Rebirth of the Blues : Two Pivotal Days in June With the New Dodgers

IT IS HALF PAST 2 ON A sultry Wednesday afternoon in June. Up the corridor, down the ramp and out on the playing field of Dodger Stadium, you might have to squint through the glistening sunshine to watch the tall palm trees beyond the outfield fence sway to the unheard rhythm of a gentle breeze. Out there, where the perfectly realized geometry of the 19th-Century baseball diamond is framed by the 20th-Century engineering marvel that is sport’s pre-eminent arena, there is nothing for a man to do but count his blessings, toast his good fortune and celebrate the virtue of a workplace so beguiling and alluring. If baseball, as so many have said, is a romance rather than an occupation, this is the place where it seduces you absolutely.

But up that ramp and down that corridor Tommy Lasorda, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is not singing any silly little love songs. Bathed in the fluorescent light of the cinder-block bunker that is his office beneath the grandstand, Lasorda flips through the day’s mail. Somewhere, perhaps in Dodger heaven, a solitary guitarist picks out the chords and wails the melancholy lyrics of the subterranean homestand blues.

“The last two nights,� Lasorda says, “I felt lousy.�

The angst is whittled in his face. The circles around his eyes, which reveal Lasorda’s emotional state much the same way the rings of a trunk reveal a tree’s age, have begun to overtake his face. They are darker, deeper, even somehow ominous. The ordinarily easy smile comes reluctantly today, as well. That is because there is a direct correlation between the way the Dodgers play baseball and the way Tommy Lasorda feels. And the past two nights the Dodgers played baseball like men in love rather than men at work. Although being enthralled by the rapture of merely playing baseball has a great deal to recommend it, it is no way to win games and succeed in a pennant race. Which is precisely the point Lasorda needs to convey to his team today.

For the Dodgers are at a crossroads on this Wednesday in June. The games tonight and tomorrow afternoon against the Houston Astros will be their crucible. These games may well serve to define the team for the rest of the season and perhaps into the next decade. Months from now, perhaps even years, you will be able to look back on these two games as a turning point for the team and, quite possibly, the franchise. After a sudden, unexpected and unbroken fall from grace the past two summers, Los Angeles had just as suddenly, just as unexpectedly, ascended to the top of the National League’s Western Division standings.

Yet right now, at half past 2 in the afternoon, it appears that the Dodgers are poised on the precipice of failure, about to float ever so gently downward like a hot-dog wrapper discarded by a disgusted fan in the upper deck, rocking slightly, occasionally riding a thermal up a few feet, but certain to continue its descent. Gravity always prevails.

Forty-eight hours ago, the Dodgers were in first place in their division by 2 1/2 games. They had taken two of three games from the Cincinnati Reds, and they were bracing for their first meeting of the season with the Astros, the team with which they had been battling for first place for the past two months. Then, on successive evenings, they were beaten by Houston, 10-4 and 5-2. Their lead was narrowed to half a game. Another loss and the Dodgers fall out of first place, a position in the standings they have occupied for 45 days. With another loss would come self-doubt, the constant groping for explanations of what went wrong. With tonight’s game, the Dodgers will have concluded only the first third of their 162-game season, yet it is clear that the pennant race starts not on a sweltering afternoon in August, not on a cool September night in San Francisco, but here and now. With these two games we would learn if, in fact, the Dodgers have been rehabilitated or if they are destined to fail as they did in 1986 and 1987, when they posted identical 73-89 records and finished a combined 40 games out of first place.

As he goes about his pregame business, Lasorda masks his concern. That, he will tell you, is an important part of the job. Rancor is reserved for umpires, reporters’ questions that are perceived to be foolish and private moments with ballplayers. There is an art to dodging pointed inquiries, and in 12 summers as manager in Los Angeles, Lasorda has perfected it.

