WASHINGTON — Tommy Lasorda, who won two World Series titles
during his 21-year managerial reign with the Los Angeles Dodgers and became an
ambassador for baseball in retirement from the sport, died Jan. 7 in Los
Angeles at age 93.
Lasorda, a Catholic, died at a Los Angeles hospital an hour
after suffering cardiopulmonary arrest at his home. He was inducted in 1997 to
the Baseball Hall of Fame, the year after his retirement as manager, but he
wasn't done as a skipper, leading the U.S. men's baseball team to a gold medal
in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
As a pitcher, Lasorda's baseball career didn't amount to
much — an 0-4 career record with a 6.48 ERA over 58.1 innings playing two
seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers and one with the Kansas City Athletics — but
as a manager he shone, winning four National League pennants and winning 1,599
games, all with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
As much as he was an ambassador for the sport, Lasorda
served as a self-styled ambassador for the Catholic faith.
He grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown, Pa.,
where he attended an Italian parish, Holy Savior. In a 1989 interview, Lasorda
said: "We were so poor, I wore shoes with soles so thin I could step on a
coin and tell whether it was heads or tails."
But Lasorda said on repeated occasions, "I'm proud to
be a Catholic," and pitched in to help numerous charitable endeavors.
In 1989, he learned that the Sisters of Mercy in Nashville,
Tenn., needed financial support for a new convent. "They have dedicated
their life to God so we need to give something back; everyone thinks Rome pays
for these things," Lasorda said.
The year after the Dodgers' breathtaking upset win over the
Oakland Athletics in the 1988 World Series, Lasorda, who said he had not
stepped on a scale in eight years, weighed in at 218. He pledged to get down to
190 and collected $50,000 in pledges for the convent. He was aided by two of
his stars, pitcher Orel Hershiser and outfielder Kirk Gibson, each of whom
promised to contribute $10,000 if he lost 20 pounds, and then added to their
pledge the other eight — which Lasorda accomplished.
"We can't do enough for education in this country — all
the way up through college," said Lasorda, who addressed numerous Catholic
organizations and diocesan events around the country, in a 2001 interview.
In 1994, when the Dodgers were still conducting spring
training in Vero Beach, Fla., Lasorda emceed a dinner to benefit the St. Joseph
School Foundation in Lakeland, Fla., the spring training home of the Detroit
Tigers, which coincided with Detroit manager Sparky Anderson's 60th birthday.
At the dinner, Anderson, himself a Hall of Fame Catholic skipper, received a
baseball autographed to him by St. John Paul II.
In a 1994 interview, Jim Leyland, then the manager of the
Pittsburgh Pirates whose brother is a priest in Ohio, said he admired fellow
Catholics Lasorda and Anderson most of all. They "have been successful for
so long because they could adjust to the changes in the game," Leyland
said.
In 1985, Lasorda worked with Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley to
help Carmelite sisters in Guerra, Dominican Republic, where the Dodgers had set
up a development camp for promising Dominican ballplayers.
Lasorda and Cuban-born Dodgers super scout Ralph Avila
rented a house where the Carmelites began to teach their first class of 35
children in 1985. Later, Lasorda bought them a bus. By the turn of the century,
the Programa Comunitario Futuro Vivo school had room for 600 youths in
vocational training and computer classes, with six students having gone on to
join religious communities.
At a 1995 testimonial dinner in Philadelphia, Lasorda called
his Catholic faith "very, very important, something I believe in strongly
but don't try to force on others."
"I love my faith," he said. "I practice my
faith. It's helped me a great deal throughout my lifetime."