Dodgerland

by Michael Fallon

  At Dodger Stadium in early May, as the weather heated up and the tension of the season began to build, Tom Lasorda had trouble communicating his good intentions for the team. The Dodgers’ manager, in light of the team’s inconsistent performance, struggled with the feeling that he was somehow responsible, that he wasn’t doing enough, and that perhaps he had somehow lost the pulse of his boys. On May 12, after the Dodgers had lost the opening game of a three-game series against the Cubs—the team’s third straight home loss—and had fallen into third place, the Dodger manager held yet another closed-door clubhouse meeting. Afterward, again Lasorda would not talk about what he had said in the meeting, beyond the fact that he had asked the team to show “more aggressiveness.” Other sources, however, reported that the manager may well have surpassed his previous record for vulgarity—that is, the 117 “four-letter words” that Sutton had “counted” during the previous clubhouse meeting. Whatever the content, to many it was becoming increasingly clear that, despite his reputation for being a “player’s manager,” Lasorda also possessed a pretty sizable dark and angry side.

  The Dodgers beat the Cubs in the second game on May 13, 5–2, behind strong pitching by Tommy John and reliever Terry Forster. In the final game of the Cubs series, however, all hell broke loose. On a rare Monday day game, the Cubs overcame the Dodgers 10–7 in fifteen innings on the strength of three home runs by the team’s lanky left fielder, Dave “King Kong” Kingman. Though he had come into the game struggling—batting only .221 with just four home runs on the season—Kingman smashed a two-run shot in the sixth, which cut the Dodgers’ lead at the time to 3–2. He then followed with a two-run blast in the top of the ninth, which tied the game 7–7, and another three-run shot in the top of the fifteenth inning to provide the victory. The Dodger hitters, who had sixteen hits in the game, stranded fifteen runners on base. It was their sixth loss in the last eight games. “This was as tough a loss as I’ve ever been involved in,” said Lasorda afterward, before focusing on the three–home run exhibition. “It was an unbelievable exhibition. The guy [Kingman] always seems to wait until he gets out there before he does it.”16

  In Newhan’s article Lasorda sounded levelheaded, if tired and disappointed—the kind of manager that Dodger fans widely believed he was and that the press let everyone believe he was. It was, however, a somewhat less than complete view of a manager. That is, beyond Lasorda’s image as a jovial, backslapping master of hugs and silly nicknames, there were a growing number of clues about a different Lasorda. None of these clues was more revealing than a later, less guarded, response by Lasorda to the loss his team had just suffered at the hands of Dave Kingman.

  Sometime after the game Tom Lasorda was interviewed by Paul Olden, a reporter for local radio station KLAC-AM. According to transcripts of the interview, it began innocuously enough, with Olden asking, “Can you give us just a few basic comments about your feelings on the game?” Lasorda’s response, too, was relatively mild, delivered in an aw-shucks sort of twang. “Well,” he began, “naturally I feel bad about losing a ball game like that. There’s no way you should lose that ball game. And it, uh, just doesn’t make sense.”

  “What’s your opinion of Kingman’s performance?” Olden then asked. The explosive response was instantaneous.

  “What’s my opinion of Kingman’s performance?” Lasorda responded, his voice suddenly rising.

  What the bleep do you think is my opinion of it? I think it was BLEEPING BLEEP. Put that in, I don’t BLEEP. Opinion of his performance? BLEEP, he beat us with three BLEEPING home runs! What the BLEEP do you mean, “What is my opinion of his performance?” How could you ask me a question like that, “What is my opinion of his performance?” BLEEP, he hit three home runs! BLEEP. I’m BLEEPING pissed off to lose that BLEEPING game. And you ask me my opinion of his performance! BLEEP. That’s a tough question to ask me, isn’t it? “What is my opinion of his performance?”

  “Yes, it is,” responded Olden in a somewhat shell-shocked voice, “and you gave me an answer.”

  “Well, I didn’t give you a good answer,” Lasorda said, “because I’m mad.”

  From there the interview wound down quickly. Olden quickly allowed that it “wasn’t a good question,” and Lasorda continued his rant. “That’s a touchy question to ask me right now,” he said. “‘What is my opinion of his performance?’ I mean, you want me to tell you what my opinion of his performance is.”