A few years ago, the Dodgers lost a game to Philadelphia when one of their outfielders, an outfielder paid a great deal of money precisely because he could make such plays routinely, shied away from a catchable fly ball near the wall, ducked, covered his head with his glove and allowed the ball to carom off the wall and away from him without a chase.

After the game, Lasorda was overcome by curiosity.

“What the hell happened on that play?� he asked the outfielder.

“I thought the ball was going to bounce off the wall and hit me in the head,� the outfielder said.

Four decades in baseball, and this was the first time Lasorda had ever heard a player say he was afraid of getting hit by a ball he thought was going to bounce off a wall.

A few minutes later, reporters were in Lasorda’s office asking him to analyze the team’s defeat.

“What the hell happened on that play?� one of them said.

“I don’t know,� Lasorda said. “I didn’t see it. I was getting a drink of water.�

Lasorda knew he was setting himself up with that answer. He knew that he was making himself look foolish, inattentive. But by his reckoning, that was better than criticizing the player or repeating the player’s absurd excuse. To do any less would be to abdicate responsibility. The manager’s job is more than changing pitchers, calling on pinch-hitters, or initiating the double steal. It is to act as the lightning rod for criticism, to absorb the external shocks that might otherwise jostle the team into disarray. Sixty years old, Lasorda is able to do this because he vividly remembers what he felt and thought 30 or 35 years ago, when he was a pitcher of modest promise and unfulfilled dreams.

“All I ever wanted to do,� he says, “is to try to be the manager I wanted to play for.�

“Who is that?� he is asked.

“Ralph Houk,� he says, referring to the man who managed the New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox for 19 seasons. “I played for him in Denver. He was great. He was a ballplayer’s manager. He always had time to talk to you, to motivate you. He tried not just to be a manager, but to be a friend, a father figure.�

Lately, Lasorda has had to be all those things to many people. He is reminded of that when, at 3 o’clock, Bill Russell, one of the seven coaches on Lasorda’s staff, arrives to fill out the evening’s lineup card.

The past couple of seasons, filling out the Dodger lineup card was about the same as filling out an entry for the Lotto 6 / 49 Jackpot game. After summers of stability provided by Steve Garvey and Ron Cey and Davey Lopes, by Dusty Baker and Steve Yeager and this very same Bill Russell, the Dodgers were a patchwork of players named Craig Shipley, Tito Landrum, Mike Ramsey, Alex Trevino, Mariano Duncan and Phil Garner. With a few notable exceptions, they were a sorry lot of castoffs, has-beens and never-weres.

This season was supposed to be different. During the off-season, Fred Claire, Dodgers executive vice president of player personnel, signed four free agents--outfielders Kirk Gibson and Mike Davis, starting pitcher Don Sutton, reserve catcher Rick Dempsey--and traded for shortstop Alfredo Griffin and relief pitchers Jesse Orosco and Jay Howell. After some tinkering in early March, Lasorda found a lineup that he intended to play every day, from spring training until October. At last, a summer of stability: Mike Scioscia catching, Mike Marshall at first base, Steve Sax at second, Griffin at short, Pedro Guerrero at third, Gibson in left field, John Shelby in center and Davis in right.

“I was happy,� Lasorda says. “We had this thing solidified. We had everyone playing every day. And then these injuries came up.�

So it is that making out the lineup card has become an exercise in crisis management.

The first crisis occurred when Griffin was hit by a Dwight Gooden fastball and suffered a fracture of the second metacarpal bone in his right hand in the fifth inning of the game on May 21.

“Look up the guy’s record,� Lasorda says. “Four of the last six years he plays every game. The other two years he plays 140 and 144. He comes here, he breaks his wrist.�

Joe Ferguson, another Dodger coach, sticks his head in the office in time to hear the manager’s lament.

“Someone,� Lasorda says, “must be getting even with me for what I did as a kid.�

“Yeah,� Ferguson says, “stealing all those Tastykakes.�

The second crisis occurred when Guerrero, the team’s most consistent hitter, had to be removed from the lineup because an arthritic condition in his neck was causing a pinched nerve and intolerable pain.

