The Dodgers took two of three games in the opening series against the Giants, and then they closed their first home stand by taking two of three from the Atlanta Braves and former teammates Andy Messersmith and Mike Marshall. The Dodgers, at 4-2, were in second place by one game behind the Houston Astros, and observers continued to note that something felt different with this team. It was particularly noticeable whenever a Dodger player hit a home run, as Rick Monday did in the rubber match—his first as a Dodger—in a 4–3 win over the Braves on April 13. Whenever this happened Lasorda made a point of greeting his players at the top step of the dugout and hugging them like a proud uncle. This ritual bolstered the image of the Dodgers as one big happy family enjoying themselves in the California sunshine. And perhaps because of the manager’s enthusiasm, players continued to give the manager credit for changes that had come to the team. “You can sense the difference in the dugout,” said Lasorda’s third baseman, Ron Cey. “We are more aggressive because Tommy is an aggressive manager. He shows his emotions and it reflects on the club.”14
Despite the positive results of the first week of the season, the team knew it had yet to be truly tested. But they didn’t have to wait long. On April 15 they traveled to hostile San Francisco to begin a long twelve-game road trip against their Western Division rivals, the Giants, Reds, Braves, and Padres. Fans need not have worried. In San Francisco the Dodgers swept the Giants in a three-game series, outscoring their rival 19–7. Reggie Smith had two home runs in the first game, had another in the second game, and then nearly got into a brawl with Montefusco in the third game. After striking out Smith in the first inning, Montefusco had issued a verbal insult to the slugger, and Smith had to be restrained from charging the pitcher. Once relative calm was restored the Dodgers won a crazy back-and-forth game, 7–6. When the dust had settled Smith stood near the top among league leaders in offense, with three home runs, thirteen RBIs, and a batting average of .395.
Though it was still early in the season, players were almost giddy over the team’s prospects. “I tell you,” said left-handed starting pitcher Doug Rau, “this is a real treat for me to pitch with all those runs.” Reggie Smith agreed with the pitcher. “This is more than a one-dimensional club,” he said. “This is a team that can hurt you in many ways. We have more than one guy who can hit it out.”15 Lasorda, for his part, couldn’t stop talking about how everyone on the team was playing a part. “The way things are going,” he said, “managing is easy.”16
The team’s success continued. The Dodgers traveled to Cincinnati and quickly took two straight in a short series. After the second game, a 3–1 win that was the Dodgers’ seventh in a row, the Reds’ manager dared again to shrug off the Dodgers’ success. “They’re not much different than any other team,” Anderson said. “Somewhere along the line they’re going to lose four or five in a row and they’ll have days just like we had today. They didn’t beat us today, we beat ourselves. . . . When you only get five hits,” as the Dodgers did that day, “you’re not going to beat many people.” Lasorda countered the remark by saying, “Tell Sparky that when we hold the other team to one run, we’re not going to lose many, either.”17 Much of Anderson’s bluster must have come from an early premonition of what might come. At the end of the season’s second week his 4-8 Reds were in last place in the Western Division, while the 9-2 Dodgers were in first. And just when it seemed things couldn’t get any better for his bitter rival,18 a new Dodger slugging star would emerge for the team during the next series against the Atlanta Braves. In early spring training Tom Lasorda had slotted his third baseman, Ron Cey, into the crucial cleanup-hitter position. Alston, in 1976, had tended to put Steve Garvey in the slot, though Cey had occasionally appeared there as well. On Lasorda’s team Cey had flown under the radar as cleanup hitter for much of the first three weeks of the season, but in Atlanta something finally clicked. Against Atlanta in the first game Cey hit a double and a single. In the second game, on April 23, Cey homered and singled with four RBIs, and in the third game he doubled, homered, and knocked in five runs. The Dodgers took two of three from the Braves, raising their record to 11-3. In San Diego Cey continued his tear, going seven for thirteen with three home runs and five RBIs over four games as the Dodgers swept the Padres. On April 28 the Dodgers stood in first with a 15-3 record, and Cey’s batting line on the season was otherworldly. In eighteen games he had collected eight home runs, a .448 batting average, .990 slugging percentage, and twenty-six RBIs.