  “You just did,” Olden said.

  “That’s right,” Lasorda said, sounding very satisfied with himself. “BLEEP. Guy hits three home runs against us. BLEEP.”

  20

  The Ballad of Glenn and Spunky

  Managing is like holding a dove in your hand. Squeeze too hard and you kill it, not hard enough and it flies away.

  —Tom Lasorda

  I hear that when you get too loud in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, they call you aside and say, “We don’t do that.”

  —Pirate infielder Phil Garner

  Tom Lasorda’s rant about Dave Kingman would become, over time, a thing of legend—a glimpse at the unguarded mind of a Major League skipper dealing with the everyday pressures of managing a baseball team. In the immediate aftermath of Lasorda’s explosion, team followers and fans were astounded to discover that the carefully nurtured image of the manager as a cheerleading, jovial, backslapping friend of Don Rickles and Frank Sinatra and best buddy to his players was somewhat less than truthful. And by mid-May people all around baseball were taking note of the changed atmosphere around the Dodgers. While the team had formerly been known for its workmanlike efficiency and ability to avoid the scandals, flair-ups, and other unrest common among high-performing teams such as the Yankees and Reds, now the Dodgers seemed to have their share of internal tension. The quiet confidence that drove the previous year’s squad to dominate the National League was gone, and tension ruled the day.

  While the public and press were just beginning to understand the full character of the Dodgers’ sophomore manager, a number of players throughout the year had already learned their lesson the hard way. Sure, there was a lot you could get away with in Tom Lasorda’s loose clubhouse. “You can laugh at Lasorda,” wrote Bill Plaschke some years later. “You can play jokes on Lasorda. You can treat him like a nutty uncle or a wacky grandfather. You can do things to him that players on other teams would never dream of doing to their managers. But there is one thing you cannot do to Lasorda. The manager with no rules has one sin, and it is a mortal sin.” That sin? Betrayal. Betrayal to him, betrayal to the Dodgers organization, betrayal to the Dodger Way. None of these was tolerated by Lasorda. There was another good reason, after all, that Lasorda had his young players bend down on one knee to pledge their belief in the Dodgers—a reason beyond motivating them to do their best for the organization. Lasorda also wanted to let them know, in a subtle way, that disobedience came at the player’s own peril. “You must not be disloyal,” Plaschke continued. “You must never turn your back on him or the franchise. You must never do anything that would show a lack of respect for all he has done for you.”1 From the moment Lasorda became the Dodgers’ manager in 1977, any player who betrayed him or his team simply disappeared.

  Don Sutton, of course, was one player who put all of Lasorda’s rules to the test. The veteran pitcher had no qualms about directly clashing with his manager. Early on in Lasorda’s reign, Sutton went against one of Lasorda’s few pregame rules—that pitchers had to shag fly balls during batting practice. Sutton’s custom was to use this time to run, so that’s what he continued doing. One day in San Francisco during batting practice, Lasorda observed that Sutton and Doug Rau were running together. “Why do you do this to me?” Lasorda asked Rau, a player who had played under him throughout the Minor Leagues. “You’ve been like a son to me.” Rau’s response: “Sutton made me do it.” Lasorda then summoned Sutton. Sutton bluntly told his manager he would continue to run during batting practice. And Lasorda locked the office door. “Fine, you wan
t to change the rule, we’ll change it right here,” he said to Sutton. “Let’s fight right here, you and me. If I beat you, the rule stays. If you beat me, I’ll change it.”2 Sutton backed down, and the manager had made his point.

