On May 22, as the team traveled to San Diego for a night game against the Padres, the Dodgers shared second place in the West with the Reds, just a half game behind the San Francisco Giants. In contrast to just a few days earlier, manager Lasorda was in a jovial mood with the press. “It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen through the rest of the summer,” he said. “But this (the three-way race with San Francisco and Cincinnati) is great. I’m happy for baseball. This is good for our division and good for the game. . . . To see the fans’ reaction this weekend to these games was great, really something.”3 The lightness in the clubhouse was short-lived, however. In San Diego the Dodgers lost two of three games. Then, after traveling to San Francisco on May 25, the team lost two of three against the Giants. Just like that, on May 28, Los Angeles had fallen back into third place, three and a half games behind San Francisco.
Part of the problem was a series of nagging injuries to Dodger regulars. Rick Monday, Reggie Smith, Bill Russell, Ron Cey, and Dave Lopes all missed time due to various strains and pulls, causing Lasorda to joke: “We’ve gone through so much tape I should have bought stock in Johnson and Johnson.” Beyond the jokes, however, Lasorda remained frustrated with his team, again holding a closed-door clubhouse meeting before the team’s May 27 game against the Giants, then exploding at an umpire after a controversial call during the fifth inning of a loss. Dodger fans too, having noticed the team’s troubles thus far on the season, were quick to express their dissatisfaction. “I wonder if other true-blue fans like myself think maybe the Dodgers aren’t exactly putting out 100% effort?” a fan wrote to a local paper, perhaps voicing the concerns of many team followers. “The 1978 team seems to lack determination and enthusiasm. Is it complacency or is it that they are satisfied with just reaching the World Series last year? Whatever, that winning punch is missing.”4
With all the criticism leveled at the team, a reporter asked veteran outfielder Reggie Smith if there might not be a backlash among players over the added pressure Lasorda was creating. “No, because Tommy always speaks confidently and collectively,” replied Smith, whose own seasonal frustrations were clear during the first game of the season, when he was restrained from going after a fan who had thrown a beer can at him. “It’s only when you start singling out individuals that a pressure is created, that you sit there wondering, ‘Who’s next?’ Tommy doesn’t do that, and he also never fails to mention that he knows we are still going to win it.”5
Despite all the efforts to rally the team, through much of June the Dodgers’ play was characterized by inconsistency, missed opportunities, streakiness, and plain sloppiness. The month began with a long road trip to the East Coast, during which the team’s record against the Phillies, Mets, and Expos was 3-7. Afterward, the Dodgers rushed home to prepare for a two-game series against Philadelphia, a team that had swept them a week earlier. Frustration continued to mount. Now just three games above the .500 mark, the Dodgers were stuck five games behind the Giants. A spate of letters flooded into the paper, some blaming Lasorda for his angry tirades—“I’m sick and tires of reading nothing but complaints from Dodger manager Tom Lasorda,” wrote one woman. “. . . There’s more to this game than . . . continuously babbling”—and others blaming the team for being poor losers. “The Dodgers [are] a fast-fading group of ego trippers who are poorly led and motivated,” wrote a fan from Pasadena. “What’s wrong with the Dodgers? Simple: Ron Cey and Davey Lopes worry more about Steve Garvey’s image than their own batting averages,” wrote another fan from Irvine.6
The outside perspective on the team may, or may not, have been accurate. On the one hand, players took full responsibility for the team’s losing ways and sought to address the problems. After an ad hoc meeting of players in Reggie Smith’s hotel room on June 6, for instance, during which players discussed the need to remain confident and aggressive, some players emerged shamefaced. “Tommy can only do so much,” said Smith about his decision to lead a meeting, “can only say so much before it becomes repetitive. We’re the ones who have to do it and I think we all felt a need to reassure ourselves about each other’s confidence, to reassure ourselves that we all still feel we have the best team, that by July and August we’ll be back out front. We talked about the need to stop waiting for things to happen and going out and making them happen, about staying loose and relaxed, and regaining that old feeling, that old confidence that when we step on the field, we’re going to win, period.” Dodger pitcher Doug Rau, who went out and got the win later that day to snap the team’s five-game losing streak, agreed with Smith, while also acknowledging his appreciation for his manager. “I give Tommy Lasorda a lot of credit. He hasn’t panicked one degree during all of this (nine losses in the previous 12 games).”7
