman gave up two unearned runs in the ninth inning. On March 14 the team lost to the New York Mets after giving up a first-inning two-run homer to Mets slugger Dave Kingman.
The team’s exhibition record was now 2-2, and Lasorda was silent after the game, perhaps fuming to himself about the losses. To make matters worse, in the hometown paper the next day reporter Don Merry wrote of former manager Walt Alston, who had been hanging around Dodgertown in his capacity as a special consultant for the team. It was a presence Lasorda did not relish being reminded of, especially after a loss. Alston, for his part, was noncommittal about the welfare of the team, saying he was keeping busy, even though his duties were not terribly clear. “Sometimes,” the paper quoted Alston as saying, “I feel as though I’m not earning my keep.”12 Alston gave a perfunctory assessment of Rick Monday, Yeager’s new swing, and some of the younger prospects at camp before he slipped quickly away to the golf course, and the reporter seemed disappointed the old skipper didn’t have anything more of note to say. But he shouldn’t have been particularly surprised—this dull nonstory about a nonevent was on par with the vast majority of reports that had emerged thus far from the Dodgers’ spring camp in 1977. As the spring progressed, and Lasorda kept his pledge to play his starting eight for much of the exhibition season, the beat reporters in camp were growing increasingly exasperated. They need not be, though, as the story lull would end soon enough.
On March 17 the Dodgers broke open a tie game versus the New York Yankees in Vero Beach, when the team’s thirty-nine-year-old pinch-hitting specialist, Manny Mota, knocked a two-run single in the eighth inning. With the 5–2 victory the Dodgers improved their record overall to four wins and two losses. All seemed to be back on track, and Lasorda was his jovial self again, little aware that a runaway train was about to upset his carefully constructed sense of harmony. That morning back in Los Angeles in the august pages of the L.A. Times, a story had broken that flew in the face of Lasorda’s rhetoric: the Dodgers’ ace pitcher and arguable face of the franchise, Don Sutton, was unhappy as a Dodger.
It came up as such things often do in spring training. Two days earlier, on March 15, a report announced that the Dodgers had come close to trading their thirty-two-year-old ace to the Boston Red Sox for the promising twenty-four-year-old outfielder Jim Rice. Sutton, who’d been saying for two seasons now that he was dissatisfied with his contract, had reportedly asked for a trade, and the Dodgers had been seeking a way to oblige him.13 When Don Merry, the frustrated reporter who’d spoken a few days earlier to a blasé Alston, asked Sutton directly if he was unhappy as a Dodger, the veteran smiled ironically. “No, I’m not unhappy,” he said. “I just shot a 74 [on the Dodgertown golf course], that’s only one over par.”14 Whatever the actual circumstances of the trade offer, or whatever the extent of Sutton’s unhappiness, the story sent shock waves among many who followed the Dodgers. As a result the team’s management quickly sought to contain the damage. Dodger GM Al Campanis, for instance, immediately downplayed the near trade as typical spring exploratory talks. Tom Lasorda, meanwhile, said simply, “I hope and pray that Don, no matter what is said, is loyal enough to himself and the Dodgers to do his best to win. . . . I know he’s too much of a pro to give anything less.”15
In light of the news about Sutton, as well as the continued holdout of Tommy John, many wondered what really was going on with the team. After all, how could the Dodgers’ two most veteran starters both be unhappy? This was the Dodgers of Koufax and Drysdale, of Don Newcombe and Carl Erskine, of Johnny Podres and Phil Regan, and an endless array of phenomenal pitchers. Who around the league, they wondered, wouldn’t trade place with either of them in a heartbeat? Heck, even Tom Seaver had wanted to be a Dodger. And Sutton? He had come up with the Dodgers back in 1966, right at the end of Koufax’s career. He had picked up his pregame habits from Koufax, learned how to act like a Dodger pitcher from Don Drysdale. For more than ten seasons he’d pitched his heart out for the team, winning nearly two hundred games in eleven seasons. Sutton in 1977 epitomized one of the game’s great ongoing traditions. How could he not want to be a Dodger pitcher? It was akin to Roger Staubach wanting to be rid of the Dallas Cowboys. The Dodgers just wouldn’t be the same without Don Sutton, nor Sutton without the Dodgers.
