Dodgerland

by Michael Fallon

  For a day hearts across Los Angeles raced. At a glance the Dodgers already looked beaten. They seemed to have little of the Phillies’ hunger and bite. After their sloppy play in Game One, the Dodgers looked like Little Leaguers playing against a team of full-grown men. Only Tommy Lasorda, the eternal scrapper, optimist, and native of a Philadelphia suburb, seemed unaffected by recent events. “You still got to win three games to win the playoffs,” Lasorda said after the loss, “and they won only one. Like the guy said, one flatulation does not make a windstorm. And one game doesn’t win the playoffs.”11 Bold words, to be sure, but Lasorda meant what he said. More important, he had a plan to start the windstorm.

  Considering how he had acted throughout the 1977 season, it was inevitable that Lasorda would take a can’t-fail attitude going into Game Two of the League Championship Series. Though he had been in the league and around the Dodgers for the better part of three decades, and had experienced all the highs and lows of the baseball life, he was still in essence a rookie manager. He was just happy to be here, after all, and certain that he would find a way to steer his beloved team to its final goal. He saw no reason he should contemplate losing or allow any doubts to creep into his thoughts. He was also was willing to try anything to get results. In his office after Game One’s tough loss, therefore, Lasorda weighed his options.

  Ten hours after Game One, the inner areas of Dodger Stadium were all but empty—except for a lingering Lasorda, a couple of sportswriters, a cleaning crew, and, surprisingly, Bill Russell. The shortstop, who was widely considered the goat of the game because of his two critical errors, stopped by Lasorda’s office before leaving and spoke to the gathered writers and his manager. “I’ll take you all out to dinner,” Russell glumly joked. “My money from Vegas should be here any minute. The gamblers have got to pay me a bundle for this one.” Lasorda looked at his young shortstop. He knew he could have taken a stern approach, as Alston might have. He could have yelled and ranted and told Russell his teammates expected more of him, but something, some slight inkling, told him that might be exactly the wrong approach to take this time. Lasorda knew his boys. He knew they could play better than they did. He knew this not only from his own experience, but because of a letter he had just received from a prominent fan from back east. “Dear Mr. Lasorta [sic],” the letter began, “I feel that I know you personally as I have been an ardent Dodger fan for 30 years.” That would have been 1947, the year that Jackie Robinson first broke into the league. “Please win the playoffs and go into the World Series. . . . I am 79 years old and this may be the last opportunity to see my Dodgers in a Series. Please give the team my love and devotion. I shall be listening and watching you on TV every game. Sincerely, Lillian Carter.”12

  Now, in the emptiness of Dodger Stadium, he wondered what it would take to get them out of their own heads, force them to lighten up, and just go out and do what they were capable of doing. Then it came to him. Lasorda gave Russell a slight nod and a smirk, and, in front of the reporters, he yelled at Russell, just a bit too loudly for the small confines of his office. “Cut that out. You can’t feel bad. You got us here. Just a couple of tough breaks. So what? You’ll be the hero again tomorrow. We’ll all be feasting again tomorrow on the fruits of victory.”13 Russell departed with the slightest trace of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. And Lasorda picked up the phone. He had a plan.

  In the tense Dodger clubhouse before Game Two, Tom Lasorda entered and announced he had someone with him who wanted to say a few words. A short, slightly plump, balding middle-aged man stepped out from behind the manager and walked into the middle of the room. “Hello fellas,” barked Don Rickles. “And thanks, Tommy Lasorda. Look at him.” He pointed at the manager standing in the doorway and at his most prominent feature. “Look at that stomach. You think he’s worried about you guys? No way. If you guys lose, he’s gonna tie a cord around his neck and get work as a balloon.” The clubhouse exploded in laughter, and Rickles began working the room like a pro, poking fun at Sutton, Garvey, Russell, Cey, and others each in turn. He told the team that if they lost tonight, they’d “all be waiting tables at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas tomorrow night.” When he got to veteran Tommy John, he stopped and opened his eyes wide. “And look at T. J. He makes a million dollars a year, and he wears trick-or-treat underwear.” When Dusty Baker, chuckling, stuck out his hand to shake Rickles’s, the comic deadpanned: “Don’t do anything. I’ll give you my TV. Whatever you want.” And on and on he went, until the clubhouse was as loose and noisy as any high school locker room.14

