OXNARD, Calif. — The Lasorda Chronicles.
Garrett: “You gotta tell these guys the Sandy Koufax story.”
Lasorda: “Okay anyway, Koufax. [In 1954 when I was a pitcher] I have a god---- good spring training with the Dodgers, trying to make the ball club. We go into Brooklyn to open the season, and I get a call from Buzzie Bavasi, the general manager, to come to his office. I walk in and he said, ‘Tommy, I’ve got a problem.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter Buzzie? One of your relatives sick?’ He said, ‘No, I have to send somebody out. I have to cut one guy out of this ball club, Tommy.’ I said, ‘You didn’t bring me in here to tell me that! No! I won 17 games in f---ing Triple-A last year! What do I have to do to show you I can pitch here? You’re going to keep Koufax over me? No!! He’s a f---ing guy who can’t throw a ball and hit a f---ing barn door! And you’re going to keep him over me?!’ He said, ‘Look Tommy, you’ve gotta go.’ So, I went. So like I say, it took the greatest left-handed pitcher in baseball to knock me off of that Brooklyn team. That was my claim to fame.”
King: “Seems like the rivalry is missing from baseball now. Football too. Guys are pretty friendly.”
Dalrymple: “Our guys pray with the other team on the field after the game.”
Lasorda: “If I saw my players ever talking to the other players, I would chew their ass out. Get the f--- off the field! Don’t talk to them SOBs! You might have to go break up a double play and knock him off a base, and you’re talking to him? They hug each other and everything now. I would never shake hands with the f---ing other team when they beat us. Why shake hands? We are trying to beat their ass, we ain’t shaking hands with the enemy!”
(MMQB.SI.com)
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