He Keeps on Trucking at 90

The back injury that first surfaced when he was a young prospect with the Brooklyn Dodgers now requires the use of a cane shaped like a bat barrel.

Rod Dedeaux has several, and each has been autographed by celebrities, from President Bush to Hall of Fame baseball players to stars of entertainment.

Those signatures, of course, are symbolic signposts of a life that is the stuff of legend and that continues unimpeded by the cane or the calendar that says he will be 90 on Tuesday.

A frequent companion named Tom Lasorda shook his head and said, “The guy is amazing, one of a kind. No matter where we go, he never stops. He always maintains that enthusiasm. When the great Dodger in the sky finally summons him, they should send his body to the Smithsonian.”

Given his almost 70-year affiliation with USC and those unparalleled 11 national titles in 45 years as the baseball coach, Dedeaux might argue that it’s the great Trojan in the sky, but then, what’s in a name?

Doesn’t he still call everyone Tiger, as he always has, and doesn’t everyone beam and still call him Coach when he arrives at the Jonathan Club for lunch or stops anywhere else in a city that is fortunate to still feature the twin towers of Dedeaux and John Wooden, who is 93?

After all, no matter who or how anyone worships, Lasorda was only saying that his pal remains blessed with the vigor of someone much younger, as Justin Dedeaux, at 60 the oldest of Rod and Helen’s four children, confirmed.

“There has been no drop-off,” Justin Dedeaux said. “Dad still doesn’t miss a party and is as sharp mentally as ever. In some ways, he seems to be getting stronger. When the [Trojans] went to Cuba recently, my brother-in-law and I had a tough time keeping up.”

The Smithsonian can wait.

Consider that Dedeaux still reports to work at the Commerce trucking company, a multifaceted, multimillion-dollar conglomerate that he started in the late ‘30s by spending the last of his baseball savings on a $500 Chevrolet truck that he drove himself on pedal-to-the-metal routes to Albuquerque and back.

Consider that he is still an active ambassador in baseball’s international growth, a visionary and Olympic pioneer in that movement “long before it became my own mission,” said Peter O’Malley, the former Dodger owner and Dedeaux’s frequent global traveling partner.

Consider as well that he basically remains, as he always will, the face of USC baseball even 18 years after retiring --or being told to retire -- from a coaching tenure during which the Trojans dominated the college sport, winning a remarkable five consecutive national titles at one point while serving as the game’s best farm system.

Dedeaux sent 200 players into professional ball, including Tom Seaver, Randy Johnson, Mark McGwire, Dave Kingman, Ron Fairly and Fred Lynn among more than 50 to the big leagues.

More than one publication selected him as the coach of the century, and although Lasorda likes to needle him at banquets by saying, “Big deal, I’d like to see him win that award twice,” Dedeaux responds by pointing out that because seven of his nine grandchildren are boys “who knows, maybe I can win it twice if I can raise my own team.”

One thing is certain:

The respect with which Dedeaux is held was demonstrated again Friday night when almost 100 of his former players surprised him at a Jonathan Club party. USC will salute his 90th birthday in a ceremony before today’s game with Long Beach State at the campus diamond named for him.

Sitting in a conference room at his trucking company the other day, his back to a wall featuring dozens of photos, plaques, letters and newspaper clippings, the framed salutes to a memorable career, Dedeaux brushed off 90 as just one more day and said, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I’ve definitely had a great past.”

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There are pivotal crossroads in every life, and maybe more of them in a life spanning 90 years.

Even with all of his accomplishments and success, Dedeaux admits that he can’t help but wonder how it might have been different if his big league career hadn’t been limited to four at-bats with the 1935 Dodgers by the back injury suffered when he was with the Dayton Ducks of the Mid-Atlantic League. Or how his career would have evolved if he had accepted Casey Stengel’s coaching offer with the New York Yankees in the late ‘50s. Or an offer from Walter O’Malley in the early ‘70s to join Walter Alston’s Dodger staff with an eye to becoming the manager when Alston retired.

Dedeaux has often related the Yankee part of it, of how he and Stengel had almost a lifelong relationship that started when he was a young player at Hollywood High. He would work out with Stengel, then managing the Toledo Mud Hens, on Sundays in Griffith Park and then, as he put it in the retelling, “literally sat at the master’s feet,” soaking up his baseball knowledge.

“People talked about Stengelese,” Dedeaux said, “but I understood every word. Of course, I’d occasionally wonder if there was something wrong with me because I was the only person in our group who did understand.”

Mentor and pupil became confidants. When Stengel, supported by Yankee General Manager George Weiss, offered him the coaching opportunity, it was with the understanding that Dedeaux would be the next manager.

“The Yankees were the pinnacle, my dream team,” Dedeaux said, “but we had a young family, I was still getting the trucking business off the ground and I had loyalty to the people at USC [where he had become the coach in 1942, replacing Sam Barry]. It was a difficult decision, but I just didn’t feel I could uproot everything we had started at that point.”

There would have been no uprooting with the Dodgers, of course, and this is the part of it that Dedeaux said he had never revealed before, how the senior O’Malley approached him with the concept of serving under Alston for a year or two and then becoming the manager.

Lasorda, at that point, was managing Spokane of the Pacific Coast League. He joined Alston’s coaching staff in 1972, conceivably taking the spot that Dedeaux had rejected for some of the same reasons he had rejected the Yankees, then began his 20-year stint as manager in 1976. Lasorda, too, tried to lure Dedeaux onto his coaching staff without success. History, of course, would have been considerably different if Dedeaux had accepted the Dodgers’ initial proposition.

