Brooklyn Connection Is Still Alive

The retirement of Manager Tom Lasorda leaves only two holdovers from the club’s Brooklyn days--announcer Vin Scully and traveling secretary Bill DeLury.

But neither man is ready to follow Lasorda just yet.

Scully is in his 47th year of broadcasting Dodger baseball.

“I plan on doing this as long as I’m healthy,” he said, “and I feel as good as I do.

“I still get excited about baseball, about a game like Sunday with [Tim] Wallach’s grand slam. I don’t have to manufacture the feelings. That is real emotion.

“People ask me, ‘How can you still sound so enthusiastic?’ I don’t try. It’s just there. Oh sure, all the travel gets tiring at times, but boy, once the game starts, I just love it. When the crowd roars and the players come on the field, it’s still very exciting to me.”

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Scully remembers the first time he heard of Lasorda. It was at spring training in the early 1950s, back in the Brooklyn days, and Buzzie Bavasi, then the team’s general manager, mentioned to the announcer that he was concerned about a promise he had made.

“I’ve got this young pitcher popping off,” Bavasi said, “saying he is strong enough to pitch batting practice to everybody in camp. I told him, if he did it, I’d pay him $50.

“But I’ve got to call it off. This kid will kill himself trying to do it.”

He probably would have. In those days, the Dodgers had 26 farm teams, meaning Lasorda would have had to pitch to about 800 hitters.

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Lasorda will be honored by the Cardinals in a special ceremony before tonight’s game, the series finale and the last game of this nine-game trip.