Dodgers Had Enough to Worry About

“Will you still need me,

Will you still feed me

When I’m 64?”

--The Beatles

Evidently.

Tom Lasorda, 64, has had his contract prolonged an additional year as manager of the Dodgers, who would rather see him get a diamond ring than a gold watch.

This is a calculated move by the club, designed to keep people from bugging Lasorda as to whether this will be his last season on the job.

All it actually does, however, is guarantee Lasorda’s pay through 1993. He still could retire, or be asked to step aside voluntarily, should the Dodgers suffer through an insufferable summer of ’92.

I know, a deal’s a deal.

But in baseball--in business--such things happen all the time.

Tuesday’s action will be misinterpreted, or oversimplified, by many who follow or even work for the Dodgers. They will be led to believe that the job now belongs to Lasorda for two more seasons, no matter what happens on the field.

Should the team be 10 or 15 games out of first place by July, with the talent on hand, I seriously doubt that the Dodgers would consider it an act of disloyalty to dismiss a manager who is still under contract. It has never happened in Los Angeles, but there’s a first time for everything.

If every ballclub waited until a guy’s contract was up, the New York Yankees wouldn’t have changed managers during the past decade more than once or twice.

This is not meant to be negative thinking. For all I know, Lasorda and the Dodgers will win 100 games and live happily ever after.

In my mind, this is simply Peter O’Malley’s way of (a) showing faith in a trusted employee, (b) relieving Lasorda of any reasonable doubts he might have had and (c) keeping the players, reporters and the public from bringing up the subject every time the Dodgers drop three or four games in a row.

It is an honorable way to do business by a man with a deserved reputation as an honorable businessman.

O’Malley is more on Lasorda’s side than most of his employees. This is his doing, this move to extend the manager’s contract. I believe O’Malley considers it the least he can do for a company man with 43 years of dedicated service.

But even the owner is keeping his eye on the manager. O’Malley, who is younger than Lasorda but acts older, appreciates how spry Tommy still is at 64, but doesn’t want him to overdo it. He wants him to quit pitching so much batting practice, for instance. He wants him fresh.

Yes, a healthy body often means a healthy mind. But the new, leaner Lasorda is such an exercise nut now, he runs the risk of exhausting himself.

Oh, I can hear Lasorda now, angry that he gets criticized for being out of shape, then gets criticized for being too in-shape. That, too, would be an oversimplification.

A manager always wants his players to work hard, but wouldn’t want one working too hard. He wouldn’t want a pitcher leaving his best stuff in the bullpen. He wouldn’t want a base stealer burned out by too many pregame laps.

Lasorda still runs things his way, an old-fashioned way. He believes in pep talks and motivation. He believes in ancient baseball rituals, like leading some gullible rookie into thinking he has just been farmed out, or like the players’ recent bonfire of Cincinnati and San Francisco equipment bags, which was pointless but harmless in a 1952 kind of way.

Lasorda has done enough for the Dodgers to be entitled to manage this season without that retirement question dangling over his cap.

The Dodgers have enough on their plate without the players wondering about their manager’s status from day to day.

They have a concern over how strong the right arm of Ramon Martinez is going to be, particularly with Tim Belcher and Mike Morgan no longer on the premises. They have a concern over how many of Tom Candiotti’s knuckleballs are going to drive Mike Scioscia to the team psychiatrist.

They have great expectations for author-outfielder Darryl Strawberry, whose revealing new book names names, some of whom didn’t care to be named, and partner-in-lime Eric Davis, who might drive in 100 runs or might play in 100 games, depending on how he feels.

They have high hopes for young players such as Olds salesman Eric Karros and older players such as first baseman--first baseman?--Kal Daniels, whose knees won’t be a problem in the field, but whose hands might.

And in the dugout--or occasionally the third base box--will be Lasorda, for whom John Lennon and Paul McCartney must have written those lyrics about someone needing you or feeding you when you’re 64.

In baseball, men half his age get asked the same question, all the time.