The colorful manager started with the club in Brooklyn as a pitcher, then guided L.A. to two World Series titles as he fit in oh-so-well in Hollywood.
Tommy Lasorda, the boisterous master motivator who “bled Dodger Blue” during his seven decades with the club as a player, scout, coach, manager and ambassador in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, has died. He was 93.
Lasorda, who managed the team for nearly 20 years to four National League pennants and World Series titles in 1981 and 1988, died Thursday night after suffering a heart attack at his home in Fullerton, California, the Dodgers announced. He had been ill for some time.
He retired as Dodgers manager in July 1996, about a month after he suffered a heart attack and underwent an angioplasty to clear a clogged artery. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1997, the same year his uniform No. 2 was retired by the club.
Most recently, Lasorda served as a special adviser to Dodgers chairman Mark Walter. He was there in Arlington, Texas, on Oct. 27 when the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series.
"In a franchise that has celebrated such great legends of the game, no one who wore the uniform embodied the Dodger spirit as much as Tommy Lasorda," Dodger president and CEO Stan Kasten said in a statement.
With his infectious personality, impeccable comic timing and gift for storytelling, the colorful son of Italian immigrants was showbiz through and through, a perfect fit in Hollywood.
Frank Sinatra promised him that he would sing the national anthem at Dodger Stadium if Lasorda ever became manager of the team, and so he did on Opening Day in 1977. Lasorda once put Don Rickles in uniform and let him sit in the dugout, and legend has it he sent the comic out to the mound to make a pitching change.
Lasorda also counted Ronald Reagan, Robert Wagner, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Milton Berle and Tony Danza among his buddies, and Pia Zadora sang “The Way We Were” at his son’s funeral in June 1991.
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