The third crisis occurred when it became apparent that National League pitching and Mike Davis were incompatible. Coming into the Houston series, Davis had three hits in his previous 44 at-bats.

The fourth crisis arose yesterday when Mike Marshall, slumping as well (seven hits in 59 at-bats), came to Lasorda and asked him to offer the advice of a manager, the compassion of a friend and the understanding of a father. Marshall said that the pain in his chronically bad back had been flaring up again, that he did not want to complain or disrupt the team but that the constant bending, quick starts and abrupt movements required of him at first base were aggravating the condition. He said that he thought that both his health and his hitting would improve if he were moved to the outfield, to his old spot in right.

This fourth crisis offered a solution to the third crisis--it provided a graceful way for Lasorda to bench Davis.

Lasorda called Davis in to explain that Marshall would be playing right field for the foreseeable future.

“I didn’t want him to go outside and read it on the lineup card,� Lasorda says. “It’s my place to tell him, and I did.�

Then he dispatched Russell to ask Danny Heep, a part-time first baseman earlier in his career but a substitute outfielder and pinch-hitter in Los Angeles, if he would be comfortable replacing Marshall at first. Heep acknowledged that he would, then played horribly in the field. He became the object of boos and derisive cheering from fans, and he attempted to transfer the blame for his failures to Marshall with some harsh and pointed comments.

“I haven’t worked out at first base all year,� Heep told reporters. “It wasn’t fair to me. . . . It wasn’t fair to the team. This is a big series. A change in the lineup like that . . . maybe it’s me, but I thought it was bad timing. We’ve got to put our best lineup in. We’ve got people out of position.�

So as he confers with Russell about tonight’s lineup, Lasorda deals with his fifth crisis of the series--getting people back into position. This time, Danny Heep is back on the bench, and Franklin Stubbs, a first baseman by training and occupation, is starting.

“Did Heep’s comments disturb you?� Lasorda is asked.

“They did bother me until I talked to him,� Lasorda says. “And Mike felt bad about what Heep said, too. What people don’t understand is that out of frustration, you say things you don’t mean.�

By 4 o’clock, the lineup card is posted on the baby-blue wall of the Dodgers’ dugout. Facing Houston pitcher Mike Scott will be Sax, Stubbs, Gibson, Marshall, Shelby, Scioscia, Jeff Hamilton in Guerrero’s stead at third and Dave Anderson continuing to replace Griffin at short; pitching is Fernando Valenzuela.

Valenzuela might well be Lasorda’s sixth crisis, putting the manager in a league with Richard Nixon. In his last start, against Cincinnati, Valenzuela gave up four earned runs and got just seven outs. Two starts before that, against the New York Mets, he relinquished one earned run for each of the five outs he recorded. His record is 3-5. His earned run average is 4.03. This from a man whose career record was 113-82 before the season commenced. This from a man whose career earned run average was 3.08.

In summers gone by, these were the occasions to which Valenzuela rose. Whether it was Mike Scott or Dwight Gooden, John Tudor or Steve Carlton, he would beat the opponent’s ace, win the big game and end the losing streak.

“This is the one he would win for you,� Lasorda says now. “You wouldn’t have too many losing streaks with him around.�

But now Valenzuela has not won a game since May 6. And now Scott, perhaps the best pitcher in the National League the past three seasons, a Cy Young Award winner in 1986, is pursuing his seventh win in eight decisions this season.

At a quarter past 6, after batting practice has concluded, the crises met and the challenges ahead are on Lasorda’s mind as he closes the clubhouse door for a private meeting with his team. He does this a handful of times each season. This evening’s sermonette is the standard fare. Its purpose is to motivate, to inspire, and to remind every Dodger that each bears the burden for past defeat and holds the key to future victory. This is generally accomplished through the usual means of baseball communication--which is to say equal parts hyperbole and profanity. A chair may be punted, as well. Just for emphasis.

