He Feeds the Public a Message

Usually, when a manager finishes fourth in a six-team division, he gets to buy his own dinner all winter. He can’t get anybody to have a cup of coffee with him. His phone gets cobwebbed, his dog avoids him and the only way he can get anybody to listen or talk to him is to ring up Dial-A-Prayer.

Then there’s Tommy Lasorda. He hasn’t had a home-cooked meal since the Carter Administration. If somebody accidentally bangs a fork on a glass, he jumps up and begins to shout what a great country this is and how lucky it is to have the Dodgers in it.

His one-week itinerary would exhaust Marco Polo. He is constantly in furious motion, either on an airplane or on a dais. He gets five hours’ sleep a night, maximum.

He is baseball’s traveling salesman with a kit full of cliches, homilies, mottoes, words to live by. His spiel is constant. Everybody can win the pennant, even if the Dodgers didn’t. God is a Dodger, but He’s open-minded. Only in America would all this be possible. Winning isn’t everything but losing is nothing.

He never speaks in a normal tone of voice. Lasorda always sounds like a guy who’s lost in a blizzard and is shouting into an echo for his party. He always manages to sound as if he is screaming at an umpire who just called his cleanup hitter out on a third strike in the bottom of the ninth with two gone and the bases loaded. He treats the world as if it were hard of hearing or not paying attention.

Lasorda is like an oncoming train. You hear it long before it comes into view. His decibel level could warn ships off rocks.

He used to have the most nearly perfect silhouette ever devised for a baseball manager. He looked like an egg with legs, Humpty-Dumpty in cleats. Hollywood couldn’t have cast the part more perfectly. He was America’s Manager. Part of the drama.

When a call went against him, he was King Lear. When he won, he was as emotional as the overture to “Aida.” He was as verbal as a sidewalk vendor hawking vegetable peelers. No one ever came out of his office without a full notebook.

When most people lose weight, only their doctors know. When Lasorda lost weight, he let the whole world in on it. He huckstered Slim Fast as shamelessly as he huckstered his team and his game. He made more money out of not eating than the Aga Khan used to get stuffing himself for the diamond scales. He was the most famous thin man since William Powell had the part.

Still, I thought I might find him in his carpet slippers, watching daytime TV, or walking the dog, when I called him at home recently. I had heard he was to be on the spit at a roast at Bally’s Casino Resort in Las Vegas Saturday for the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center in Rancho Mirage, a shelter for emotionally and physically abused children. I wondered if they had to get him out of mothballs for the event.

“MOTHBALLS!” he roared. (I didn’t really need the earpiece. He was only in Fullerton.)

“I haven’t had time to unpack since the season! I was the Orange County professional sportsman of the year for about the fifth time! I flew to New York to the New York Athletic Club! Then I flew home!

“Then I was at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York. I was their man of the year! I’m leaving tomorrow for Oklahoma City! Then I go to Vegas. I was the grand marshal at the Columbus Day parade.

“Tuesday I went to the state department (puff, puff) then I went to New York University, then (puff, puff), I drove to Philadelphia, that night (puff, puff). I spoke at Jersey City. I went to bed at 2 a.m., I got up at 6 a.m. (puff, puff).

“I flew to the Air Force Academy in Colorado, I spoke to 3,000 cadets at noon and (puff, puff) they put me on the board of directors of the Air Force Academy. at 6:30, I talked to the football team (puff, puff).

“The next morning I flew back to Washington (puff, puff) for the national Italian-American foundation dinner for me and Danny Aiello and a dinner for the president of Italy (puff, puff). Imagine! Me at a dinner for the president of Italy!

“Then I went to Cherry Hill, N.J., for a dinner and home to Norristown.”

I had to come up for air.

“Wait a minute! Have we got a bad connection?” I asked. “There’s this wheezing on the line.”

“I’m on a treadmill!” Lasorda roared. “I have to walk an hour a day (puff, puff) , four to eight miles a day! Wait a minute, I’m going to turn it up. It’s (puff, puff) like walking up Everest!

“What do I do while I’m walking (puff, puff) ? I watch TV and talk on the phone. I’m on a 12 elevation right now. It’s like walking up the Empire State Building! Physically, I can’t believe how great I feel. I’m 62, but I feel like they got the numbers mixed. I feel like I’m 26!

“What a great story this is! This dinner is not only for the Barbara Sinatra center, but for the Sisters of Mercy in Nashville.

“Listen! Is this a miracle? When I found out they were going to lose their home, I said, ‘Where will you go?’ and they said they didn’t know but God would provide. They prayed for a miracle.

“And then two of my ballplayers, Kirk Gibson and Orel Hershiser, say they will give me $10,000 apiece if I will lose 20 pounds and another $10,000 if I will lose 30 pounds. And I give the money to the sisters. All of a sudden, their new home is a reality!

“But, here is the best part! I lose the weight and three things happen: 1. I feel better; 2. They get a new convent, and 3. Thousands of people lose weight because of me.

“And, on Nov. 30, I’m going back to Nashville for an all-star show at the Grand Ole Opry and we’re going to have our new convent! A miracle! Only in America!

“What? The team? We’ll be great! We’re in conversation with Mark Langston. What an outstanding young man! He was born to pitch for the Dodgers!

“Do you know we were involved in 78 one-run games last season? Do you know we lost 80 games by two runs or less? I can’t wait for opening day!

“But, meantime, I have to go to Toledo, Chicago (puff, puff) and, of course, back to Nashville.”

Puff, puff.