  To be fair, Lasorda balanced his insistence on loyalty from his players with his own unconditional loyalty to them, at least within limits. “It’s simple, really,” Lasorda said. “I show you the loyalty of a father, you show me the loyalty of a son. . . . That’s how I am, that’s what I’ve preached forever, that’s what made our teams work so well. You show me loyalty, I will watch your back forever.”3

  With the team not playing up to its potential in May, Lasorda was not the only Dodger who was frustrated. On May 16, two days after the Dodgers’ Sunday-night loss against the Cubs, Dodger beat writer Ross Newhan revealed that Reggie Smith had come back to the Dodger clubhouse and smashed a shelf. Though his public persona was not terribly colorful—particularly compared to the “other” Reggie who dominated the New York and national media—the veteran Smith was known as a strong and explosive personality. Described as a “high-spirited, volatile, bruising competitor on and off the field” in a newspaper feature profile in the summer of 1978, Smith was a key cog in the Dodgers’ success. (He had been voted by teammates the Dodgers’ most valuable player in 1977.) A Los Angeles native who had grown up in a strict, deeply religious household with seven siblings, Smith was taught at a young age to work hard and follow the rules. “The rules in our house were no smoking, no drinking, no coming in late, no backtalk,” Smith said. “I was encouraged to do my schoolwork, play plenty of baseball and football, but I was also expected to help with egg deliveries” in his father’s wholesale-egg business.4 From this background, Smith developed an intense drive to succeed in whatever he attempted. At Centennial High School in Compton, he mastered several sports: the one-hundred-yard dash, Golden Gloves boxing, football (he was recruited by a half-dozen colleges), and, most of all, baseball.5 Smith approached baseball with an intensity that was daunting. “Reggie’s a foxhole dude,” said his teammate Dusty Baker some years later. “If it was war or a baseball game, there wouldn’t be another person I want next to me.”6

  In 1978 Reggie Smith was the same person he always was. Married to his high school sweetheart, Ernestine, Smith strove for accomplishment and achievement. At home he played music with his family, having learned to play seven musical instruments, and he taught his children the same values he had been taught. “We begin with the usual parental subjects,” Ernestine said, “morality, honesty, responsibility, studying hard. Then we extend the guidance to other areas. We’re not fanatical preachers . . . but Reggie makes a special effort to pour his heart out to kids who have fewer opportunities.” Smith concurred with his wife and then tried to justify his intensity. “Someone once said,” he explained, “‘Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.’ And I believe it. . . . I’ll go out of my way to read and study. Ernestine and I are two of a kind in that way.” The two discussed some of their recent learning experiences—a Vladimir Horowitz concert, the King Tut exhibition, and an attendant study of ancient Egyptian history—before Smith continued. “The explanation is simple,” he said. “We didn’t go to college and we’re trying to become more well-rounded by reading and learning.”7

  Smith’s Dodger teammates, of course, were well aware of Reggie’s various passions. They called him the Professor, often testing his knowledge with questions and once even hanging a sign on his locker that read THE PROFESSOR IS GIVING LECTURES ON KING TUT. “He was very intelligent,” said teammate Dave Lopes years later, “and everything he did he wanted to become good at doing. He worked hard in the off-season at something new every year. . . . One year it was an airplane pilot, and he got his license. One year it was photography. . . . Every Spring Training, we’d ask ourselves, ‘What’s coming next?’ Reggie didn’t ever settle for doing things half-assed.”8 According to Lopes, Smith had also become, by 1978, perhaps the most accomplished of the team’s needlers, serving the crucial role of keeping things as “loose as possible in the clubhouse” in order to clear players’ minds of their worries and frustrations. “A good needler gets downright personal,” Lopes said in describing Smith’s approach. “He’ll try to shock you by saying the worst things he can think of about your wife or you—or any part of your life. He holds nothing back. But he does it in a way that if the guy getting the needle is human, he’ll laugh. That’s the goal.”9

  On May 15, one day after the loss to Kingman and the Cubs, Reggie Smith was the key in a close 7–6 win against the Pittsburgh Pirates. In the game Smith smashed two singles, hit a two-run home run, had two stolen bases despite his sore legs, and then came up to bat in the ninth with bases loaded and a chance to win the game for his team. “With a Dodger Stadium crowd of 35,290 chanting ‘Reggie, Reggie,’” wrote Newhan, “the right fielder drove [a] double into the right-field corner to cap a three-run, last-gasp assault that burdened Bert Blyleven with his fourth defeat in six decisions.”10

