Less-Burdened Lasorda Thinks He Could Manage a Comeback

Tommy Lasorda is feeling so good after retiring, he’s thinking about coming back.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” the former Dodger manager said Thursday night. “I feel great right now. If I’d have felt like this in July, I wouldn’t have stepped down.”

Lasorda, 68, left after 20 years as Dodger skipper, citing his health and family. After undergoing heart surgery in June, he said, “I was tired. I was scared.”

“I made a tough decision,” he told the Knoxville News-Sentinel before a banquet for the Tennessee baseball team. “It was an emotional decision. I just didn’t feel like I could go down [in the dugout] and do it.”

But he feels much better now and it shows. He says he has lost 25 pounds since last summer and is almost as excited about his diet as baseball.

“If I feel the way I do now,” he said, he might consider a comeback.

Lasorda said he was surprised by the announced sale of the Dodgers, describing Peter O’Malley as “a great owner.”

But he intimated a sale would ease his feelings of loyalty to the O’Malley family and, hence, make it easier to continue rethinking his managerial retirement.