“My dad and Norman Topping, who was then the USC president, were really good friends, and Rod was a popular and successful coach in the city,” Peter O’Malley said.

“I remember my dad telling me that he thought Dedeaux would make an excellent manager of the Dodgers someday. I don’t know if the coaching part of it was discussed, but I don’t think my dad was hesitant at all about hiring a college coach, even though that would have been a couple years before the Angels hired Bobby Winkles.”

Winkles came directly from Arizona State in 1973 and lasted little more than one season as the Angel manager.

Where would Lasorda’s career have taken him if Dedeaux had chosen to succeed Alston, rather than making what he said was the “heart-wrenching” decision to remain “with the people who were on board with me and building their own careers” at USC and the trucking company?

“He’d have probably ended up managing for George Steinbrenner,” O’Malley said of the Yankee owner who did try to lure Lasorda from Los Angeles at one point in the ‘80s.

It is hard to envision, of course, Lasorda’s praying to the great Yankee in the sky, or to contemplate how that different bit of history might have affected his close relationship with Dedeaux.

As it is, Lasorda’s wife, Jo, has had cards made, featuring a picture of her husband and Dedeaux, and an inscription that reads, “Three of a kind can’t beat this pair.”

“I love the guy,” Dedeaux said, repressing a smile, “but when people say we look alike and think we’re brothers, it’s really insulting because he’s so ugly.”

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Dedeaux has always refrained from selecting his All-Trojan team. He would be bound to offend someone, he said, and he would upset his wife because he would not include his two sons -- Justin and Terry were both infielders.

Helen Dedeaux is 89. She and Rod met at USC, and they will have been married for 63 years Feb. 28, the day he is scheduled to receive the Coach John R. Wooden Award from the Paralysis Project of America, the second time Dedeaux will have received an award named for the former UCLA basketball coach.

“I think we have a mutual admiration society,” Dedeaux said. “He would send me a personal letter every time we won a championship, and I respected the way his teams played as much as he would let me know how much he respected the way we played.

“I think character, discipline, attention to details were important to us both. Play sloppy and you lose. I never believed what Leo Durocher said about good guys finishing last, and I’m sure Coach Wooden didn’t as well.”

Wooden had his pyramid of success. Dedeaux could sometimes do it with one word.

“If you were to look in Rod’s dictionary,” Ron Fairly said, “I think you’d find several definitions for the word ‘tiger.’ He could compliment you with the way he said it or he could say it in a way that let you know you’d made a mistake.

“I also think that a lot of Stengel rubbed off on Rod. He could call a kid into his office for 10 or 15 minutes and the kid would come out feeling pretty good about himself, even if he had no idea what Rod had said.”

It was under Dedeaux that McGwire and Kingman, who became two of the game’s most renowned power hitters, made full-time moves from the mound to the batter’s box.

It was under Dedeaux that multi-sport players such as Mike Garrett, Willie Brown, Marvin Cobb and Bill Sharman became viable baseball contributors.

If Dedeaux still bristles at the suggestion that his title dominance ended when NCAA scholarship reductions evened the playing field -- “As a private school, we always had scholarship limits,” he said -- he also still bristles when recalling that NCAA penalties, directed primarily at football, might have deprived the Trojans of as many as six other national championships.

Still, success bred success, and the players developed confidence in Dedeaux as an “instinctive and great game-day manager,” according to his son, Justin, who played and coached for him.

“There was almost a feeling that it would take a miracle to beat us,” Justin said. “We never thought we were out of a game. He was so optimistic that he wouldn’t allow those teams to lose.”

The younger Dedeaux referred specifically to the 1968-74 era when the Trojans won six of seven national titles.

En route to the 1968 and ’74 crowns, the Trojans were losing to Cal State Los Angeles with two out in the ninth inning of both regional finals before rallying to win.

In the ninth inning of the 1973 College World Series semifinal, the Trojans were losing, 7-0, and Dave Winfield was pitching a one-hitter for Minnesota before they rallied for one of the most improbable victories in college baseball history. They won the title the next day, rallying from a 3-2 deficit with two runs in the ninth inning against Arizona State.

Justin Dedeaux laughed and said, “My dad always liked to say, ‘Hey, my tastes are simple. All I demand is perfection.’ ”

No life is perfect, but the old coach has made a 90-year run at it, and those walking sticks help illustrate that he has done more than talk the talk.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Tribute to Dedeaux

The USC baseball program will celebrate legendary former coach Rod Dedeaux’s 90th birthday today in a ceremony before the 1 p.m. start against Long Beach State. The game at Dedeaux Field is the 2004 regular-season home opener for the Trojans.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

* Spent 45 seasons (1942-86) as USC’s head coach.

* Won an unprecedented 11 national championships.

* Won a record five consecutive titles from 1970 to ’74.

* Named “Coach of the Century” by Baseball America and Collegiate Baseball

* Posted an overall record of 1,332-571-11 (.699).

CEREMONY

* Guests for the pregame ceremony include three members of Hall of Fame: Tom Seaver, Sparky Anderson and Tom Lasorda. Seaver pitched for the Trojans in 1967, and Anderson served as a batboy for Dedeaux during the 1948 season.

* Longtime USC announcer Tom Kelly will emcee the ceremony.

* Fans are encouraged to arrive at noon. Tickets can be purchased at the gate or by calling the USC ticket office at (213) 740-GO SC.