In the end Bradley need hardly have worried about the racial rhetoric. After lining up endorsements from a wide array of political figures—Governor Jerry Brown, Senator Alan Cranston, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, and the majority of city council members, just to name a few—on April 5, 1977, Bradley swept back into office, winning just less than 60 percent of the vote to Robbins’s 28 percent. Despite the lingering sense of frustration and malaise that afflicted many in Los Angeles, Bradley’s reelection was at least something to crow about. There was still some light to be found behind the clouds of 1977.
9
Hollywood Stars and Blue Hard Hats
I bleed Dodger blue.
—Tommy Lasorda, Los Angeles Dodgers’ 1977 yearbook
Tell him that blood comes in only one color. Red.
—Sparky Anderson, March 26, 1977, in response to Tommy Lasorda
In Los Angeles at the end of March 1977, the Dodgers’ diehard fans were increasingly eager for the team’s return. Despite the meaninglessness of spring-training games, fans could see that the lineup was firing on all pistons. Some fans even allowed themselves the tiny hope that this might finally be the year. On Friday, April 1, the Dodgers played the first game in their annual Freeway Series against the Angels, winning 5–0 in front of nearly thirty thousand fans at Anaheim Stadium. Starting pitcher Doug Rau easily baffled the Angels’ vaunted new million-dollar free-agent signees Joe Rudi, Bobby Grich, and Don Baylor, giving up only one hit in six innings. Steve Garvey and Dusty Baker provided all the power the Dodgers needed by each slugging a two-run homer. In the next game on Saturday, also at Anaheim Stadium, Los Angeles got to the Angels’ All-Star left-handed starter Frank Tanana quickly and then amassed fifteen hits and ten runs en route to a lopsided 10–3 victory. Finally, on April 3, Tommy John shut out the Angels 3–0 in Los Angeles. The win gave the Dodgers their first Freeway Series sweep of the Angels since the series started in 1962, the Angels’ second year in the league.
After the final game of the Freeway Series, both teams attended the annual Southern California Baseball Writers Awards banquet, where local sportswriters vote on the best players on both local teams in certain categories. For instance, Manny Mota, the Dodgers’ aged pinch-hitting specialist, won the Most Popular Player Award; Rick Monday won the Civic Award; Steve Garvey won the MVP Award for both the 1976 season and the 1977 Freeway Series; and Don Sutton, who did not attend the event because he was shooting a commercial, won the Dodgers’ Best Pitcher Award. (After learning of his award, Sutton suggested that winning the award gave him “a chance to show the writers how happy I really am.”) Afterward, columnist John Hall, who attended the event, praised the Dodgers despite his lingering distaste for the current spirit of the game. “There was no gloating,” Hall wrote of the various Dodger players’ conduct at the banquet, “not even a mention of their sweep of the Angels putting them ahead for the first time ever in the rivalry that began in 1962.” Various Dodgers had fun at the banquet, poking gentle fun at each other, but beneath the facade was a seriousness of purpose that seemed to thrill Hall. “Maybe the Dodgers’ gentlemanly attitude was a bit humiliating to the Angels. Like ho hum, no big deal, they expected to whack the daylights out of the ambitious American Leaguers.”1
Hall’s comments after the Freeway Series pointed to two strong character traits that were emerging among the 1977 Dodgers. On the one hand, the team exhibited a businesslike attitude that was different from previous years. The Dodgers were serious about proving their mettle to the rest of the league. On the other hand, the Dodgers were also, as a group, surprisingly loose. After game 2 of the Freeway Series, Bill Russell suggested the key reason for this. “Usually spring gets boring,” the ordinarily restrained Russell said, “but it hasn’t been that way with Tommy around. Honestly, I think he’s got us jacked up.”2 (As if to illustrate his point, Russell had gone three for three in the game and had knocked in four of the team’s ten runs.)
