Of Tommy Lasorda and TV coverage

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At 81, Tommy Lasorda’s fiery locker room pep talks, equal parts color, rage and profanities, are behind him. That’s not to say his passion has cooled. It’s just that he works the players on an individual basis, leaving the team meetings to the manager.

With his Dodgers staring into the abyss before Sunday night’s game at Dodger Stadium, facing the possibility of going down 3-0 to the Phillies in the best-of-seven NLCS, Lasorda had a story for the occasion.

To those whose ear he got, Lasorda told the story of the sailor who was shipwrecked a thousand yards from shore. The sailor leaped into the raging sea and got within three yards of land, only to collapse and die.

‘I asked these guys,’ Lasorda,said, ‘are you going to waste all you’ve accomplished this season? Are you going to go 997 yards, only to come up three yards short?’

Don’t know if anybody was listening to him, but the Dodgers didn’t come up short Sunday.

Neither did the Fox Sports telecast. So many times, you’ll see the benches empty in a game and wonder how the tension built up so quickly. When the benches emptied in the third inning Sunday night, it was the logical result of a story line thoroughly developed by announcers Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. They reminded viewers of the disappointment Dodger players had expressed over the failure of right-hander Chad Billingsley to respond after a pitch was thrown behind Manny Ramirez in Game 2.

They speculated over the Dodgers’ response after catcher Russell Martin was hit on the knee in his first at-bat and was the recipient of a pitch thrown in the vicinity of his head on his second at-bat.

Would there be retaliation?

‘Martin’s got something to do with that. He’s the catcher,’ said McCarver, himself a former catcher.

McCarver predicted that, if Dodgers right-hander Hiroki Kuroda retaliated in the ensuing inning, it would come with nobody on base, perhaps late in the inning, and surely with two strikes on the hitter.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened, a Kuroda pitch flying over the head of Shane Victorino with two out and two strikes on him.

The camera zoomed in as Victorino kept pointing to his head, then his ribs, then back to his head, indicating that if a brush-back pitch was necessary, stay away from the head.

That soon led to the benches-clearing moment at the end of the inning, but no punches were thrown.

Asked about the incident during an interview with Fox between innings, Dodgers Manager Joe Torre would only say, ‘The game polices itself.’

-- Steve Springer