“The idea,� Lasorda says later, “is you gotta communicate with them.�

A couple of hours later, it is apparent that he has.

Valenzuela has pitched successfully through the first three innings, giving up just two singles. The Dodgers scratched out a run in the first with a single, a walk, an error and a ground out. As they come to bat in the third, Lasorda abandons his station in the dugout corner closest to home plate and starts pacing its length, clapping his hands and yelling.

“We got to go hard, gang!� he shouts. “We got to want this freaking game! We got to want it more than they do!�

Kirk Gibson does. After Stubbs opens the inning with his second hit, a line single to center, Gibson assaults Scott’s next pitch. The home run describes a majestic arc, lands halfway up the vacant right-field bleachers, bounds one more time and settles about three exits up the Pasadena Freeway just as Marshall hits Scott’s next pitch over the 385-foot sign in left field to give the Dodgers a 4-0 lead.

This is the kind of game Lasorda can love. Big Bang baseball. Shutout pitching and home runs. He rushes to the top step of the dugout to greet Gibson and Marshall as each returns at the end of his home-run trot. But Lasorda is not the first to offer congratulations. That distinction belongs to Joey Amalfitano, the Dodgers’ third-base coach. It is a job that requires care and style. Amalfitano directs the slugger around third with his right hand extended and, moving toward home, offers a conventional handshake, then finishes it off with a left-handed pat on the back.

“It’s more dangerous than it looks,� Amalfitano says. “In 1985, Sax hit a two-run homer in the 10th to win a game. I was ready to give him a conventional handshake. But as he comes around third, he’s got this wild-eyed look in his face, and he goes to give me the high five. I should have known better, but I put my arm up and he breaks my right thumb. It was in a cast for five weeks. What a nuisance.�

The home runs are a release for the Dodgers, a primal scream of dominance and determination. Unleashed by Gibson’s fury and power, they go on to score seven more runs. Valenzuela allows just six hits, no more than one in any inning, and gives up an inconsequential run in the seventh.

In the fifth inning, when the Dodgers are in the field, Lasorda seizes the good feeling of the moment, sits down in the middle of the dugout and talks things over with Heep.

In the eighth inning, Heep, who has replaced Gibson in left field, leads off with a double. On Marshall’s fourth hit of the game, a single to center, Heep advances to third. Heep scores when the next batter grounds into a double play, and Heep and Marshall return to the dugout together.

“Heep said, ‘Nice hitting’ to me,� Marshall tells Lasorda.

“You go say, ‘Nice hitting’ to him,� Lasorda says. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.�

Once the game is won, the feeding frenzy commences. A restaurant has delivered two enormous tins, one filled with pasta, the other with chicken and rice, to Lasorda’s office. Gibson is among the first to indulge.

“Did you outplay that left fielder today?� Lasorda inquires, testing whether Gibson is worthy of food.

“I don’t give a damn who outplayed who,� Gibson says, digging in without hesitation. “We won.�

Gibson is roaring now. He lapses into a hysterical and booming impersonation of Vin Scully, mimicking comments the announcer made at the conclusion of the previous night’s radio broadcast.

“ ‘Oh, the Dodgers are in trouble now,’ � says Gibson-as-Scully. “ ‘They’ve lost two in a row, and Mike Scott and Nolan Ryan are next.’ � He returns to his normal tone of voice. With a wave of the hand and an occasional expletive, Gibson dismisses Scott, Ryan and anyone who might consider the Dodgers’ position to be precarious. There is nothing uncertain about this. But then there is nothing uncertain about the way Kirk Gibson approaches baseball. It’s one part the working-class ethic of football and nine parts the determination of the school kid who lived for recess dodge ball. You look at Kirk Gibson, you listen to him, and you see a mother who spent his entire childhood sewing patches on the knees of his britches so he would have something to wear to school the next day.