Lasorda—who by now had been dubbed, because of his vocally eternal optimism, “Mr. Bubbles” by the local press—had indeed ratcheted up his antics in the final days before opening day. For instance, prior to game 1 of the Freeway Series Lasorda had finally cleared Baker to start the season in left field. But he had made the announcement in his own particular way. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Dusty,” the Dodger manager told Baker after calling him into his office, “but you’ve been traded to the Indians. I don’t know how they could have done this to me because I was counting on you to play left.” Only when Baker’s head dropped into his hands did Lasorda break character, looking at a calendar and saying, “Oh, wait a second. It’s April 1st. It’s April Fool’s day, isn’t it?” Lasorda’s prank, upsetting as it was, of course served a larger purpose. By poking fun at Baker’s deepest concerns—that he might not, after all his work, be part of the Dodgers’ long-term plans—Lasorda reinforced how committed Lasorda was to Baker for the 1977 season. It was just Lasorda’s way of giving the weak-kneed Baker one more shot of confidence for the season. And in the game that followed Baker smashed a double and a homer. Throughout the season Lasorda used this ironic method of reinforcement and encouragement, making a joke out of a weakness, distracting players with a purposeful prank, and so on. And Lasorda’s focused banter and targeted frivolity had already seemed to draw the Dodgers’ wide range of strong clubhouse personalities together. Or as John Hall noted, “The Dodgers already are playing like July.”3
After the Freeway Series, with the start of the regular season now only three days away, Lasorda and his coaches were determined not to let up. They continued working with players on the small parts of their games—Lasorda and coach Monty Basgall riding Ron Cey as he worked on his swing in the batting cage, Maury Wills working with Garvey on a long footwork session, Lasorda taking Bill Russell aside to discuss a mental lapse while running the bases, and on and on. As opening day loomed Lasorda continued to challenge his team of veteran professionals to take their game to the ultimate level, and his players—with perhaps just one or two key exceptions—rose to the challenge without outward complaint. The Dodgers won their next exhibition game on April 4 against the Giants in San Francisco and then ended the exhibition season with a loss against the Chicago Cubs in Arizona. Despite the final loss the Dodgers finished spring training with a 17-7 win-loss record, the best in the Majors by a full game over the Phillies and Brewers. Inspired by the team’s spring record and the infectious enthusiasm of Lasorda, team owner Walter O’Malley was overheard boasting at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon before opening day. “I have no apologies at all for our group,” O’Malley said. “After 20 years in L.A. this is our best team.”4
Lasorda’s motivation for driving his team in 1977 may have gone deeper than just wanting to prove his own managerial chops, and it may have gone deeper than his desire to prove himself worthy of his predecessor. Lasorda may have been out to return his beloved Dodgers to the heights of success that their owner, staff, fans, and followers expected. As if to explore these lofty team expectations before the 1977 season got under way, the L.A. Times published a story called “The Dodger Image,” written by Don Merry, which attempted to pinpoint the exact elements that made up the Dodger “brand.” The article enumerated the team’s unique assets: Dodgertown was considered the cream of spring-training sites in 1977, and Dodger Stadium, overlooking downtown Los Angeles, was widely admired. Plus, the Dodger fan base was enviable—in twelve of the previous nineteen seasons in Los Angeles, two million–plus people had come to see the team play. Part of the reason for the strong fan support, according to the article, was the consistently lively, and mostly positive, coverage of local media, led by the team’s television and radio broadcast guru, Vin Scully, who had been with the Dodgers since 1950. “I think that we came close to creating something like a Yankee dynasty in the early 60s,” Vin Scully told Merry. “But we didn’t have that cold, U.S. Steel approach to winning. There was always something zany happe