There are so many working parts to any baseball team, and so many opportunities for things to go haywire during the long season, that Dodger fans had to remind themselves to take in stride the Dodgers’ fast start in 1977. Still, all could agree on one thing: despite having to manage so many diverse working parts, the team’s new manager had acquitted himself admirably. Lasorda’s veteran players were all playing at, or above, their career marks, and, with a 15-3 record as of April 28, his Dodgers were within spitting distance of the franchise’s best start—the 22-2 record that the Dodgers had recorded in Brooklyn in April 1955. With all this under his belt, and more, one would think the new manager would be ecstatic, resting a little easier and focusing on keeping the team on track over the long season. Yet several niggling things kept Lasorda occupied during the season’s first month.
For instance, Lasorda remained concerned about the Dodgers’ overall lack of power. Beyond Cey and Garvey, who had eight and six home runs, respectively, on April 28, there was not much to speak of. Smith had slumped after his early displays of power, and both Baker and Monday, each with just three home runs thus far, had been less than spectacular. With that issue in mind, and with Al Campanis coming to a quick dead end in his talks to acquire slugging Mets first baseman–outfielder Dave Kingman, the team signed an aging free-agent slugger—Boog Powell—to hold down a bench spot. Powell, who was thirty-five and stood at six foot five and 250 pounds and had been hampered in 1976 by torn tendons in his ankle, had come to Vero Beach to ask for a tryout after being released by the Cleveland Indians on March 30. Powell cleared waivers on April 5 and was signed by the Dodgers to serve as a pinch hitter and backup first baseman.
Worse than the question of power, however, was another niggling issue that continued to worry Lasorda. Back on April 7 disgruntled Dodger pitcher Don Sutton—who, by his own admission, was never going to join the Tom Lasorda Fan Club—threw a fat grapefruit in his first pitch to the first batter of the season, Gary Thomasson. When Thomasson, a journeyman outfielder who was never going to be confused with Willie Mays, put the pitch into the grandstands, Lasorda was shocked. While Sutton returned to his workmanlike self after the initial blast and gave up only three more hits the rest of the way, winning the game 5–1, something about that first pitch stayed with Lasorda. After the game Lasorda was magnanimous about his first win as manager, saying the Big Dodger in the Sky “could not have planned it any better,” but privately, Lasorda couldn’t shake the feeling that the home run was another of the veteran pitcher’s ways of sticking it to his manager. After all, Sutton had been clear after Lasorda’s hiring that the veteran pitcher didn’t appreciate Lasorda’s showbiz way of working the press, and the pitcher had also told the press, when asked, that he would have preferred his friend and former teammate Jeff Torborg as manager. Characteristically, Lasorda, while not pleased with Sutton’s antics, made a joke of the situation. “I know they intended to send the first ball used on opening day to the Hall of Fame,” Lasorda told the press, referring to the new Rawlings ball. “But they planned to mail it to Cooperstown—not have it fly itself direct.”19
Sutton, for his part, continued to fashion himself as the team’s black sheep, though in many ways this made him a walking contradiction. After all, as Lasorda would be the first to acknowledge, no one on the Dodgers hated to lose as much as Sutton. “Don has about as complex a personality as anyone I’ve ever met,” said his Dodger pitching teammate, and fellow southerner, Burt Hooton. “He’s a very generous individual who�
�ll talk to anyone while the rest of us just say ‘Hi’ and keep going. At the same time, he’s an extremely competitive person.” Dodger coach Monty Basgall, who had first discovered Sutton in the early 1960s when he worked as a scout for the team, concurred. “He’s an odd guy in a way. He’s very independent. He knows what he wants, and he goes after it.” Born in the rural Gulf Coast region to a poor but hardworking family of sharecroppers, Sutton referred to himself as a “nothing semipolished hick,” even though his dedication to his professional practice was anything but unpolished. Sutton not only had become, by 1977, one of the winningest Dodger pitchers in history, but had also become enough of a fixture in the large Los Angeles to marry a smart local urban girl—his wife, Patti—and form his own corporation, SuttCor International, which managed a local restaurant and a deli. In person, Sutton lived a clean life—no smoking, no drinking—in keeping with his Christian upbringing, but he also spoke his mind often enough to get himself in trouble with his teammates and occasionally the fans. “He’s not the kind of guy you want to get into a verbal battle with,” his pitching coach, Red Adams, would later say. “He’s quick with the whip.”20
