It's Friday, an unseasonably warm day for late January here on the East Coast. It's also the day of week when I share quotations intended to be informative or uplifting. Today's words of wisdom come from Hall of Fame baseball man Tommy Lasorda.
That's not as random as it sounds. The news peg is last Monday's debate in California between four candidates running for the U.S. Senate seat held for three decades by Dianne Feinstein. The candidates were three congressional Democrats who want to trade their House seat for one in the Senate, and one Republican, Steve Garvey, is who seeking office for the first time.
Garvey was a star first baseman in Major League Baseball in Southern California, playing for Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. His best years were with the Dodgers where he played for Tommy Lasorda, a Hall of Fame manager known for fierce loyalty to his players, including Garvey.
(Steve Garvey, by the way, should also be in the Hall of Fame. The modern obsession with advanced analytics makes that impossible, but it's one of life's minor injustices. Explaining my reasoning would take us down a rabbit hole and cause the stat geeks' heads to fly off their bodies. It's been a stressful week for some of them, what with Donald Trump winning in New Hampshire, so I'll write about Garvey and Cooperstown another time.)
Born in 1927 to immigrant Italian parents in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Tommy Lasorda excelled as a left-handed pitcher in high school and the minor leagues. There's a phenomenon in organized baseball in which a ballplayer is doomed to be "a Triple-A player." That means he performs well at the highest level of the minor leagues, but doesn't quite have the talent to succeed in what players call "The Show."
Lasorda was an extreme example. And undersized if fiercely competitive left-handed pitcher, he dominated in the minor leagues, but flamed out in the majors. That is not hyperbole. Pitching for the Schenectady Blue Jays in 1948, Lasorda once struck out 25 opposing players in a 15-inning game -- and knocked in the winning run himself with a single. He was so good for so many years pitching in Montreal (then a minor-league affiliate) that he's in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame as a player. Yet his stat line as a major league pitcher is utterly underwhelming: 26 total appearances in 58 and one-third innings, a won-loss record of 0-4, and an abysmal Earned Run Average of 6.48.
He was released after two seasons by the Brooklyn Dodgers before pitching for one more year in Kansas City. (In the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up category, Lasorda's spot on the Dodger's roster was taken by another young lefty, albeit one who threw much harder. His name was Sandy Koufax.)
And so it was on to coaching and managing. In 1976, Lasorda replaced Dodgers manager Walter Alston, who would be inducted into Cooperstown himself six years later. Lasorda was confident from the start. Asked by famed Dodgers' broadcaster Vin Scully about the pressure in replacing a legend, Lasorda said, "No, Vin, I'm worried about the guy who's gonna replace me. That's the guy who's gonna have it tough."
In the next two decades, Lasorda made this bravado come true. Wearing jersey No. 2, he won two World Series championships, lost two, and was named Manager of the Year twice.
In an environment dominated by hyper-competitive men, Lasorda stood out as a guy who hated to lose more than most. He also loved his players more than most managers, which may have been a key to his success. He patterned himself after one of his own managers, Ralph Houck.
"Ralph taught me that if you treat players like human beings, they will play like Superman," Lasorda once told Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bill Plaschke. "He taught me how a pat on a shoulder can be just as important as a kick in the butt."
That quote hints at the fact that Lasorda was famous for his colorful language. To be specific: for his loud, profane, red-faced tirades, in which every other word was the f-bomb. I'm not going to quote any of those this morning -- RCP is a "family newspaper," as we used say -- but take it from me, they are quite funny.
Here are a few of my favorite Lasorda-isms, and let's get the Garvey one out of the way first.
-- "Steve Garvey is a Hall of Famer in all ways, as far as I'm concerned. He exemplified the words ‘role model,' he was a great hitter, a great ballplayer."
Lasorda variously dispensed quotations that made him sound like Jedi master Yoda, or positive-thinking guru Norman Vincent Peale. Other times he came across as Don Rickles, or sometimes just a cocky guy who made it on guts and guile. One thing always came through, though. He loved his job. Here is a sampling:
-- "I don't want guys who try … I want guys who do! I could go out and get a bunch of truck drivers to play for us who'll try. I don't want guys who try … I want guys who do!"
-- "The only way I'd worry about the weather is if it snows on our side of the field and not theirs."
-- "The best possible thing in baseball is winning the World Series. The second best thing is losing the World Series."
-- "Nobody has to tell Frank Sinatra he is a good singer and nobody has to tell me that I am a good manager."
-- "When we win, I'm so happy I eat a lot. When we lose, I'm so depressed I eat a lot. When we're rained out, I'm so disappointed I eat a lot."
-- "My wife tells me one day, ‘I think you love baseball more than me.' I say, ‘Well, I guess that's true, but hey, I love you more than football and hockey.'"
-- "I love doubleheaders. That way I get to keep my uniform on longer."
And those are our quotes of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