  Lasorda’s team, riled up from Smith’s heroics, swept the Pirates and prepared to meet the first-place Giants at home. Before the series, however, Lasorda decided to administer another necessary system shock to the team. On May 17 the Dodgers announced the trade of Glenn Burke, the once-promising outfield prospect who had come to the end of his rope with the team, to the Oakland A’s for twenty-nine-year-old outfielder Bill North. The Dodgers sold the trade as a win-win for both teams and both players. For the Dodgers North was an upgrade from Burke, who had never seemed to figure out how to hit Major League pitching. North would benefit as well by returning to the limelight. (The Oakland A’s had finished dead last in their division the season before, with a 63-98 record.) Critics, however, questioned the trade’s wisdom. North, they suggested, was not the player he once was. Though a switch hitter who gave the Dodgers a much-needed left-handed option and a speedster who had led the American League in steals three times, North’s playing time in 1977 had been limited to just fifty-six games due to various injuries. And in 1978 North was batting just .211, with almost no power.11 Sure, Burke’s numbers were even worse than North’s at the time of the trade, but it still seemed to many that the ceiling for the twenty-five-year-old center fielder was much higher than North’s. “Once we get him cooled down a little from wanting to play all the time,” Dodger coach Jim Gilliam had said of Burke sometime before 1978, “frankly, we think he’s going to be another Willie Mays.” Fans, too, were upset at the trade. “If Glenn Burke’s absence,” wrote two fans, “causes the Dodgers to lose the division title—as it may, considering his importance last year—we all can thank Walter O’Malley’s greedy, quick-profit business sense.” And according to a Dodgers beat writer at the time, even several veteran players on the team were distraught. “You don’t break up, disrupt a team going as well as it was going, to make change,” Lopes said later. “I didn’t feel it was going to make us a better ball club. . . . It was probably not the real reason why things happened.”12

  In fact, a number of things about the trade failed to add up, at least on the surface. If the management was truly concerned about the clubhouse atmosphere and attitude of the players, they likely hadn’t improved matters things by going after North.13 A member of the free-spirited and loose “Swingin’ A’s” of the early 1970s, North seemed initially upset about the move to the constrictive and conservative Dodgers atmosphere—not least because it meant he had to shave his beard, which he kept because shaving tended to irritate his skin. Dodger management shrugged off the issue, saying that North’s agent had indicated he would be receptive to the trade. But the arrival of North was tainted with other complications, including his continued leg problems and confusing life choices (North had recently been arrested for possession of cocaine).14 And though the Dodgers’ new center fielder said the right things when interviewed by the press a few days after his arrival in L.A. (“I’d like to play every day but I’m abou
t winning,” he said. “I’m about making a contribution in any way I can”), he also had this to say about his transition from the wild and contentious A’s. “I’ve been to the mountaintop, and nobody can take that away from me,” he said. “Now it’s mostly about money. I want some. I’ve enjoyed the fruits of the game, I’ve had a good career. Now I want to make some money.”15

  Also not adding up were the reasons the Dodgers gave for shipping off Burke. After the trade the team’s upper management let it slip out that one of the reasons for the move was that they considered Burke a “troublemaker,” and as evidence they cited his “frequently expressed desire to play regularly.” But what professional baseball player doesn’t want to play regularly? Furthermore, from all reports Burke was anything but a “troublemaker” inside the clubhouse. “He was the life of the team,” said Lopes a few days after the trade.16 “He was the guy who kept the chemistry going in the clubhouse.”17 Tellingly, Burke had been particularly popular with some of the team’s most problematic stars, Reggie Smith and Steve Garvey in particular, as well as with clubhouse leaders Lopes and Baker. Known for blasting disco music from the tape deck in his locker and reaching across the divides of a very diverse clubhouse, Burke had a ready and wide smile and a distinct penchant for making “Ali-esque pronouncements regarding his baseball and basketball ability,” all of which were widely appreciated by a team weary perhaps of the franchise’s dry professionalism and seeking to clear their minds of the stress of the long and difficult season. Indeed, according to common lore Burke had been the catalyst for inventing, or at least helping to popularize, a gesture that would become nearly ubiquitous in years to follow: the high five.18 “God, it’s quiet in here,” remarked one player in the days after Burke’s departure.19