A Tommy Lasorda Pep Talk, circa 1985 [by David Lehman]

In 1985 the Dodger skipper Tommy Lasorda — who died a few days ago at age 93 — turned the team's season around when he switched Pedro Guerrero from third base to left field on June 1st.  Guerrero hated playing third base. When Steve Sax was the Dodger second baseman and suddenly developed a tendency toward errancy, Guerrero was asked what was in his mind when he played the hot corner and the opponents had two men on base. His first thought, he admitted, was "Please don't hit the ball to me." And what was his second thought? ''Please don't hit it to Sax." Guerrero, which in Spanish means "warrior," hit fifteen home runs that June, after Lasorda reversed himself and moved Guerrero to left field, where, in Jim Murray's words, "the action is more sporadic, the existence more monastic." The change woprked wonders for Giuerrerao and since "hitting is contagious" (Lasorda) for the team. "I've seen Mays and Aaron carry ball clubs," Tommy said. "That's what Pete is doing for us."

Jim Murray, one of the great sports columnists, asked Lasorda how he had persuaded Guerrero to play third in the first place. In a piece for the Los Angeles Times  that rain in late March, 1985, Murray described the problem:

"[Guerrero] is not at his best at certain fine points of the play at third base. At picking up or stopping ground balls for example.

"A minor detail, shrugs Lasorda. Even Caruso had to learn to sing.

"A more major detail was that this particular third baseman did not really want to be one. He preferred some place where the action was more sporadic, the existence more monastic, where he had somewhat more than a blink of an eye to react to a batted ball approaching at something only slightly less than the speed of sound.

"Tommy called Guerrero in. 'Pete,' he asked him in the fatherly tones Moses might have used carrying the tablets down from the mount or guaranteeing the Red Sea would part, 'when you walk down the street and the team is trying to get in the Fall Classic, do you want kids to read where Pete Guerrero said that ‘since the Dodgers made it possible for me to be secure for life, I want to repay them in any way I can, including playing third base,’ or do you want them to read, ‘Pete Guerrero says he won’t play third, too bad about the team?’ ”

"History doesn’t record Guerrero’s exact answer, but he was next seen on third base, whereupon Lasorda next introduced him to Brooks Robinson, a passing broadcaster who only happens to be the greatest third baseman of his day, and a man who practically invented the position as it is practiced today.

"Now, introducing Pedro Guerrero to Brooks Robinson is tantamount to introducing Ma Kettle to Miss America and urging her to find out how to be more like her, but history records Pedro Guerrero went out that afternoon and turned in two sparkling, vacuum-cleaner plays at the third sack that afternoon. After the game, Lasorda was ecstatic. “From now on your name is ‘Brooks!”’ he screamed at his third baseman. “The new human vacuum cleaner! Who do you think was standing up in the press box cheering his head off!? Brooks Robinson! He said those were two of the greatest plays he ever seen in his life!

"Lasorda’s stock-in-trade is unbridled optimism. 'I learned it from my father,' he boasts. 'Every day of his life he drove this truck down in this quarry. He’d come home at night, and we’d have to rub his feet–they were frostbitten–and he’d say ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world. I’m living in the greatest country in the world and I have this family and a job.’ And I’d say, ‘How can you say you’re the luckiest man in the world–your feet are frozen!?’ And he’d say, ‘What’s a little frozen feet compared to all the other happiness I got?!’ So, I say, what’s wrong with playing a little third base? I mean, do your feet get frozen?”

*

PS: This is the opening graf of Jim Murray's "Blue-Carpet Treatment by Lasorda," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 1985:

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