ning. The Dodgers just seemed more human.” And there was also, continued Merry, the shrewd and able leadership of its longtime owner, Walter O’Malley, and the “family” atmosphere that he engendered. This atmosphere had spread through the entire organization, become part of the institutional culture, and created a unique sense of team loyalty among staff and former players. This, the article pointed out, was perhaps the Dodgers’ biggest single asset: Dodgers, both former and current, were known far and wide for buying into the Dodger brand and promoting it. Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Dixie Walker, and current players like Ron Cey all were spokesmen for the Dodgers at events, civic functions, and throughout the baseball world. “They all created . . . a good public-relations image,” said Walter O’Malley. The article’s author agreed. “It is doubtful that even a high-powered Madison Ave. firm could have concocted a more favorable public image than the Los Angeles Dodgers enjoy today,” wrote Merry. “To spectators at Dodger Stadium, relentlessly billed as the finest of its type in the land, the product they pay to see represents success and excitement. . . . To others in baseball, the Dodgers come across as extremely professional, slightly conservative, authoritarian and dedicated to doing things correctly and in first-class style. They radiate a slight aura of superiority.”5
Interestingly, the article singled out one particular current player who perfectly personified “the Dodger image,” the team’s star first baseman, Steve Garvey. Garvey was described by Merry as “talented, good looking, friendly, happily married to a beautiful woman and well-educated.” Steve Garvey was, in many ways, the heart and soul of the Dodgers in 1977. Or, more precisely, he was the player that the public saw as the team’s heart and soul. Easily the team’s most popular player among its fan base, Garvey carefully cultivated a clean, wholesome, and friendly image. He was known for always taking extra time to talk to sportswriters, to stop and sign autographs or acknowledge fans, and to participate in a number of highly visible public charities around Los Angeles. Garvey, with his thick, dark hair parted across his forehead and his square All-American jaw, was nearly as telegenic as a Hollywood star. It helped too that his wife, Cyndy, was tall and blonde and as put together as a shampoo model. (In the late 1970s Cyndy began appearing on local television as a talk show host and would eventually land a regular position on AM Los Angeles, as a cohost opposite a veteran media personality named Regis Philbin.) The Garveys, as they built their presumed dream life together, were featured often in the media as the “Ken and Barbie” of baseball. Mostly this was said with admiration, but not always. At least outwardly, the Garveys were made for Los Angeles and the Dodgers, and the Dodgers and Los Angeles were made for the Garveys.
The team’s proximity to Hollywood affected the careers of Steve Garvey and a number of other Dodgers—such as the much less telegenic Don Sutton—heightening their visibility and turning them into fixtures on local, and sometimes national, media. While Garvey, the local media king, signed lucrative deals to endorse Aqua Velva, SegaVision’s new big-screen TV, Geritol, and Southern California Chevrolet dealers and made appearances on television shows like The Gong Show and The Celebrity Challenge of the Sexes, Don Sutton appeared on the game show Match Game PM. Several Dodger couples—Ron and Fran Cey, Sally and Tommy John, Steve and Cyndy Garvey—were featured in Family Circle. Davey Lopes was a spokesman for the Ronald McDonald House. Ron Cey endorsed Wheaties, hoarsely singing the “Eaties for My Wheaties” jingle, and so on. But this was nothing new; Hollywood had long helped define the team’s core identity. In the 1950s key Tinseltown figures had been among the most prominent local voices supporting bringing the Dodgers to town.6 And from the team’s first opening day in Los Angeles, on April 18, 1958, at the jimmy-rigged ball field at the old L.A. Coliseum, Hollywood turned out in force to support the team. Among the nearly eighty thousand fans gathered to watch the Dodgers beat their rivals, the Giants, who had moved to San Francisco, were Edward G. Robinson, Ray Bolger, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, Danny Kaye, Chuck Connors, Burt Lancaster, Jack Lemmon, Nat Cole, Danny Thomas, and Groucho Marx.7
The Hollywood-Dodgers connection lasted beyond just the first season or two. With the demise of the old Pacific Coast League Hollywood Stars after 1958, the Dodgers established an annual “Hollywood Stars” charity event, in which famous old Dodgers and team figures played a slow-pitch game with various Hollywood figures of the day. Among the stars who played the game during the event’s heyday were Pat Boone, Phyllis Diller, Milton Berle, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Phil Silvers, Nancy Sinatra, Annette Funicello, Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, Walter Matthau, and Jack Lemmon. Even beyond this event the Dodgers’ fan base of the 1960s and ’70s included such Hollywood figures as Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, and Milton Berle.
