Remembering Drysdale: : The End Came Too Soon : Memories: Montreal was where his career blossomed and where his life ended. Now friends such as Lasorda and Scully try to cope with his death.

Don Drysdale’s body was placed in the Parthenais city morgue early Sunday morning, about 500 feet away from where he played his first full season of professional baseball 38 years ago, with the Montreal Royals at Delormier Stadium.

He is remembered here as a promising right-hander, an 18-year-old with a sweeping sidearm motion who was called up by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956, then returned to start his broadcasting career in 1970.

But miles away from Delormier Stadium, in a downtown hotel, those who knew and loved Drysdale spent a sleepless Saturday night, remembering him not as a player, but as a dear friend.

Vin Scully and Tom Lasorda, both forced to perform their respective jobs Saturday night after hearing the news of Drysdale’s death just minutes before the Dodgers took the field to play the Montreal Expos, were up late in Scully’s hotel room, struggling to accept the news.

“We talked until about 3 a.m., reminiscing,” Lasorda said. “You know, when Don and I were roommates (with the Montreal Royals), we used to pretend. He wanted to be an announcer, and I wanted to give speeches. So, I would say, ‘OK, announce two innings of a ballgame,’ and he would. And then he would say, ‘OK, give your speech to the Boys Club. Now give it to the Rotary Club.’ Can you believe that?”

By late Sunday morning, when Scully, Lasorda and Ross Porter returned to Olympic Stadium before the Dodgers’ final game against the Montreal Expos, the shock had dulled. But their grief had not.

“That’s life. It’s the only explanation; and it’s no explanation,” Scully said.

” . . . From the day I first learned to learn, I was brought up to acknowledge that death is a part of living. I know it’s there and know it will be there for all of us. When Red (Barber) passed on I felt reasonably happy because he had filled a full life, 87 plus years old and had accomplished everything; when Roy Campanella passed on, Roy was 71, and again I had the feeling he had fulfilled his life, and again, it’s easier to take.

“With Don, (who was 56) it’s a great tragedy because of the young wife and the three little children he leaves behind. Don is 6, Darren is 3 or 4 and Drew is just a baby, just a couple of months old.”

Scully said that after Lasorda left his room, Drysdale’s wife, Ann, phoned him about 3:45 a.m. She later called Lasorda.

“I talked with her for about 15 or 20 minutes,” Scully said. “Not that I could give her any great comfort, but it gave her a chance to talk it out.”

Montreal police say that Drysdale died of an unconfirmed heart attack around 11:30 p.m. in his hotel room Friday night, shortly after he returned from the Dodger game at Olympic Stadium. He had placed a “Do Not Disturb” sign on his door, and police say he appeared to be getting ready for bed, when he apparently collapsed and fell to the floor near his bed. Police estimate he had been dead for more than 19 hours when he was found by a hotel security guard at 7:16 p.m. the next day.

By then, Porter and Scully were already at the park, and learned the news of Drysdale’s death about 7:20, 15 minutes before the game began. They proceeded to announce the game for KABC radio and Channel 5, respectively, and did not talk with reporters until Sunday morning, when they explained the agony they experienced the next three hours.

“It was the most difficult broadcast I have ever had to make,” Scully said. “Despite the fact that you are emotionally overwhelmed and somewhat in shock, there is a job to do. . . . I think your job is to furnish as much escape from the pains of this world as possible, so you are really split: one part of you wants to cry and run away and hide and the other part says, ‘Hey, you have a job to do,’ just like the players down on the field.

“We will find our own time and our own way to grieve.”

Porter said that when Drysdale didn’t show up at the park, he feared the worst. “I prayed it wasn’t the worst, but it was,” Porter said. “Then I huddled (with Scully), and had a moment of mourning, I think, and then we said we have to go on. It was a very difficult broadcast for both of us because we had to hold (the news) for so long. Finally we announced it.

“All I could keep thinking about was Annie and the kids. Then I thought about his mom and dad. When you are in the business we are in, you fear someone hearing the news over the radio or on TV. I knew they were having all kind of difficulty finding the (family), all of them. Chuck Harris, (the Dodgers’ assistant publicity director), kept coming in and saying, ‘Who do you know? Where might she be? I thought of her brother, who used to play basketball at UCLA. He was in Temecula; I knew her mom and dad were in Hemet.”