As for Tommy John, the veteran left-handed sinker baller, he had brought himself back from the dead with the Dodgers in 1974 by undergoing a radical new surgery to repair his frayed elbow—the type of surgery that was avoided by ballplayers of the time, who were convinced that the moment you went “under the knife” your career was likely over. John had been a journeyman veteran of nine seasons when he came to the Dodgers from the White Sox at age twenty-nine in 1972. With the Dodgers, however, his career blossomed. First, he began to win games—a lot of games, turning his lifetime losing record around to lead the National League in winning percentage in 1973 and 1974. Then, after blowing out his elbow late in the season, John was rescued by Dodger medical consultant Dr. Frank Jobe. The new surgical procedure, called ulner collateral ligament reconstruction but more commonly known as “Tommy John surgery” today, was like something out of science fiction—akin to what had happened to a popular TV character of the time, Steve Austin, a.k.a. the “Six Million Dollar Man,” whose body had been reconstructed with cyborg parts after a horrible plane crash. Jobe took a tendon from John’s right (nonpitching) forearm and used it to replace a ruined ligament in his left elbow. The idea was not a completely new one, as Jobe had used the technique to repair what he termed “Overuse Syndrome” on damaged wrist and hand ligaments for some time. However, since the type of elbow injury that Tommy John had was something experienced only by baseball pitchers, and since baseball pitchers long avoided any kind of surgery on their elbows, there had as yet been no opportunity to attempt the ligament reconstruction surgery on a patient’s elbow. Jobe’s idea was certainly radical and innovative, but what’s often overlooked in this event is how much credit is due to John for risking the surgery—for overcoming prevailing attitudes and fears of the baseball world—and then working bullheadedly, completely on his own, in the face of the complete unknown and through the pain and partial temporary paralysis and uncertainty to get his arm back in good-enough shape to become a star pitcher again.
In 1976 John returned to the Dodgers to pitch solidly for the team, winning ten games against ten losses and recording a respectable 3.09 ERA. By the spring of 1977 John, knowing that his arm was as strong as ever, that he was poised to help the team return to the World Series, simply wanted some extra assurance from them in the form of a multiyear contract. And Dodger fans certainly hoped there was a resolution to the impasse—the prospect of losing John and Sutton in the same year that the team lost Walt Alston was too frightening for many to imagine.
Despite all of the uncertainty, on March 18 Sutton helped the Dodgers improve their spring record to 5-2 by scattering only three hits and one run over five innings in an eventual 5–3 win over the Montreal Expos. Before the game Sutton would not comment on the Times story about the trade. “It’s been a smooth, uncomplicated spring,” he said cagily, “and I don’t want to get involved in any debates.”16 Still, despite taking the high road in the press, Sutton’s feelings about the Dodgers remained mixed. Sutton always seemed to feel he was not given his due with the Dodgers. He was not a flashy pitcher, not a big-weapon guy. Sutton simply had his own way of pitching that was good
enough for him to finish in the top five in Cy Young Award balloting in each of the previous five seasons.17
Now, with blustery Lasorda running things, Sutton’s patience had worn thin. (It didn’t help that Sutton was jealous of the contract the Dodgers had given Steve Garvey that spring.)18 Throughout spring training and beyond, then, Sutton waged a solo campaign. He flaunted Lasorda’s rules whenever he could, almost daring the new manager to take a stand with his most accomplished single player. Lasorda, bristling, took note of the slights but said nothing. Whenever Sutton made subtle comments or semirude cracks during clubhouse meetings, whenever he raised mild questions about Lasorda’s managerial techniques and strategies in the press, whenever he demanded trades, questioned other players’ contracts, or cracked jokes at the team’s expense, Lasorda said nothing. The manager simply said that he expected Sutton to be a “professional,” and Sutton, realizing perhaps he was doing himself little good, eventually simmered down.
Once the furor over Sutton’s unhappiness slowly died down, Lasorda faced other critical issues. On March 18 the manager announced that he had a new “number one concern.” Dusty Baker, the big twenty-seven-year-old left fielder who had undergone knee surgery during the off-season, had come up lame. The problem was, according to team trainers, that Baker’s repaired knee was responding to daily therapy much more slowly than they had hoped. While Baker insisted he felt no pain and pointed out he was swinging the bat well (batting over .400 in spring-training games so far), he continued to run with an obvious limp, and this worried Lasorda. “I don’t want to play him,” Lasorda said, “unless he is completely well.”19 On March 19, then, against the New York Mets, Lasorda inserted in Baker’s spot a twenty-year-old outfielder from the Dominican Republic named Pedro Guerrero. Guerrero was a promising prospect that the Dodgers had received in a trade with the Indians back in April 1974, when he was just seventeen years old. In the game against the Mets, which the Dodgers eventually eked out in twelve innings thanks to a three-hit, two-error rally, Guerrero got a key RBI as Baker watched from the bench.
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