On the other hand, just as the Dodgers’ losing streak began in June, word spread around the team and among the press corps that an old sore spot of dissension within the clubhouse had once again flared up. After a loss on June 8, noted team gadfly Don Sutton was the subject of a story by sportswriter Marty Bell. In the June issue of the magazine Sport, in an article called “Don Sutton Does Not Bleed Dodger Blue,” the pitcher sang a familiar song. “I do not bleed Dodger blue,” he said. “I don’t appreciate the rah-rah style. I don’t go in for all the hugging and kissing. . . . I’m also not a yelling, screaming headline grabber. . . . I don’t need to be the most famous player in baseball. But it would be nice to know that I was respected and appreciated by those around me. . . . Some day, I’m going to retire with most of the Dodger pitching records and someone’s going to pick up the record book and say, ‘Gee, I never realized this Sutton was such a great pitcher.’”8 Despite Sutton’s statements fans responded warmly to the pitcher after a game on June 25. In a 4–3 squeaker over the Reds, Sutton pitched six somewhat shaky innings, in which he gave up nine hits and a home run to César Gerónimo. Still, it was enough to collect the win, Sutton’s 7th of the season (against 6 losses), and the 197th of his career. That number, 197, moved the thirty-three-year-old veteran of twelve seasons with the Dodgers into a tie with Hall of Famer Don Drysdale for most wins by a Los Angeles Dodger pitcher. (Drysdale, who pitched two seasons in Brooklyn, had an overall career total of 209 wins as a pitcher for both cities). In the fifth inning of the game, Sutton also received a standing ovation after recording his third strikeout, and 2,283rd of his career. That total tied him for first on the L.A. Dodger strikeout list, again with Don Drysdale. “I wasn’t expecting it,” said Sutton, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically (considering his recent criticisms). “It was really thrilling. It was one of the greatest things to happen to me. A lot of people where important to me as I was coming up were watching on national TV. The timing couldn’t have been better. I wish I could have gotten one more (strikeout) and broken the record.”9
As if it wasn’t enough that the old tensions with Sutton had rekindled, after a loss on June 9 Lasorda must’ve felt like throwing in the towel on the season. In the game Reggie Smith was knocked out with an injury to his shoulder, the same shoulder that, in 1976, had required season-ending surgery. Even worse, after initially consulting with doctors who said Smith might need another surgery to repair the shoulder, Smith suggested he might retire from baseball rather than have another surgery. “When it rains it pours,” said Lasorda, summing up all of his current worries. Yet, dark as things seemed, it was at just this moment that several key developments finally seemed to drag the team out of its doldrums.
The day after Smith’s injury the Dodgers beat Montreal in a happy fashion, manufacturing two runs in the top of the ninth off a base hit by Garvey and a walk by Cey, followed by a sacrifice bunt by Monday and a bloop double by Baker just over the head of the Expos’ third baseman. “We got a break,” said Lasorda, of the game-winning hit. “He (Montreal manager Dick Williams) played the infield in with one out and a one-run lead. If the infield’s back, the third baseman catches Baker’s chinker.”10
Between June 10 and June 16 the Dodgers followed by
rattling off seven straight wins at home, though afterward they remained in third place, still five games behind the Giants. A little more than a week later, meanwhile, the Dodgers, seeking to shore up a faltering bullpen, made an important move—calling up a twenty-one-year-old pitcher from Michigan named Bob Welch. Drafted by the Dodgers in the first round of the 1977 June amateur draft, Welch pitched the second half of the 1977 season in AA San Antonio. He did well enough in that stint to be invited to attend spring training with the Dodgers at Vero Beach in 1978, where he played well. At one point a radar gun clocked Welch’s fastball at ninety-three miles per hour. “That puts him in Tom Seaver category,” said an excited Al Campanis within hearing of a reporter. Sent down to the team’s AAA affiliate in Albuquerque after spring straining, in eleven starts Welch recorded a 3.78 ERA and 5-1 win-loss record, which was good enough that buzz began to build around the young pitcher.