Kirk Gibson is Tommy Lasorda’s sermonette come to life. Gibson is why the Dodgers are in first place by a game and a half again. Gibson is why Tommy Lasorda’s telephone is ringing right now, an hour after the game.

His wife, Jo, is calling from their home in Fullerton. “Hurry home,� she says, “I want to spend some time with you when you’re happy.�

He hurries. He showers, he dresses, he drives down the Santa Ana Freeway with Bill Russell. When Jo opens the front door, they hear Sinatra playing on the stereo.

“When was the last time you two danced?� Russell asks.

Jo holds out her arms, and Tommy sweeps her into the living room. Life is sweet now. For a few moments in the wee small hours of the morning, Lasorda can be swept away; he can leave behind the troubles that await in the subterranean office. He can forget, for the first time in a long while, that he is working without a net. He is in his 39th year with the Dodgers, he has won five Western Division Championships in 11 seasons as manager, and he has no job security. His contract is up at the end of the season. And it will be another month yet before a new contract is discussed and settled upon over a private dinner with Dodger owner Peter O’Malley.

Meanwhile, the rumors about Lasorda’s next place of employment have started. The Boston Red Sox will hire him to be their manager at the end of the season. The California Angels would consider inviting him to fill two jobs as a combination general manager/field manager. The Chicago Cubs were interested last winter. Perhaps the Chicago White Sox will be this winter. And then there are the Yankees. When you are talking about managers, there always are the New York Yankees.

At half past 10 on Thursday morning, Tommy Lasorda is not talking about managers. He is talking about managing. About how pleased he was with Valenzuela’s performance the previous evening. “It was very important for him to win,� he says. “It was something he needed. It was something we needed.� About how important victory was last night. “It was a big game for us, especially after the last two games,� he says. “That’s the reason we had the meeting. We got to go after these guys. We got to play hard. We had to be aggressive. We had to get some runs. . . . With ballplayers, you got to keep telling them these things.�

Lasorda was late getting to the office today. Something about the traffic being brutal on the Santa Ana Freeway. “They ought to blow that thing up and start over again,� Lasorda says, sounding like every commuter who ever battled it during rush hour. The delay caused Lasorda to miss the earthquake that shook the stadium from its foundation to its rafters half an hour earlier. Perhaps that is why he doesn’t mention that earthquakes seem to augur well for the Dodgers. After the big one last Oct. 1, they defeated the Giants here 7-0.

Today, there is no agonizing over the lineup; today no meetings need be held. The same eight will be starting for the Dodgers as last night. Pitching is Orel Hershiser, the starter who has been the stopper this season, with a 7-3 record and a 2.46 earned run average.

The opposition is formidable. Nolan Ryan, 41 and still the best fastball pitcher in the major leagues, is working for Houston. He arrives with a 5-3 record and a 3.97 earned run average.

The first two innings are a struggle for Hershiser. This is unusual for him. As much as Gibson embodies determination on a baseball field, Hershiser embodies grace. He pitches baseballs the way a three-card-monte dealer moves cards, with stealth and cunning. The fastball arrives before it’s expected. The breaking ball arrives someplace other than where it is expected. And like the sucker believing that sooner or later he’ll find the red card and beat the dealer in the street-corner card hustle, batters keep coming back for more against Hershiser and keep going away empty.

Today, though, Hershiser is getting behind the hitters. In the first inning, he wriggles out of a jam by stranding runners at second and third. In the second, he is not so fortunate. The Astros contrive two runs on a homer, a double, an error and a single, and Ryan is staked to the kind of lead he does not often relinquish.

But in the fourth inning, the Dodgers scratch out a run. And in the fifth they manage three. John Shelby, who has a 24-game hitting streak working now, is a catalyst in both rallies. Now Hershiser is staked to the kind of lead he does not often relinquish.

He is, however, forced to give up the ball. Because of his hitting.