All the contradictions—the southern affability and wit, the sharp focus on his personal goals, his dislike of the PR aspects of the sport, and his abiding will to win—made Sutton a challenging teammate to get along with. And because of his particular vantage point as a veteran Dodger who had stuck with an underachieving team for more than ten seasons, Sutton seemed to feel it was his right to question the approach of the team’s new manager. Throughout spring training and well into the season, Sutton took every opportunity to defy Lasorda. And though the two would eventually reach a state of shaky détente, Lasorda would harbor doubts about his ace long after they had both gone elsewhere. “If I had to pitch one guy in a Game 7, it would be Don Sutton,” Lasorda said years later. “I loved him. But sometimes I was one of the only ones.”21
It’s perhaps a testament to the sheer power of Lasorda’s personality that, despite his failure to win over Sutton, he was still able to bring a lot of strong personalities into his orbit. Ron Cey, for instance, could easily have been as prickly about Lasorda as Sutton. After all, Cey was often overlooked for his contributions to the team and overshadowed by the team’s other stars, particularly the highly popular Steve Garvey. This was despite the fact that Cey was an All-Star who had brought much-needed stability to the Dodgers’ hot-corner spot. Furthermore, Cey, like Sutton, had lingering frustrations over contracts that he felt didn’t acknowledge his true value to the Dodgers. At the same time, however, Ron Cey was his own unique personality on the team. Though he once said he felt like a “bit actor waiting to get my big chance,” he would be the first to acknowledge that he was not as Hollywood glamorous as some of his teammates.22 He wasn’t as daunting at the plate as Jimmy Wynn or Reggie Smith and was not the all-around athlete that Dusty Baker was. He was not the All-American hero that Rick Monday was, and he was not the public darling that Steve Garvey was. Born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1948 to a middle-class family with working-class roots, Cey epitomized a certain Dodger spirit.23 After the age of eight, all he ever wanted to do was play Major League Baseball, though he’d made the decision without fully realizing the challenges he’d face. “If I’d known the circumstances I’d have to overcome, I probably wouldn’t have felt so strongly about it,” Cey told Sports Illustrated in early May. “I was fortunate to make it, even though a lot of people said I never would.”24
Watching Cey stand at the plate in 1977 was like watching a blacksmith approach a hot furnace. His arms were short and steely, and his hands were as meaty as welding gloves. His bat was an iron hammer, and he swung it with a quick and controlled fury, which, when his timing was on (like it was in April 1977), gave it a great deal of pop. Perhaps the best word to describe Ron Cey as a ballplayer was solid. Cey was solid in the way that a stone monolith was solid. This was also his biggest liability. His sturdy, muscular 185-pound, five-foot-ten body was unique in baseball—with thighs as large as an offensive lineman’s and calves that were particularly short. His lower body’s structure in fact gave Cey a distinctive gait that led directly to his nickname: the Penguin. Still, Cey took full advantage of what assets he did have—although he lacked pure speed, his quick hands and a quick first step made him a solid fielder at a tough position, and his leg strength added to his power at the bat. Also, because of the challenge he had faced in convincing baseball people he could play the game with his particular physical frame, Cey had developed the mental toughness and workmanlike habits required to play the hot corner at a high level. By 1977 the Dodgers’ third baseman had played on three straight National League All-Star teams.
