Dodgerland

by Michael Fallon

  The next day Lopes tipped his cap to the Reds on field as he ran with teammates. Rick Monday cracked jokes. “Maybe Joe would feel better about it if we held hands while we ran,” he said. “The way they run on an individual basis, maybe they’re the ones who don’t like each other. All I know is the way Morgan pops off, they should hang a sign over his locker which reads, ‘consultations now in order.’” Garvey noted that the comments seemed more personal and cynical than usual, and not in the spirit of the rivalry between the teams. And Lasorda simply shook his head. “I don’t care what he says,” Lasorda said. “Probably just couldn’t think of anything else. Last year, he kept saying that it was fun chasing us because he knew the Reds would catch us in August. We made it so much fun for him that he must have laughed all the way through the playoffs.”2

  The truth was, though Morgan had no way of knowing it, and as the Dodgers were still unaware, his comments were far more prescient than the usual tossed-off locker-room insult. In a quick few months the Dodger clubhouse would be virtually coming apart at the seams. For now, however, the Dodgers seemed intent on focusing on winning games and continuing their push for a second straight World Series appearance.

  After ending April with two quiet losses against the Cardinals—in which the Dodgers failed to score a run despite the fact that Steve Garvey extended a hitting streak to twenty games—May got under way, after a day off on May 1, with a third straight Dodgers loss. This time it was a close one, 5–4 in ten innings, against the Cubs in chilly and windy Wrigley Field. In the game Garvey had another hit, an RBI double, but the Cubs were sparked by a two-hit, two-RBI day by a former friend—the ever-gimpy Bill Buckner, whose ankle issues had persisted for yet another season. “I guess the Big Cubbie in the sky took care of us today,” Buckner joked after the game, adding that while he still gets psyched up for a game against his old team, he also wished them the best. “I’ve also fallen in love with this city,” Buckner said of Chicago, “the fans, the park, and I know that the trade was the best thing that could have happened. The way my ankle is all I could have done with the Dodgers was pinch hit. I can only play first base and, I don’t think they’d have moved Garvey out.”3

  Despite the recent struggles the Dodgers remained still a half game atop the Reds in the Western Division, and they stayed that way on May 3 by beating the Cubs 9–5. Steve Garvey lost his hitting streak in the game, going oh for four, though he still knocked in two runs on a sacrifice fly and a force-out. “I was very aware, very conscious of it,” Garvey said of the end of the streak. “I kept wanting to get up one more time today. I hit the ball well a couple of times but I couldn’t get it to fall. Still, it’s a nice feeling to open the season with a 21-game hitting streak, to go all of April without getting shut out. And I’d much rather have it end on a day that we win than on a day we lose.” Despite the focus on Garvey, Reggie Smith and Rick Monday were the catalysts for the win, collecting seven hits, four runs, and five RBIs between them. Smith also had a double and a triple, while Monday had a double and a home run and made a dramatic, run-saving diving catch in the seventh inning on a ball that commenters afterward suggested was located in a spot similar to the one he had injured himself on in Houston the previous season. “People have been asking me if I’d ever attempt another diving catch and this was their answer,” Monday said after the game. “Thank God it wasn’t AstroTurf.”4

  In the backdrop behind the Dodgers’ first win of May was an event that happened in the clubhouse before the game. After the three straight sloppy losses, Lasorda decided to call his first team meeting of the season before the game—a ten-minute expletive-fueled monologue in which the manager called into question just how dedicated members of the team were to the common cause, to the Dodger cause. The exact words that Lasorda used were, of course, never recorded, though afterward an amused Don Sutton reported that the Dodger manager used one particularly foul word in his oration 117 times (or 144 times, or 120, depending on the telling).5 While Lasorda was mum about what he discussed with the team, when asked about Sutton’s comment Lasorda replied that the four-letter word was “love. L-o-v-e. Four letters.” Rick Monday, who still led the league in home runs with nine and the team in hitting with a .378 batting average, was philosophical about the meeting. “We had not played well for three days,” Monday said, “and Tommy was irritated about it, just as we were. He felt some things needed to be said, to be straightened out, and it probably did some good.”6