  It was an odd moment, but the ploy worked. The Dodgers took Game Two, 7–1, on the strength of a complete-game performance by Sutton and a grand slam by Dusty Baker in the fourth inning. The team was solid in the field, showing none of the jitters of the day before, and the team’s shortstop did redeem himself just as Lasorda said he would. “I just felt a lot more relaxed,” said Bill Russell, who had collected two hits, scored two runs, and ended the game by turning an unassisted double play. “It wasn’t like opening night in the playoffs. . . . I was booed a little (before the game) but I expected that. I deserved it the way I played last night. It was funny. I just laughed.”15

  In Game Three Los Angeles continued the fight. In front of a full rough and raucous Philadelphia crowd of nearly sixty-four thousand, the Dodgers kept pace through seven innings, fighting their way to a 3–3 tie. Notably, in the second inning, the Dodgers’ first run came on a scrappy effort by Garvey, who scurried from first base on a long double by Dusty Baker—although Phillies faithful claimed then, and afterward, that the Dodger first baseman never touched home plate. In the bottom of the eighth, however, the Phillies seemed to get the upper hand at last, scoring two runs when the Dodgers, in shades of Game One, committed two errors. And with Gene Garber on the mound for the ninth, who had thus far shut down the Dodgers in two innings of relief, things were looking good for the home team. When Garber retired Dusty Baker on a grounder to third and Rick Monday on a grounder to second, the seventh and eighth straight batters he had retired on ground outs in the playoffs, the home crowd stood in anticipation of a victory. It was at this moment that Lasorda decided to gamble.

  With two out in the top of the ninth and his team down 5–3, Lasorda called back his catcher, Steve Yeager, and sent up forty-year-old veteran Vic Davalillo to pinch-hit. It was perhaps the biggest call of the veteran ballplayer’s life, but you wouldn’t know it to look at the pinch hitter. Stepping up to the plate, Davalillo was calm. Years later he would reveal that he went to bat with a plan. Though Davalillo must have looked ancient to the young Phillies, he knew he still had good foot speed. As he approached the plate, he noted that the right side of the infield was playing well back to protect against any extra-base hits. Recognizing that “he was being given a gift,” Davalillo “decided to take what was being given him . . . and dragged a perfect bunt past the mound.”16 He just beat out the throw from second baseman Ted Sizemore.

  Next, Lasorda sent Manny Mota up next to pinch-hit for the pitcher, Lance Rautzhan. Mota hit a fly ball to left field that appeared to be the game ender, but the slow and clumsy left fielder, Greg Luzinski, booted the ball badly. Postgame commenters and armchair managers around the country would wonder, loudly and often, why Ozark had left Luzinski in the game, when it was a perfect moment for a defensive replacement. Ozark explained that yes, while he had done such a thing in certain key games throughout the years, in this game the situation was unique; Luzinski was due up third in the bottom half of the inning, and Ozark wanted to keep his slugger in the game just in case the Dodgers rallied to tie. Whatever the case, when the dust had settled, Mota stood at third and Davalillo had scored, bringing the score to 5–4. The crowd was suddenly silent, while the Dodger bench hooted and roared. Lopes came up next and smashed a hard grounder toward third that hit a seam in the Veterans Stadium artificial turf and bounced off Mike Schmidt’s knee. Phillies shortstop Larry Bowa picked up the ball and fired it to first, bu
t Lopes beat out the throw while Mota scored the tying run. Again, commenters at the game, and afterward, would suggest that the umpire at first blew the call—that Lopes was obviously out. Whatever the case a few moments later Lopes took second on an errant pickoff attempt by pitcher Gene Garber, and then Bill Russell singled up the middle, sending Lopes around to score the go-ahead run. In the bottom of the ninth, reliever Mike Garman held on to get the win, and the Dodgers were ahead in the series 2–1.

  One night later, on a wet Saturday night at Veterans Stadium, the Dodgers clinched by outlasting the Phillies through several rain delays. The final score didn’t matter much (it was 4–1; Baker hit another key home run and was unanimous choice for the series MVP), as this game was anticlimactic after the drama of Saturday. Afterward, as his players celebrated with laughter and showers of champagne, Lasorda was feisty. “All anyone has talked about during the playoffs,” he shouted over the noise, “is that the Dodgers couldn’t win here at the Vet. . . . Everyone in the country thought this Philadelphia club was better than ours. But we showed them on the field who’s the greatest ballclub in the league.”17

