The stock market, the weather, interest rates, all may fail if the Dodgers do. All America hangs on the fate of the Dodgers. God is a Dodger, Lasorda would remind you. How could even a hack not exceed himself when confronted with the superlative doings of the demigods in Dodger Blue? A journeyman might be sufficient for comparative trivialities of the San Diego Padres, for example, but not something as close to sublime as the Lasorda Dodgers.Ĭould journeyman prose do justice to a Steve Sax? Pedro Guerrero? No, Tommy Lasorda will remind you, only literary lights of the dimension of Renaissance poets could be expected to rise to the subject matter. It is a subject matter which, like the Fall of Troy, would endow its chronicler with divine inspiration like Homer or Aeneas, would call forth the rolling strophes of poetry worthy of Lord Byron or Dante, to say nothing of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. ![]() It is unthinkable that anyone sub-Hemingway or sub-Pulitzer would be assigned to covering a subject as cosmic and apocalyptic as the Dodgers. To be great in Tommy’s eyes you merely have to have a nodding acquaintance with the infield fly rule, verbs in all the sentences-and be assigned to the Dodgers. The man in question is not to be confused with the other literary greats who have passed through Dodgertown in recent years, the great Mel Durslag, for example, or the great Gordon Edes, the great Dick Young, Red Smith or the great correspondent for the Hackensack Daily Blade whose name escapes Tommy for the moment but not his accomplishments. Shakespeare never got a better introduction. The decibels lingered embarrassingingly around the soft summer air as Tommy Lasorda launched into a eulogy of the life and times of this new arrival in inspired words normally reserved for the funeral of Abraham Lincoln or the verse on a Hallmark card to your boss. But most of all he was fun.The pride of Abruzzi, Italy, Norristown, Pa., raconteur, published author and all-around good fellow stood with bandy legs, arms akimbo and spoke in his normal tone of voice-somewhere between a guy shouting “Fire!” in a crowded building and a man seeing an iceberg from the bridge of the Titanic-"WELL, IF IT ISN’T THE GREAT JIM MURRAY!” as he spotted a newcomer around the batting cage. He listened to me and taught me so many things. He was always there for me when I needed him. Thanks for teaching me to work hard and laugh harder." Kate Upton
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