A Dodger Gets His Due
"Dodger Stadium Was His Address,
But Every Ballpark Was His Home"
CNN/SI presents selections from Sports Illustrated highlighting Tom Lasorda's journey from Norristown, Pa., to the Baseball Hall of Fame
Destiny's Boys
L.A. miraculously beat Oakland in the World Series
by Steve Wulf
Issue date: October 31, 1988
How in the world did it happen? How did a team with a lineup resembling that of the Albuquerque Dukes trounce a team reminiscent of the 1927 Yankees? How did the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Oakland Athletics like a drum, four games to one, in the 1988 World Series? How come manager Tommy Lasorda and the rest of his Dodger Glue team get to go to the White House this week to shake hands and schmooze with the Prez, while Tony La Russa and his Abashed Brothers have gone home, shaking their heads?
Lasorda kept telling his players about David and Goliath—''The first time the underdog won,'' he said—and, given the relative strength of the combatants, this was an upset of Biblical proportions. The Dodgers jumped on NBC sportscaster Bob Costas for calling their Game 4 lineup perhaps the weakest in World Series history, but, truth be told, he was right. One would have to go back to the 1906 Chicago White Sox, known as the Hitless Wonders, to find a worse Series team, but it's interesting that the Sox beat the crosstown Cubs that year.
Not even the Dodger faithful had much faith. On the afternoon of Game 1 comedian Don Rickles was talking with Lasorda when the Dodger skipper excused himself to go give his players a pep talk. ''You're not going out there and feed them some line of bull about how they're gonna win this thing without [Kirk] Gibson, are you?'' asked Rickles.
''Yup,'' said Lasorda.
He's full of prosciutto, but Lasorda did a superb job of both micro- and macromanaging. In the 4-3 victory in Game 4 he tried four hit-and-runs. The first one precipitated a two-run rally in the first, and the last, in the seventh, kept L.A. out of a double play and allowed its fourth run to score. In the fourth inning of the clinching victory Lasorda gave the green light on 3 and 0 to [Mike] Davis, who had two homers and a .196 average in the regular season, and Davis responded with a two-run homer that gave Hershiser a 4-1 lead. Lasorda stayed one step ahead of La Russa during the entire Series, even though La Russa had a much more talented roster at his disposal.
As for the bigger picture, Lasorda kept his troops loose and confident, even though everyone else knew they had no business being in the Series. Some of his motivational techniques were childish—example: exploiting Costas's innocent remark about the Los Angeles lineup to the point that the Dodgers were chanting ''Kill Costas!'' in the clubhouse—but they worked, not so much on L.A. as on Oakland. La Russa was so obsessed with the emotional edge the Dodgers had that he showed uncharacteristic emotion himself, hollering at his team in the dugout, for example, during Game 3. Speaking of hollering, Lasorda wandered through the Los Angeles clubhouse after Game 4, yelling something about ''the fruits of victory.'' One Dodger yelled back, ''Why does it always have to be food with you, Tommy?''
With each injury to the patients of Jobe—team physician Dr. Frank Jobe—the Dodgers seemed to gain strength. First there was Gibson's right knee, severely sprained in Game 7 of the playoffs. Then there were the recurring ills of pitcher John Tudor's left elbow and outfielder Mike Marshall's back. Then catcher Mike Scioscia twisted his right knee sliding into second in Game 4. Lasorda never panicked, not even when the team he put on the field included Jose Gonzalez (.083 for the regular season), Franklin Stubbs (.223), Jeff Hamilton (.236), Alfredo Griffin (.199) and Davis. The last injury of the Series was suffered by Lasorda. At the presentation ceremonies he cut his forehead on one of the metal flags on the World Series trophy.
''He certainly did the finest job of managing I've seen,'' said [coach Joe] Amalfitano. ''You know, when you guys do those player-by-player matchups, you don't really think about the impact the managers have on a team. That was a big difference in this Series.''
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