Despite his struggle to overcome his own limitations, in early 1977 Cey credited his success thus far to Lasorda. The manager, he said, had given Cey freer reins even as he expressed greater expectations for his third baseman. Indeed, thus far most of the Dodgers were much the same as Cey—responding well to Lasorda. After the sweep of the Padres in San Diego, the Dodgers were batting .305 as a team and averaging three more runs per game than in 1976. To end April the Dodgers played two games at home against the Montreal Expos and won both of them. Amid much fanfare and attention from local and national media, Ron Cey knocked in two runs in the first game, and then, after going hitless in the first six innings of the final game, he slugged a solo home run in the seventh to help cement the win. The blast gave Cey his twenty-ninth RBI, a feat that broke a Major League record for the first month of the season. Ron Cey was named National League Player of the Week for April 18–24, and he was also the obvious choice for National League Player of the Month for April.
On May 1 the Dodgers, at 17-3, stood atop the Western Division by a crushing seven and a half games over their nearest rival, the Cincinnati Reds, which was said to be the largest lead ever for a team after the first month of the season. And the Dodgers continued putting on a show well into May, as people around the nation started to take notice. On May 16, in an article titled “In L.A., It’s Up, Up and Away with Cey,” Sports Illustrated lavished high praise on the Penguin and the Dodgers. “A major league baseball season is not supposed to be a 100-year dash,” wrote author Larry Keith.
It is a marathon, an endurance test demanding strong will, a steady pace and reserve strength for a finishing kick. . . . But from the very start of the season the Los Angeles Dodgers have been going flat out, crushing the opposition and setting new standards for early excellence. They have won with force, and they have won with finesse. They have been awesome at home and on the road, in the warmth of the afternoon and in the chill of the night, against hard-throwing righthanders and against curve-balling lefthanders. They won their opener, have kept on winning and give every indication they plan to win some more.25
On May 6, after a convincing 9–3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies, the Dodgers’ record stood at 22-4, a stunning ten and a half games ahead the Reds. On May 17, powered by Don Sutton’s sixth win against no losses, the Dodgers beat the Phillies again to move twelve games ahead, and, on May 26, after beating the Astros 4–3, the Dodgers led the Western Division by twelve and a half games. Sportswriter Don Merry pointed out that this was the team’s largest league lead over a second-place opponent since the move to Los Angeles. Even during the Koufax and Drysdale era, no Dodger team had so dominated its opponents.
The team continued rolling for much of the next month. At the end of May the Dodgers’ record stood at 33-15; its team batting average was, at .290, about .40 points higher than opponents were batting against them. Five of the team’s starters were hitting over .300, and even the usually weak-hitting catcher, Steve Yeager, was batting a surprising .290. Ron Cey and Reggie Smith were near the top of league leaders in home runs and RBIs, and Steve Garvey was right behind. And the starting pitching had been, for the most part, outstanding—the team’s overall ERA was just 3.35, best in the league. In other words, the team was showing it was as good as Lasorda had
believed. This Dodger team, with its furious approach to the game and its voracious appetite for winning, seemed far removed from nearby Tinseltown. As if in response, then, in early May a new team nickname began to appear in local media. And by May 7 the name had already gained currency among some of the team’s followers, as evidenced in a letter to the Los Angeles Times that day from a fan named Mario P. Basich. “Well, we finally came up with a name for the local boys,” Basich wrote, “‘The Big Blue Wrecking Crew.’”26
Much of the inspiration for the name must have come from the way the team had been demolishing its opponents, though it’s probably more likely that someone wanted a name as catchy and powerful as that of its chief divisional rival. Or as Basich concluded in his letter, ““I hope they live up to it [the nickname] when they meet the ‘Big Red Machine.’”27
10
A John Wayne Kind of Adventure
Kids today don’t have any fantasy life the way we had—they don’t have Westerns, they don’t have pirate movies . . . the real Errol Flynn, John Wayne kind of adventures.
Dodgerland Page 15
