No Matter, His Image Is Always Very True Blue

Tommy Lasorda’s evil twin. I keep waiting to meet this guy.

He’s quiet.

Never raises his voice. Never gets too excited. Doesn’t cuss and doesn’t fuss. About as enthusiastic as a cross between Alistair Cooke and Jackie Vernon. So low-key, he’s almost no-key. Shy as a rat at a convention of cats.

He’s anorexic.

Never eats late at night. No breakfast. Has a Cobb salad and mineral water for lunch. Maybe some mashed yeast. Despises pasta. Wouldn’t want to cut himself shaving and have marinara spill out. Believes gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins, along with pitching to Jack Clark.

He’s atheistic.

Doesn’t believe there’s a big Dodger in the sky. Doesn’t believe there’s a big anyone in the sky. Believes there’s an ozone layer in the sky. Believes if God truly preferred the Dodgers, He never would have permitted anybody to call themselves the Angels. Believes God actually lost interest the day they invented the designated hitter.

He hates baseball.

Never goes to a game. Never sees one on TV. Knows next to nothing about baseball. Thinks Darrell Evans rode with Roy Rogers. Thinks Tim Leary is some dude on LSD. Thinks Howard Johnson runs motels. Thinks Buck Rodgers conquered outer space. Thinks Chili Davis comes with crackers.

This is the evil Tommy, the one separated at birth, the parallel-world version, the bizarro Tommy, the one who stands for everything the real Tommy detests, the Tommy we rarely get to see.

The Tommy we usually get to see is the cheerful Tommy, the cherubic Tommy, the lovey-dovey Tommy, the “He’s a Dodger, She’s a Dodger, Wouldn’t You Like To Be a Dodger, Too?” Tommy. The Tommy whose dream date is a woman who can cook gnocchi and subscribes to the Z Channel. The Tommy who thinks the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are Walter and Peter O’Malley and Branch Rickey.

This is the Tommy who lives for the Dodgers and expects to die for the Dodgers. He wants to plant their pennant at Iwo Jima. He wants to die with his spikes on. Please forgive a mordant comparison, but to hear Tommy tell it, you get the feeling that if you’ve gotta go, you might as well go the way Dodger coach Don McMahon went, in full uniform, right out there on the mound, on baseball’s sacred ground.

“I’ve lived as a Dodger, and I’m gonna die as a Dodger,” Lasorda says.

And also: “I want to die a Dodger.”

Hey, no hurry, babe.

Stick around. Enjoy those two years they just tacked onto your pact. So you’re a senior citizen in short pants. So the only guy in a baseball uniform who calls you “sonny” is Jimmie Reese. So you’ve been around so long, you remember when Farmer John was still milking his pa’s cow before school. So you’re the Los Angeles Codger.

So what? You say you want to stay? Stay.

You say you would rather manage than general manage? Then manage, already. Nobody’s stopping you. Keep wiggling and jiggling out of that dugout. Keep looking at the world through rose-colored DiamondVision. Keep passing the open windows. Make them peel that uniform off you as if it’s Velcro’d to your flesh. Stand as proudly inside it as Ralph Kramden at a meeting of the Loyal Order of Raccoon.

Is there a secret Lasorda?

Is there a no-man inside the company yes-man? Is there a Tommy Lasorda who would have told Los Angeles to get lost, in English and Spanish both, if the Dodgers had fired him after one more fifth-place finish?

Is there a Lasorda who would have come to Dodger Stadium as manager of the Mets or Cubs or Pirates--God, can you picture him dressed as a Pirate? --and held court for all the reporters, regaling them with predictions of how his boys were going to beat those dirty Dodgers on behalf of . . . of . . . of whom? . . . the Big Buc in the Sky? The Big Padre in the Sky? The Big Giant? (How redundant.)

What about the Big Red Sock in the Sky? What if Boston had asked Peter O’Malley’s permission to speak to Tommy Lasorda about its next managing vacancy? What would Tommy do then? Bleed red?

In Oakland, would he bleed green? In San Diego, would he bleed brown? If he bled brown, would the groundskeeper clean it up? Or would it just sit there in a puddle, next to the tobacco pools?

I needed to know if the darker side of Tommy had any doubts about his lot with the Dodgers before Friday’s contract extension. I needed to know what he would have done if the Dodgers had gotten out of the gate slowly this spring, if he, like so many others in his profession, would have gotten the business end of the ax.

So, I pulled him over to the side, one on one, at the Stadium Club, just to ask what Tommy would rather have done--be booted upstairs to some titular executive job with the Dodgers, or be the field manager of some other major league club.

Maybe it was the wrong day to ask him. Maybe Tommy could switch to automatic pilot and give me his true-blue, forever-yours, “Remember, L.A. is part of Lasorda” response, seeing as how Peter O’Malley had just taken him out for a little spaghetti spooling and contract extending.

Anyhow, what Tommy said was, he isn’t tired of managing yet. He wants to manage. He said if he got offered the managing job of the Mets and the general managing job of the Giants, simultaneously, he’d take the managing job.

“I’m a manager. I love managing. How the hell can you get tired of doing something you love?” he asked, volume rising, Lasorda style.

“I would manage until I could no longer get up the stairs. I would manage until they yanked the uniform off my back. When I no longer can manage, then I would like to do some GM work, or something like that. But not until then. Understand?”

Yeah, but where did all those stories start about your wanting to yield your manager’s job and be the Dodger general manager?

“I don’t know where the hell that started!” Lasorda said. “Somebody asked me, ‘Would you like to be GM?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ What else should I say? What would you say if somebody asked you if you’d like to advance in your company? I said, ‘Yeah! I’d like to be GM!’ I just didn’t say when.

“All of a sudden, I’m going here, I’m going there, I’m going everywhere. All of a sudden, I’m mad because Fred Claire’s GM and I’m not. All I want to do is manage! I want to manage as long as I can! I want to die, right in this uniform! Then I’d like to come back from the dead and work for the Dodgers.”

Talk about having your contract extended . . .