Sent to Showers, He Had to Come Clean

Tom Lasorda, who will serve as the master of ceremonies at a dinner at the Beverly Hilton hotel tonight benefiting baseball scouts, remembers scouting a broadcasting talent when he was the manager of Spokane of the Pacific Coast League in 1971.

Lasorda said that during a series against the Hawaii Islanders in Honolulu, he called Dodger Vice President and General Manager Al Campanis to tell him about a young announcer for the Islanders.

“I told him I’d been listening to this kid named Al Michaels, and he was tremendous,” Lasorda said. “All Campanis wanted to know was, what was I doing listening to the radio during games? I told him I’d been thrown out of six straight games and listened in the clubhouse. He wasn’t too happy about that.”

Trivia time: Who twice hit more than 50 home runs in a season, 10 years apart?

More Lasorda: During a guest appearance by Lasorda on KSPN (710), talk-show hosts Joe McDonnell and Doug Krikorian kept pumping him for inside information about the Dodgers.

According to reader Bennett Tramer, they told Lasorda he could trust them to keep the information confidential, to which Lasorda responded, “I know you two can keep a secret, it’s the people you tell it to who can’t.”

Peacemaker: Former Dodger Bill Russell recalls that the only fight, or near fight, he ever got into was with Tug McGraw, when McGraw was pitching for the Philadelphia Phillies.

“Joe Ferguson was hitting in front of me, and McGraw was supposed to intentionally walk him,” Russell recalled. “Well, he got a pitch in too close to the plate and Fergie smacked it for a base hit.

“When I came up, Tug was slapping that glove against his leg like he always did, only harder than usual. He kept throwing inside to me until he finally hit me -- right in the rear end. So I started running toward the mound.”

And what happened?

“I got tackled by Pete Rose,” Russell said.

Round 2: The near fight between McGraw and Russell, two unlikely combatants, wasn’t lost on sportscaster Stu Nahan, who was working at Channel 4 at the time.

“The next day, I said, ‘Come on, you guys aren’t fighters,’ ” Nahan recalled telling them. “They shook hands and all was forgiven. I even got them to put on boxing gloves and take a few playful jabs at each other on camera.”

A different glove: If things get so bad that Gary Payton wants to be traded, Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times suggests that Payton hire Johnnie Cochran to deliver the message to the Lakers.

Of Cochran, Perry wrote, “He is itching for another chance to say, ‘If the Glove don’t fit.... ‘ “

Trivia answer: Willie Mays, who is being honored tonight at the Beverly Hilton. Mays hit 51 homers in 1955 and 52 in 1965.

And finally: From David Letterman: “As you know, Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life. In fact, he’s not even allowed to have himself frozen.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.