“In June,” Welch said of 1978, “the general manager of the Albuquerque team started paying attention to me. One day I was sitting in the stands, keeping a chart of our pitcher, and he sat next to me and asked, ‘Do you have an agent?’” Welch figured there was something going on, and, sure enough, he got the call from the Dodgers on June 18. And on June 20 Welch made his first Major League appearance—a two-inning relief stint at home against the Astros. Welch gave up one hit and no runs and recorded two strikeouts in the game. On June 24, in his third appearance, Welch pitched one and a third innings against the Reds in relief of Don Sutton (in the game in which he tied the all-time L.A. Dodger win mark), and he recorded his first save. By the end of June Welch had made enough of an impression in his three relief appearances, in which he had given up no earned runs in five and a third innings of work, that he was the focus of a feature article in the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t know how I could be any more excited about a young pitcher,” the article quoted Al Campanis as saying. “He’s Major League–plus. He’s akin to a power pitcher like Tom Seaver.” To Lasorda, meanwhile, Welch was reminiscent of another pitcher he once knew. “I played with Don Drysdale [at Montreal in 1955],” Lasorda said, “and I see a lot of Drysdale in Welch. Similar style and characteristics. The same intensity in his eyes. Welch comes over the top and Drysdale was a sidearmer. It’s about the only difference.”11
Welch, meanwhile, seemed to have hardly taken in his good fortune. Because of an even temperament, Welch exhibited what looked like an innate self-possession. “He comes in with poise and confidence,” said Lasorda. “He takes the ball and goes after the hitters.” Welch, however, took pains to set the record straight. “I have butterflies,” he said. “I always do. But the job is the same whether it’s here or Albuquerque, whether it’s Pete Rose or someone you’ve never heard of. I can’t do the job by getting nervous about it and Lasorda seems to know that. He doesn’t say anything that will make me uncomfortable. He give me the ball and says, ‘It’s your ball, your game.’ He’s really helped my confidence.”12
Despite the boost to the Dodger bullpen from Welch’s arrival, for the rest of June the team was up and down. In the ten games between June 17 and June 27, the team’s record was 5-5. What ailed the team, someone pointed out, was that despite having returned virtually the same lineup that had taken the team to the Series in 1977, most of the team’s regulars had fallen well short of the pace they had set the previous year. “The figures are down in every case,” wrote one sportswriter, “except those of Smith,” who was batting .318 and had eleven home runs as of June 9, “and Monday,” who was hitting .326 on June 9 and also had eleven home runs.13 The Dodgers’ number-eight hitter, catcher Steve Yeager, was batting just .198 and had hit just one home run to date (compared to the sixteen home runs he had hit in 1977). Bill Russell, meanwhile, who batted second for the team behind speedster Dave Lopes, was hitting .256, compared to his 1977 average of .278. Dusty Baker, who had hit thirty home runs in 1977, had logged only two in the first fifty-five games of 1978. Consistent Steve Garvey, who had hit just above or around .300 over the five previous seasons, was hitting a paltry .269 as of June 9. Even the team’s traditional strength, its pitching, had fallen off from the previous season, recording an ERA of 3.84 thus far in 1978, compared to the team ERA of 3.22 the season before. The Dodgers simply, continued the writer, had had “trouble regaining the former fire, feeling, and confidence” of manager Tom Lasorda’s first year at the helm.
The sense of decline on the team was so palpable and frustrating that a usually somber and quiet Dodger pitcher, Burt Hooton, spoke out about the team’s woes at a Sportswriters Association banquet. “Our staff had recorded only one shutout this season. Our staff ERA is around 3.80,” said Hooton, before explaining that he had seen things go wrong during recent games that he had not seen in all his years of playing baseball. “Errors at inopportune times, poor base running, failure to advance a runner to scoring position, lack of hitting and then lack of pitching have all combined to hurt the team.” Still, Hooton conceded, there were signs the team was coming around. “The enthusiasm is still there and it’s genuine,” he said. “But the division is so much stronger and that’s going to make it tough to catch up if any team falls too far behind.”14
As if in response to Happy’s encouragement, the Dodgers managed to win six straight games to end the month. After beating Cincinnati on the road, 2–0, on July 1 for their third straight victory over their Western Division rivals, they remained three games behind the Giants. One bit of good news was that Reggie Smith’s tender shoulder, which doctors feared would need surgery, was deemed to be merely a sprain and was improving on its own. “You have no idea what kind of load this is off my mind,” Smith reportedly said after learning he would be able to play again after letting his shoulder rest.15 While Smith’s pending return did bode well for the Dodgers’ chances, in late June the team received a small shock after their new relief pitcher, Terry Forster, developed chronic soreness in his elbow. Forster, who had been the team’s most effective reliever thus far in 1978, would have limited availability for much of the next month.