Scully said Meyers was eventually told by her mother.

“We tried to hold back until we knew that she knew, we didn’t want her to find out the wrong way,” Scully said. “(Dodger owner) Peter O’Malley was trying desperately to find her. Then I began to worry because normally Don announces the middle three innings on television, and I thought that when the fourth inning came and he did not come on we were going to hear from his dad or Ann or somebody asking, ‘Where’s Don?’ ”

Finally in the seventh inning, after the news had spread because a French wire service picked up the information from a police scanner, Scully said he got a call in the booth from Prime Ticket, which was televising the Angel game. But they still would not confirm. Then, at the end of the seventh inning, the Dodgers said they had to go with the announcement.

“I found out later talking to Ann that her mother was the one who found out. Kelly, Don’s oldest daughter, was celebrating a birthday Saturday and Meyers was with Kelly. I guess they had gone out to get something, maybe the store or something. And it was Ann’s mother who told her.

“You know Don’s oldest boy, his birthday is the same day as Don’s, July 23, and he will be 6. That will be a very tough day for the family. All these days will be tough.”

Those who traveled with Drysdale say that he showed no signs of ill health before he died Friday night. But both Scully and Porter recalled Drysdale telling them he had slept for about 13 hours Thursday night after the team arrived here from Los Angeles.

“I told Don before the game that I couldn’t believe that I had slept 10 hours Thursday night,” Porter said. “And Don said he could do me one better. He said he went to bed at 10 p.m. and didn’t wake up until 11 the next morning--he had slept about 13 hours.

“But he was joking--he was fine. He came back in the booth (Friday night) at about the seventh inning eating strawberry ice cream and said, ‘Who are we going to get for the postgame?’ We talked about that. Then he left, and that’s the last I saw of him.”

There was another factor, however, for Montreal medical examiners. Drysdale’s eye was bruised from a fall he had suffered last week at Dodger Stadium. Although he had apparently been seen by a doctor at Dodger Stadium and had checked out fine, his eye was still noticeably red and bruised, sources said. The coroner was not available to do the autopsy until today.

Scully said that his last big conversation with Drysdale was in the elevator on the way to the team bus before Friday’s game, which began with Drysdale telling Scully about how long he had slept. “I said to him, I can’t believe that,” Scully said. “I could do that when I was 20 but there is no way now that I could sleep that long.”

But Scully said that Drysdale, like the rest of the Dodgers’ organization, was concerned about the 7-year-old son of Barry Stockhammer, the Dodgers’ vice president of marketing.

“Barry and his wife Sherrie got here with the Dodgers and this was going to be their first visit to Montreal and we were going to go out to dinner Thursday night. But when we got to the hotel there was a message that Sherrie’s mother and (Scott) were in a terrible car accident and at that time, the boy was in a coma. Don, with two young sons, could really relate to that, so coming out to (the park), that is all we talked about.

“So (the trip) began in deep gloom. Then yesterday we got an encouraging word that Scott, although still in intensive care, was showing signs . . . that he would be all right, although it would take a couple of weeks. So that was the number one topic that Don and I shared, as it was the most of us.”

Drysdale usually left the game directly from the Dodger clubhouse after he conducted the postgame show. A fan waiting for autographs Friday night told Brett Butler that Drysdale rushed by him on the way to catch the subway back to the hotel.

“He was always in a rush, that was one of his trademarks,” said Jaime Jarrin, who has known Drysdale since 1959, when Jarrin began broadcasting Dodger games for radio station KWKW in Spanish. “He would get off the bus and run everywhere. But he was usually in his room at night after the games. He cut out drinking after he got stopped by the police a year ago. Just quit, cold. He didn’t touch the stuff.”

In Drysdale’s hotel room Sunday morning, housekeepers were cleaning blood stains off the carpet in front of the bed. The blood apparently came from Drysdale’s nose after he collapsed from an apparent heart attack.

Friday’s sports section of a local newspaper was still open on a love seat. The security crossbar on the hotel door, which had been sawed in half by the hotel maintenance man in order to gain entrance, was still hanging off the bar.

Two pair of rubber gloves, used by the medical examiners, remained: one on the bathroom counter, and one in the trash can. A napkin stained with blood was on the dresser.

“In a sense,” Scully said, “Don’s baseball life certainly began and ended in Montreal, because this is really where he blossomed; and this is where he passed on.”