  After the game the Dodgers celebrated their National League victory in true Philadelphian style, feasting on Italian food at the Lasorda family restaurant just outside the city into the wee hours of the morning. Meanwhile, over in the American League, the Yankees and Royals had tied up their series. Someone asked Lasorda again which of the two teams he would rather face in the Series. This time, perhaps mindful of the bulletin boards that doubtless were prominent in both clubhouses, he did not bite. “I asked God for all the help he could give me in this series,” he said. “I’m not going to ask him for anything in that one.”18

  A day later the Big Dodger in the Sky gave Lasorda his answer, even if he hadn’t asked for one. In Game Five of the American League Championships Series, the New York Yankees beat the Kansas City Royals in dramatic fashion. Having been shut down for the most part by the Royals’ left-handed starter, Paul Splittorff, in the ninth they faced the Royals’ ace pitcher Dennis Leonard, who had led the American League that season in wins (with twenty) but had seldom pitched relief during his career. Adding to the drama was a controversial move that had been taken by the Yankees’ controversial manager, Billy Martin (of 10 Cent Beer Night fame). Before the game Martin had informed his erstwhile slugging star, outfielder Reggie Jackson, that he would not be starting the game. Part of this was (likely) the manager’s lack of respect for Jackson, whom he thought was a malingerer and a liability in the field. But Martin also loved to play the odds, and he had decided that keeping the free-swinging Jackson from the Royals’ starter, Paul Splittorff, who was well known for his ability to shut down the Yankees’ stacked lineup of left-handed batters, would make the proud Jackson hungry to prove his manager wrong if called upon to pinch-hit late in the game.19 Whatever the reason the ploy worked out splendidly for Martin, as Jackson got a key RBI single as a pinch hitter in the eighth against reliever Doug Bird. In the ninth inning, bolstered by the extra run they had scored in the eighth, the Yankees quickly knocked Leonard out of the game on their way to scoring three runs and securing a 5–3 victory.

  So the Dodgers would face the Yankees in the 1977 World Series. The contentious, sniping, self-sabotaging New York Yankees. The Bronx Zoo, as they would be called in due time. The Yankees. The Dodgers’ ancient archnemesis. The team that, between 1941 and 1963, had met the Dodgers eight times in baseball’s championship and had emerged victorious in seven of those meetings. The New York Yankees. Right from the frying pan, as an Italian family like Tom Lasorda’s would say, and into the coals.

  There couldn’t have been two more different teams in any World Series year than the Dodgers of Los Angeles and the Yankees of New York in 1977. The Dodgers, the team of Hollywood stars and young floppy-haired playboys, were America’s team. Popular, prosperous, and sexy, the Los Angeles Dodgers represented the youthful side of America and all the country’s potential for the future. They were situated in California, after all, under the sun and among the starlets of Hollywood. And they had even won over former Old Worlders like Frank Sinatra (born across the river from New York City in Hoboken, New Jersey) and Don Rickles (born in Queens). New York, on the other hand, was another world—a city of corrupt politics, brownouts, serial murderers, and a crumbling, uneven infrastructure. The Yankees represented the past, the old ways, while the Dodgers were the future. The Yankees were the increasingly money-focused, corporate face of baseball, while the Dodgers were the postmodern team who still honored the baseball traditions of the past. Whichever side of the country you came from, this World Series looked to be, if anything, an epic battle of values and likely a major economic boon for ABC TV, which would be broadcasting the Series, and for Major League Baseball.

  Tom Fallon had mixed feelings about the Dodgers’ World Series opponents. On the one hand, Fallon recalled how the Yankees had long dominated the Bums, his team from back when he was a young man trying to establish a family in Menands. To Fallon the Yankees represented, even back then (and much more so now, in the 1970s), the old America that he had tried to leave behind. The rusting, crumbling America of the Bronx, the Brooklyn shipyards, the New Jersey Turnpike, and seedy Times Square. Still, since Fallon had moved west to Southern California more than twenty years ago, the Los Angeles team had all but shrugged the Yankee monkey off its back. After all, the Koufax teams had won three World Series for Los Angeles, and one of them—in 1963—had been a remarkable four-game sweep of New York. And while Fallon would have loved to see such a thing again in his lifetime—imagine another sweep of the Yankees!—deep down, in the pit of his Dodger-loving stomach, he was worried. Those damn Yankees had beaten us so many times before. God, how he hated those Yankees.

