Win or Lose, a Perfect Day to Play

You are not sure you want this information to fall into the the hands of unauthorized biographers, but former President Ronald Reagan threw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium Friday.

Nancy wasn’t with him.

The band plays, “It’s a Wonderful Day for a Ball Game,” balloons spiral into the spring air and nine members of our armed forces returned from the Persian Gulf are paid homage by a crowd of nearly 50,000.

It is a normal opener, featuring an armored car drawing up outside the Dodger offices at the treasure house in Chavez Ravine.

Before the Dodgers suffer a slight accident, losing to San Diego, 4-2, their distinguished manager, Tom Lasorda, sits in the clubhouse in reverie, harking back not to the vineyards of Abruzzi, whence come the Lasordas, but to his life the day the Dodgers first open in Los Angeles in 1958.

“I am pitching for Montreal in the International League,” recalls Lasorda. “I am making $5,000 (a year). I go 18-6 that season, best of my career. I don’t get a bonus, but the fans stage a Tom Lasorda Day and they give me a Pontiac Bonneville.”

It isn’t the type of machine you would find Jose Canseco driving, but to Lasorda, busted, this is a jewel bringing to his existence a thrill beyond description.

Even those admitted to the Hall of Fame didn’t get a Pontiac Bonneville.

The ball that President Reagan throws out is received in the mail by Lasorda from the commander of the USS Paul F. Foster, acting in behalf of his Long Beach-based crew, now working the waters off Saudi Arabia.

The skipper, E.J. Kujat, apologizes for the ball, acknowledging it isn’t major league quality, but at least it is wrapped in Haiti, same as the real merchandise.

Most important, he adds, it bears the good wishes of an awful lot of Dodger fans aboard that destroyer.

Lasorda is touched.

“I’m going to make sure this is the ball that is thrown out today,” he says.

It is handed to Reagan who, winding up, sends it down the middle. If Kitty Kelley had been standing at the plate, he might have come high and inside.

For the Dodgers, it was their 34th home opener since emigrating to this celestial paradise from the heavenly borough of Brooklyn, yet to forgive them for their treachery.

The leader of the Dodgers, Walter O’Malley, had asked for a stadium atop the train station on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush.

What was offered was a stadium in Flushing Meadow, present home of the Mets. Said O’Malley: “If the Brooklyn Dodgers are playing in Flushing Meadow, they aren’t the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

He wouldn’t listen to arguments that Vienna sausage isn’t necessarily made in Vienna.

It was then he yielded to the blandishments of Los Angeles, where he would build his own stadium with money borrowed from banks and an oil company.

“I have never been afraid of debt,” announced O’Malley, logical when you consider that once the borrower has the money, the fear shifts to the guys lending it.

Never, in the 34 times they have opened in Los Angeles, have the Dodgers experienced a rainout on that occasion.

They demand, and receive, the kind of weather they got Friday, a soft, breezy day in the 70s, a day good for grapes.

Once known to enter the rites of spring raising a glass of chianti, Lasorda now toasts it with Ultra Slim-Fast.

He also commands a team that has some catching up to do this year. The last two years, it has finished fourth and second, respectively, satisfactory in Cleveland, but not in a place where the flag is flown at half-staff if attendance at home doesn’t reach 3 million.

Toward that end, the Dodgers this time have squandered the most money in their history to capture prime personnel, putting the manager in a spot that isn’t to be envied.

Losing to the Padres Friday, he stands 2-1 for the season, finding comfort in what Casey Stengel used to say: “The Yankees don’t pay me to win every day--just two days in three.”

But the Dodger management is serious, as evidenced by the note appearing on the message board at the opener Friday.

It warned that anyone coming onto the field would be “subject to arrest and ejection.”

If you are interested, in other words, don’t look for a break. They won’t let you stay for the rest of the game.