Tommy Lasorda

Tommy Lasorda

Birthdate	9/22/1927
Death Date	1/7/2021
Debut Year	1976
Year of Induction	1997
Teams	Dodgers
Positions	Manager, Pitcher

Tommy Lasorda guided the Dodgers to 4 National League pennants and 2 World Series championships in his 20-year reign as Los Angeles skipper.

Tommy Lasorda played 14 professional seasons; three were in the bigs

Before Tommy Lasorda was a manager in Los Angeles, he was a journeyman minor league pitcher with 26 MLB games to his credit. Lasorda began his professional career at 17 years old with the Concord Weavers of the Class D North Carolina State League. He remained in the minors until a 5-game cup of coff

Tommy led the Dodgers to the pennant in each of his first two full seasons

Tommy Lasorda replaced Hall of Fame skipper Walter Alston with four games remaining in the 1976 season. In each of the next two seasons he led the Dodgers to the National League pennant. Both times in the World Series Lasorda’s Dodgers were vanquished by the New York Yankees. In the ’77

The Dodgers and Lasorda got revenge on the Yankees in 1981

The Dodgers captured the NL flag in 1974, ’77, and ’78 yet came up empty each time. The ’74 squad dropped to Charlie Finley’s Oakland Athletics. In ’77 and ’78 it was the Yankees who put down Los Angeles. In 1981 the Dodgers again earned the pennant. Again the Yan

Jack Clark made Lasorda pay in the 1985 National League Championship Series

Baseball managers are tasked with making on-field decisions for their clubs. Their success as skippers are measured in wins in losses based on those decisions. In 1997 the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee recognized the career of Dodger skipper Tom Lasorda as worthy of induction to the Basebal

On his 75th birthday, Tommy Lasorda writes about the '88 World Series

Dodger fans old enough to remember the 1988 championship recall it with great fondness. So does former Los Angeles manager Tommy Lasorda. After each of the post-season wins in the Dodger clubhouse the players would shout, “What a f*cking team!”. Always bleeding Dodger blue, Lasorda took

A grateful Tommy Lasorda reflects on his Hall of Fame induction

Here Tommy Lasorda writes about receiving baseball’s highest honor in this letter dated September 13, 1999. On the familiar Dodger letterhead, he states, “Dear Jim, Baseball and the Dodgers have been very good to me. In 1997 I became the 14th manager and the 15th Dodger to be elected to

After retiring as manager, Lasorda was a press box fixture as executive VP

The summer after his Hall of Fame induction Tommy Lasorda was a frequent visitor in the Dodger press box. An executive vice president with the team, Tommy loved to banter with the scribes. In this photo a happy and healthy Lasorda poses with ESPN SportsTicker reporter Jim Smiley who covered Lasorda&

A Story about Tommy Lasorda

Orel Hershiser needed persuading to break Don Drysdale’s consecutive scoreless inning streak in 1988

June 8th, 2022 Leave a comment

Records are meant to be broken. Or are they? In 1988 Orel Hershiser wasn’t so sure. Given the chance to break Major League Baseball’s record for consecutive scoreless innings, he almost opted out. One Cooperstown man betters another A hurler’s job is to keep his opponents from scoring. Moundsmen take great pride in putting up zeroes. One of baseball’s greatest run-preventers, Walter Johnson set the big league record by not allowing a man to cross the plate in 55 2/3 consecutive innings in 1913. The 417-game winner held the mark for the rest of his life. More than a half-century later, along came the Dodgers’ Don Drysdale. An intimidating presence on the hill, the 6’5″ right hander believed that pitchers owned the inside half of the plate. Big D finished first or second in batters hit in 12 of his 14 seasons. In 1968 he surpassed the Big Train, extending the consecutive scoreless innings record by three frames. Twenty years later Drysdale entered his first year as the Dodger color man. That season he witnessed Hershiser’s epic run. Hershiser faces a difficult decision Nicknamed “Bulldog” by skipper Tommy Lasorda, Hershiser had great respect for Drysdale, the franchise’s pitching-rich history, and […]