Several Dodger players took advantage of this connection to Hollywood through the years. Chuck Connors, a former Dodger first baseman, landed a role as the star of television’s The Rifleman in 1958. Connors had come up through the Dodgers system in the 1940s and would become associated with the team and various Dodger players. In the 1960s Dodger megastars Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, both friends of Connors, appeared on numerous TV shows and movies, including 77 Sunset Strip and Connors’s Rifleman. In fact, the two Dodger pitching stars used the threat of roles in a film called Warning Shot as leverage against Dodgers management during their holdout before the 1966 season.8 In 1977 Wes Parker, the slick-fielding first baseman who had retired from the Dodgers in 1972, was tabbed to appear in a new Norman Lear situation comedy, All That Glitters.9 Parker got the job on a fluke when he was invited to do a walk-in audition after Lear saw him doing play-by-play TV commentary. Parker suggested that his experiences on the Dodgers had been good preparation for acting. “Acting has many things in common with baseball,” he said. “Acting has the same excitement and creativity. It lets you be a ham if you’ve got a little of that in you, which I’m sure I do or I wouldn’t be in the business. It has the best aspects of the sports life without some of the things I didn’t enjoy, primarily the travel.” And when asked where he thought the job would take him, Parker was confident: “Eventually, I’d like to do feature film work. . . . I just want to be a good actor. I’m not in this for a lark. I don’t want them to say, ‘Yeah, for an athlete he’s a pretty good actor.’ I want to be a good actor in my own right.”10
Adding additional fuel to the Hollywoodization of the Dodgers in 1977 was, of course, the arrival of Tom Lasorda, whose outsize, larger-than-life personality fitted perfectly with the local schmooze-and-be-schmoozed Hollywood ethic. The stars of Hollywood, many of whom already appreciated the Dodgers, loved Lasorda because he was, like them, an entertainer. Among Lasorda’s particular friends were Gregory Peck, Milton Berle, and comedian Don Rickles, who would serve as an honorary batboy for Lasorda’s team throughout the 1977 season. Still, no Hollywood figure connected to Lasorda would be bigger in his first year as manager than one: the Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra. This connection added a complex dimension to the new manager’s clubhouse pull. Even some of the most jaded of his players—the ones who resisted even the manager’s most outlandish antics—would have to pause and consider, if Lasorda was so full of bull, why would the most famous singing star on the planet hang around him so much? “That’s why I put up a whole wall of his photos in my office,” Lasorda said. “Because nobody would believe it.” Throughout 1977 Lasorda would often have dinner with Sinatra in Los Angeles and at Sinatra’s Palm Springs estate, and Sinatra would get his baseball fix by coming to hang out in Lasorda’s office. When asked to tell the story, Lasorda would explain he had first met Sinatra years before through former Dodger manager Leo Durocher. Though Lasorda was only a Minor League manager at the time, Sinatra immediately appreciated the manager’s sense of humor and appreciated that he did not try to curry the singer’s favor. A few years later, when the two were gathered at a back table at a restaurant, Sinatra looked at Lasorda, by then the Dodgers’ third base coach, and said, “You know, Tommy, I’ve be
en thinking about it. You should be the manager of the Dodgers.” Lasorda, stunned by the pronouncement, was for once at a loss for words. “Tell you what,” Sinatra continued. “The first day you manage the Dodgers, I will come out and sing the national anthem for you.”11
And that’s how it happened that, for the Dodgers’ home opener on April 7, 1977, in the bright afternoon sun before a game against the rival San Francisco Giants, Frank Sinatra stepped up to a microphone that had been placed near the outfield wall in left field. Wearing a Dodger warm-up jacket, Sinatra sang the national anthem for a sold-out crowd, and the crowd erupted in pleasure as hundreds of yellow balloons were released into the air, brightening the already impossibly bright California sky.12
The Dodgers’ slick Hollywood image was not universally admired around the Major Leagues. Sparky Anderson, for instance, seemed particularly dismissive of the Dodgers before the 1977 season, suggesting the team was not strong enough to thrive over the long season. “They start getting ready in January,” said Anderson, whose team had dispatched the Dodgers after trailing them in both 1975 and 1976. “We’ll just have to stay within five games by July. If we do that, we’ll be all right.” And plenty of rival players looked at the Dodgers with disdain simply because of the team’s image. “I love to beat the Dodgers,” said Giants pitcher John Montefusco, “because I hate them so.”13
On opening day in 1977 the Dodgers faced Montefusco, who had predicted, after winning the Rookie of the Year Award in 1975 and playing in the All-Star Game in 1976, that he would win twenty games this season and the NL Cy Young Award. This prediction, of course, could come true only if he beat his team’s rival multiple times. In 1976, after all, Montefusco had faced the division-rival Dodgers six times, recording a 3-2 record against the team on his way to winning sixteen. The Dodgers fared well against Montefusco in the first game of the season. Taking advantage of a new ball produced by the sporting goods company Rawlings—the first new baseball in the Major Leagues after using one by Spalding for nearly one hundred years—the Dodgers played flawlessly, outhitting the Giants 9–4 and securing an easy 5–1 victory. Lasorda’s managerial career had begun with a mark in the win column.
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