With two out and no one on in the bottom of the eighth, a time when any starting pitcher sculpting a five-hitter should be waving laconically at the ball, hurrying the strikeout, Hershiser smacks a line drive to center field. The ball eludes a diving Gerald Young and skitters to the fence. As it does, Hershiser skitters around first and around second. The ball is retrieved. He heads toward third. He is laboring now, but Amalfitano waves him home. About 40 feet from home, Hershiser is moving like a man with a piano on his back who has just made the turn from the ninth-floor landing to the next flight of stairs. When he is about 10 feet from home, the catcher is cradling the ball waiting for Hershiser to arrive so that he can be tagged out. There will be no inside-the-park home run for a pitcher today.

As he heads toward the dugout, Hershiser is gasping for breath and signaling for relief. Dramatically, he points to himself, points to Lasorda and points to the bullpen. When he gets to the dugout, Lasorda instructs him to towel off, get back out to the mound and warm up. Lasorda does not intend for Hershiser to throw another pitch but he does need him to buy time so that Jay Howell can warm up properly. After Hershiser has taken his allotted warm-up tosses, pitching coach Ron Perranoski strolls out to the mound to inquire after his health. Then, without waiting for an answer, Perranoski signals for Howell.

Four batters later, Howell has his sixth save, and the Dodgers have won, 4-2. Lasorda is marching triumphantly about his office. He is exclaiming now to no one in particular and anyone within earshot.

“What a game to win,� Lasorda says. If he was not so hoarse from shouting the entire game, he would be yelling. “Beating those two guys after being down two. If they win today, it’s a difference of two games.� The thoughts spew out. Stream-of-conciousness poetry for the workingman. “When you’re two down, it’s a hell of an accomplishment. My ears and my head are aching. Did we holler enough today? Did we? What a win. I feel so good.� There is a momentary pause. “Let me call my wife.�

All the while, players parade in to congratulate their boss on a job well done. The Dodgers had played their first pivotal series since 1985, and they had succeeded admirably. They explored their collective soul and discovered a measure of grit, dignity and determination. In the pervasive shorthand of the broadcast booth, this is called having character. They came from two games down and two runs behind to win two games and go 2 1/2 games up. They defeated Mike Scott and Nolan Ryan. They won while Alfredo Griffin’s hand was immobilized in a cast and Pedro Guerrero was bidding farewell before checking into the hospital for five days of traction, therapy and further testing. They won when it mattered, and now they would have victory as a point of reference. When they would founder the following weekend in San Diego, they would have these games as a reminder of their fortitude and their ability. When they were pressed again in the standings, they would be able to mount the requisite resistance and hold onto first place. By the Fourth of July, the lead would be 4 1/2 games. By the All-Star break, even after a lost weekend against the Pittsburgh Pirates, it would remain 2 1/2 games, with the San Francisco Giants, not the Astros (who would spin out disastrously after these two games), the closest pursuer.

Night after night, Lasorda could return to Jo in Fullerton and feel like dancing. Night after night, the players could parade into his office, insouciantly offering congratulations.

Today there is a theme to the parade. The Dodgers, however temporarily, have found a rallying cry; they have discovered a thought to inspire them. More than one player has swaggered in and mimicked the well-considered, undeniable and foreboding lines uttered by Vin Scully on Tuesday night. More than one player has impersonated Kirk Gibson impersonating Vin Scully. As a measure of Gibson’s impact on the Dodgers, this is every bit as effective as homers hit and runs batted in.

Lasorda has taken notice, and, later, when Gibson arrives, searching for something to eat, he makes mention.

“You know, they say Kirk Gibson brought a winning attitude to the Dodgers,� Lasorda says. “But he also taught these guys how to throw helmets. Now they’re all throwing them, and I’m going to have to wear a helmet in the dugout.�

“That,� Gibson says, “would be an improvement.�

This summer, of course, everything seems to be an improvement for the Los Angeles Dodgers.