  Fallon was not alone. In 1977, or in most other years, the great majority of baseball fans had good reason to dislike the Yankees. “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for a yacht,” said newspaper columnist Jimmy Cannon. “Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax,” suggested Chicago columnist Mike Royko. “Most all good Americans hate the Yankees,” wrote one wag during a lull in the Yankees’ dynasty. “It is a value we cherish and pass along to our children, like decency and democracy and the importance of a good breakfast. Along with the Pledge of Allegiance, hatred of the Yankees should be part of the naturalization test for new U.S. Citizen. If it were, everybody would pass.”20

  It wasn’t just that the Yankees won so many championships, though they had won a lot of them—twenty by 1977, more than twice the number of their closest rivals. What really rankled so many baseball fans around the country, rather, is the way the Yankees won them. Starting at least as far back as the 1950s, the New York Yankees won by stacking the deck in their favor. Part of it was money. With a large ballpark, and with the support of a large and rich city, the Yankees always had money—more than most teams. But another part of it was a very un-American bit of odds rigging. According to author Michael Shapiro, starting in the late 1940s the Yankees treated another big-league team, the Kansas City A’s, essentially as a high-level farm team. Because Yankees owner Del Webb was pals with the owner of the Kansas City A’s, Arnold Johnson, the Yankees were able to pilfer the A’s top players in order to keep their own lineup sharp. “Under Johnson,” Shapiro wrote, “Kansas City became the place where the Yankees sent the inexperienced, the untested, and the unwanted.”21

  Obviously, every team seeks any competitive advantage to help it win ball games. All teams, on occasion, pull off trades that are underhanded or deceitful—recall the Cubs’ accusations regarding the Dodgers’ unloading of Bill Buckner, after all. When it came to how the Yankees treated the A’s for more than a decade, however, competitive advantage was raised to a fine-art form. Between 1955 and 1959 alone, fourteen trades took place between the two teams, sending stars and solid role players like Roger Maris, Hector Lopez, Ralph Terry, and Johnny Blanchard to New York in exchange fo
r no-names like Jerry Lumpe, Tom Sturdivant, Marv Throneberry, and Johnny Kucks. As a result in these five seasons in particular the A’s finished in eighth place (out of eight teams) once and seventh place three times; the best finish they could muster, in 1955, was sixth place with a record of 63-91. Over the same period, the Yankees finished first four times and won two World Series titles. In 1957 the shenanigans were so obvious that a congressional subcommittee investigated whether the two teams had colluded in their transactions.22 The results of the investigation were inconclusive,23 though the results on the baseball field were not. Over a fifteen-year period between 1949 and 1963, the Yankees appeared in all but two World Series, emerging as world champions in ten of those years. Among fans and players of other teams that had none of the Yankees’ advantages, many wondered what use it was to play the long season when it was all but preordained that, year after year, the Yankees would win. Paul Richards, the manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the later 1950s, saw in the systemic futility of the American League a sign of baseball’s eventual demise. “If the American League history of the next decade approximates that of the last,” Richards suggested in a Look article late in the Eisenhower decade, “and every sign today indicates that it will, then the League will die. . . . The cause of the debacle will be the strangulation of competition and interest by the overlong dominance of the New York Yankees.”24 Richards cited, as evidence, that overall baseball attendance had fallen off through the years of Yankee dominance. And this was true even in the city of New York, where the Yankees brought home their championships.

  Beyond the basic unfairness of the Yankee’s consistent dominance, people also tended to dislike the pinstriped players themselves—viewing them as haughty, distant, reactionary, ruthless, superior, and unapproachable. Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Hal Chase, Carl Mays, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Bobby “Dark Cloud” Murcer, Thurman Munson—these were not nice men, as a rule, not guys you’d want on your side when the chips were down (though the chips were rarely ever down for the Yankees, of course). As the old joke put it: “When the Yankees go out for dinner, they reserve twenty-five tables for one.” An old-school sportswriter, Jack Mann, who covered the team during the 1950s for Sports Illustrated, said the Yankee clubhouse “held all the carefree charm of a dentist’s office.” Bill Lee, who pitched for the Yankees’ rival the Boston Red Sox during the 1960s and ’70s, had perhaps the best assessment of the typical Yankee character: “The more self-centered and egotistical a guy is, the better ballplayer he’s going to be. You take a team with twenty-five assholes and I’ll show you a pennant. I’ll show you the New York Yankees.”25 One very telling indication of just how bad was the team’s culture was the fact that the Yankees were one of the last teams to field an African American player. The team’s management long expressed open distaste for the idea of a black player in pinstripes, and even when catcher Elston Howard broke the team’s color barrier in 1955—eight years after Jackie Robinson first played for the crosstown rival Brooklyn Dodgers—his manager saddled Howard with the dismissive nickname “Eightball.”