By July 1 Smith’s productive bat was back in the lineup, though his home run power was slow to return until later in the month. News that came to the team a day later provided an additional shot in the arm, when the team announced it had reacquired their former power-hitting catcher Joe Ferguson—ostensibly to provide some relief to the slumping Steve Yeager—from Houston for cash and a couple of Minor Leaguers.16 “I’m very pleased to have Fergy back,” said Tom Lasorda. “He can play two or three positions and should be able to play five or six more years. The fact that Yeager has been struggling had a lot to do with it, though Yeager is still my regular catcher, still the best defensively that I’ve seen.” Ferguson’s former, and perhaps renewed, rival for the Dodger backstop position, Steve Yeager, expressed understanding, and even some agreement, with the move. “I certainly think the trade was a good move,” said Yeager. “He’s a hell of a player and a valuable property since he can play two or three positions. We’ve always been friends. There’s never been ill feelings.” Still, in the strange and stilted atmosphere of the Dodger clubhouse, even this welcome news had negative repercussions, as the increasingly disgruntled Dodgers utility man Lee Lacy expressed some upset at the news. “With the acquisition of Ferguson,” Lacy said on July 2, “I think my playing days with the Dodgers are over. I don’t see myself doing anything more than pinch-hitting or pinch-running.”17
It’s axiomatically true that every struggling clubhouse is an unhappy clubhouse, but Dodger unhappiness was reaching a fever pitch as the team continued to underachieve over the summer. Even former players seemed concerned about the current atmosphere around the Dodgers. “The Dodgers are facing complacency,” said former Dodger first baseman Wes Parker. “We faced the same problem in 1965 and 1966. In 1965, we won the pennant, then had all kinds of problems the following year. We won the pennant again, but it was a struggle. The other teams in the league were shooting for us.”18 Meanwhile, former Dodger reliever Mi
ke Marshall, who was now attempting to make a comeback at age thirty-five with Minnesota in the American League, offered an even nastier assessment of the team:
If I could take the Dodger talent and give it to the Twins, we’d be 40, 50 games over .500 at the end of the year. The (Dodger) talent is immense. The attitude is (expletive). . . . Walk into the Dodger clubhouse and see how many players are sitting at their lockers reading stat sheets. Major leaguers don’t read stat sheets. In this game, you have to say, “If I make an out on a grounder to second base, the runner moves over and the club has a better chance to win.” Not: “I backhand the ball, I might get an error and not win the Gold Glove.” That’s not baseball.19
After beating up on the Reds in Cincinnati in early July, the Dodgers traveled back home and split four games against the Braves. Despite the split the manager was not happy with the team’s play. This was particularly true of the third game, which the Dodgers lost 9–8 after taking an 8–0 lead after five innings. “It’s a (bleep bleep) crime to lose a (bleep bleep) game like that,” Lasorda said afterward to a reporter, who, perhaps thinking of the Dave Kingman incident earlier in the season, decided to be faithful (though still PG rated) in recording the manager’s words. “A (bleep bleep) eight-run lead. A (bleep bleep) two-run lead with two (bleep bleep) strikes on the hitter. (Bleep) no. I can’t ever (bleep bleep) remember losing a game like that. I can’t ever remember a (bleep bleep) tougher loss.”20
On the road against Houston the Dodgers won three of their next four games, ending the first half of the season—before the All-Star break on July 10—on a high note. The Dodgers were still in contention, perched in second place, two games behind the Giants and one game ahead of the Reds, and the sense of relief around the clubhouse was palpable. Players were well aware that, with their inconsistency thus far on the season, they could have been much worse off at the All-Star break. “To be only two back with all the injuries we have had,” said Smith, “is a very good sign.” Dave Lopes agreed with this teammate. “We’re extremely lucky to be only two back at the break,” he said.21
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