Dodgers Feel the Pain of Death Again : Going Through the Motions : Dodgers: Players are told of Drysdale’s death shortly before the game. The broadcasters go on, knowing the truth.

Don Drysdale wasn’t on the Dodger bus that left for Olympic Stadium from the Le Sheraton Hotel at 5 p.m. Saturday, but it didn’t concern his broadcast partners Vin Scully or Ross Porter. Sometimes Drysdale would take a taxi to the game, they said.

As scheduled, the three were to split time between the Channel 5 telecast and the KABC radio broadcast for Saturday night’s game between the Dodgers and the Montreal Expos.

But when Drysdale wasn’t at the park by 6 p.m., they became worried.

They called the hotel, and a security guard was sent to Drysdale’s room, but the guard’s knock went unanswered. Eventually, the guard was able to enter with a pass key shortly before 7:16 p.m. and found Drysdale on the floor near his bed.

Police estimate that he had been dead for more than 18 hours.

Minutes before the Dodger players took the field at Olympic Stadium for a game they would eventually lose, 6-4; minutes before Scully and Porter began broadcasting and televising the game back to Los Angeles, they all were told:

Don Drysdale was found dead in his hotel room, with unconfirmed reports of a heart attack.

Orel Hershiser, on the couch in Manager Tom Lasorda’s office in the visiting clubhouse, reading the newspaper, heard Lasorda yell, “Oh my God, No.”

Lasorda summoned the players and held a meeting at 7:30 p.m. He said a prayer; they had a moment of silence, and the players walked through the tunnel to the dugout.

The players were shaken, and after the national anthems were played, Brett Butler looked up in the stands and summoned his wife, Eveline, to the dugout rail. Butler’s grandmother is critically ill, and Eveline thought that she had died. “But then he told me that it was Don,” Eveline Butler said.

Rumors of Drysdale’s death began to circulate in the press box shortly after the game began at 7:35 p.m., but the Dodgers’ assistant publicity director, Chuck Harris, would neither confirm nor deny the report. The Dodgers were trying to notify Drysdale’s wife, Ann Meyers Drysdale, before the news hit the airwaves.

Scully, who was announcing the Dodgers television broadcast, kept his headset on and his eyes peeled to the game, but his mind undoubtedly was elsewhere. As were the thoughts of Porter, who proceeded with radio broadcast.

Dave Van Horn, who was Drysdale’s television play-by-play partner for the Montreal Expos’ television broadcasts in 1971 and has remained a close friend, was told the news after the first inning. He announced two more innings before going on his scheduled break. He left his booth and said he was in shock.

“I kept looking for him before the game, because I wanted to talk about that balk call (Friday) night,” a shaken Van Horn said. “I can’t believe it.”

But there was no break for Scully or Porter. Drysdale, the third announcer, had relieved Scully and Porter for the last time during Friday’s game, when he did the telecast for the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. He then went down to the field as usual to watch the ninth inning from the tunnel near the photographer’s well, and conducted his last postgame show with Eric Karros.

Dodger pitching coach Ron Perranowski said he talked to Drysdale shortly thereafter and that Drysdale appeared to be in fine health.

Lt. Ricardo Rizzetto of the Montreal police said that Drysdale died shortly after returning from Friday’s game.

“There were no traces of violence, or anything for us to believe that he did not die of natural causes,” Rizzetto said. “The doctor who was at the hotel believes (Drysdale) died of a heart attack, but that is unconfirmed pending an autopsy.”

Meanwhile, while Saturday’s game droned on, the Dodgers continued in their attempts to reach Meyers. Montreal police even asked the cooperation of local authorities in Palm Desert, where the Drysdale family lives, and sent police to her house.

A French news service had already picked up a report of Drysdale’s death off the police wires, and it started to become public. It wasn’t long before the news had hit Montreal. Still, Los Angeles broadcasters obliged the Dodgers’ wishes and held the news.

Finally, at the top of the eighth inning, KABC radio cut away from Ross Porter to Scully, who announced the death on both radio and TV.

After making the announcement and expressing his sorrow to Drysdale’s family, Scully paused for 12 seconds, then picked up Butler at-bat with a 1-and-1 count. Porter resumed his broadcast by saying: “I don’t know what to say.”

After the game, Scully would not, and said he could not, talk with reporters, instead issuing a statement, which was read by Harris:

“Tonight was the toughest broadcast of my life. I am stunned and brokenhearted for Ann and the children. Don was not only a Hall of Fame player and a fine broadcaster, but a dear friend and a joy to be with. I pray for the Drysdales so they have strength through this difficult time.”

Down in the Dodger clubhouse, Lasorda was still in shock, and held up to reporter’s questions for about 20 minutes. But after most of the reporters left, Lasorda, reflecting on his and Drysdale’s playing days together with the Brooklyn Dodgers, couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

“I’m in shock,” Lasorda repeated over and over. “I love him like a brother. My heart goes out to Annie, and her three small children.”

There was no talk of baseball among the players. “I don’t think anybody could be faulted tonight for a lack of concentration,” Butler said. “When something like this happens, you realize how meaningless the game is, but we had a job to do.”

Hershiser took a look at the reporters standing around his locker after the game and left for a moment. When he returned, he lamented the way Drysdale died--alone.

“I thought about how many friends he that it could have happened anywhere else but alone in a hotel room,” Hershiser said. “That’s the one thing baseball players dread the most, is those four walls.”

Hershiser reflected on 1988, when Hershiser pitched 59 consecutive scoreless innings to break Drysdale’s record.

“He could have made it difficult for me, but he didn’t,” Hershiser said. “He kept his distance and didn’t talk with me about it when it was going on. And after I broke the record in San Diego he was there on the bench to greet me, and I will never forget what he said. He told me, ‘At least we kept it in the family.’ ”