  Despite Monday’s levelheaded comment something about the blowup seemed off. Perhaps Lasorda was feeling the pressure being exerted by the Reds, and by the seemingly endless battle of words between him and rival manager Sparky Anderson, and between his players and the Reds. Another win on May 4 against the Cubs, however—this one fueled by a dinged-up and heavily bandaged Reggie Smith, who had two hits, including a homer, and three RBIs—stemmed further talk about Dodger unrest and disorder, at least for the time being. And a day later, on a day in which the baseball world watched Reds veteran star Pete Rose log his three thousandth hit—in front of a home crowd that rewarded him with a five-minute ovation—the Dodgers scored a quiet win, 7–2, in Pittsburgh against Bert Blyleven.7 The win lifted the Dodgers’ record on this extended road trip to 6-3, and, even more important, it gave them a two-game lead over the Reds in the Western Division. The mood was so elevated in the clubhouse after the game that Lasorda called his friend, and Dodger honorary mascot, Don Rickles, who was performing in a casino in New Jersey. Lasorda handed the phone over to several players, whom Rickles needled mercilessly.

  The high spirits didn’t last long, however. On May 6 the Dodgers lost a squeaker against the Pirates, 3–2, and in the process they lost star outfielder Reggie Smith to a possible groin pull. What’s more, the Reds, having won at home against Montreal, moved to just one game behind the Dodgers in the standings. On May 7 the Dodgers let another game get away against Pittsburgh, 6–4, by allowing the speedy Pirates to steal eight bases against the vaunted arm of catcher Steve Yeager. “They stung us pretty good,” said Tom Lasorda afterward. “It’s the way they play and we shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. On a couple of the steals, Tommy [John, the starting pitcher] let them get good leads. On a couple more, I thought a good throw would have gotten them. We were just too lax.” Despite the manager’s frustration, and despite the fact that the Reds were again knocking on the Dodgers’ door, Lasorda expressed some relief that the road trip was over. “It seemed like we’d been on the road for a month,” Lasorda said as the team prepared to return home for a much-needed long home stand—twelve games at Dodger Stadium over the next fourteen days. “We beat Cincinnati twice on the trip and we went through a lot of weather. All things considered, I think it was a very good trip.” Lasorda later added that his players were still “embarrassed” by their performance earlier in the month. “I won’t have to remind them about it,” said Lasorda. “It’s what makes this team unique. They know they played badly and they’ll correct it on their own. I don’t think the one game should detract from what was a very long, very successful trip. We have been a good road team in my two years (47-34 last year and 10-7 this year) and there’s no reason for that except that we’re a damned good team, period.”8

  Among the Dodger players who sat through Lasorda’s tirade, no one was more embarrassed by his performance on the road trip than Steve Garvey. After his season-opening hitting streak ended in Chicago on May 3, Garvey had gone one for twenty-one between May 3 and May 9, and his batting average had dropped from .326 to .275. Garvey, like most of his team, was eager to get back to the friendly confines of their home stadium. “I think we’ve all been quite conscious,” said Garvey, “of how much time we’ve been away. It’s a real drain having to play so much on the road so soon after having spent five or six weeks in Florida. It really takes it out of you, especially when you experience the variety of weather we did on the last trip.”9

  At home, however, the Dodgers continued their recent lackluster play. A
fter taking the first game of the home stand against the Cardinals, the Dodgers lost four of the next five games against St. Louis and Chicago. Not only did the team fall behind the Reds in the division race, but after a loss against the Cubs on May 13 they were leapfrogged by the suddenly resurgent San Francisco Giants (by a half game). The thick clouds over the Dodger clubhouse darkened, and an ominous mood settled over the manager’s office. It was this mood, likely, that would soon lead to an event so notorious and raw that it changed the way the baseball public forever perceived Tom Lasorda.

  To put Lasorda’s looming explosion into perspective, one must consider some events going on at the same time in the wider world beyond the confines of Dodger Stadium. Back in April, a few days before the Joe Morgan kerfuffle, a monumental but not widely noted event took place down in Kingston, Jamaica. The event would not have much of anything to do with the Dodgers, or baseball per se, except to provide a sense of some attitudes and issues buzzing in the air of the time. On April 22, 1978, famed Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley performed at the One Love Peace Concert in the troubled city of his birth, Kingston. At the time Marley was in exile from his home country and living in England, recovering from injuries after being attacked in his home by mysterious gunmen—most likely in the employ of one of the main political factions—and coping with his recent diagnosis of a type of malignant melanoma under the nail of one of his toes. Marley’s, and the concert’s, purpose was clear—to solve the ongoing political strife that was tearing the country apart.

  The plan, simply put, was to use reggae music, which was wildly popular in Jamaica, to force the leaders of Jamaica’s two main political parties, Michael Manley of the People’s National Party and Edward Seaga of the Jamaican Labour Party,10 to negotiate a peace. The One Love Peace Concert was actually the brainchild of two rival political gangsters, Claudie Massop from the JLP and Bucky Marshall of the PNP, who had been locked up together in the same jail cell after a fight. Upon talking, the two realized that they each were desperate to stop the violence that was tearing their country apart. Reggae, they decided, was the key, as was convincing exiled superstar Marley to return home and perform. After being released from jail Massop flew to London to sell Marley on his vision, and, miraculously, Marley accepted the invitation.

  The concert attracted a crowd of thirty-two thousand, with sixteen of the biggest acts in reggae performing. Some of the musicians directly addressed the issue of political violence in Jamaica and the role of Manley and Seaga in fomenting it. One performer in particular, Peter Tosh, was particularly provocative, lighting up a joint onstage and directly berating the two political leaders, who were seated in the front row of the concert hall. Some months after the One Love Peace Concert, the police took revenge on Tosh by arresting him as he left a dance hall and beating him nearly to death while in custody. Bob Marley, meanwhile, took a different approach during his set of songs, repeatedly asking for peace and unity in his country, and he sang and danced with remote intensity—as if he were in a holy trance. In the midst of performing his popular song “Jamming,”11 Marley suddenly stopped singing, started talking in a kind of stream-of-consciousness spew, and offered up a message that might have taught Tom Lasorda something about inspiring the masses. “Just let me tell you something,” Marley said as the music kept playing and tens of thousands of audience members screamed and cheered, “to make everything come true, we gotta be together. . . . To show the people that you love them right, to show the people that you gonna unite, show the people that you’re over bright, show the people that everything is all right. . . . What I’m trying to say, could we have, could we have, up here onstage here the presence of Mr. Michael Manley and Mr. Edward Seaga. I just want to shake hands and show the people that we’re gonna make it right, we’re gonna unite, we’re gonna make it right.” Though the two seemed reluctant, under the power of the music and Marley’s exhortations, they both joined him center stage, where the singer took both of their hands, joined them to each other, and raised them over his head in symbolic unity.

  Back home in L.A. at the time of the One Love Peace Concert, Tom Bradley was facing political and social turmoil and dissension that, while less orchestrated and far less violent, was still disconcerting to a leader who prided himself on his calm and steady leadership. As the search for the Hillside Strangler continued, in April Bradley’s efforts to bring the Olympics back to L.A. suddenly began encountering some serious setbacks. Back on January 14 the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee had submitted its responses to a questionnaire required by the International Olympic Committee as a condition of its awarding the Games to its favorite (and in this case only) bidder. In the questionnaire the LAOOC had been blunt—per Bradley’s directive—regarding the facilities the city would use for the Games, detailing an austere approach to the pre-Olympiad buildup. Bradley and his team explained their basic belief that the only way to hold a successful Olympics was for the host-city organizing committee, and not the IOC, to be the final arbiter of the construction of venues and staging of events. They also wanted to have final control over the revenue.12 While the tough stance by Bradley and local Olympic organizers was widely praised by local officials and commentators, it was immediately deemed unsatisfactory by IOC officials—and particularly by its president, Michael Morris, Lord Killanin. For shrewd political reasons, however, Killanin and the IOC remained mum on the issue for several months, submitting no formal response to the city. Then, in early April, just a few days before the target date for a planned April 11–12 summit meeting between both sides in Mexico City to hash out the details of the Games, the IOC finally countered the questionnaire’s stipulations. While Bradley was traveling in New Zealand, he was caught off-guard by a reporter who asked for his opinion on the recent demands Lord Killanin had just made public. Bradley, of course, had no knowledge of the letter, which insisted bluntly that the IOC would make “all final decisions regarding the staging of the Games, even though the city would foot the bill.” Uncharacteristically, Bradley snapped at the reporter, saying that he did not intend to negotiate the Olympic contract “in the public media.” A few days later Bradley told a reporter simply, “We are sending staff to Mexico City to further discuss the matter. I think only at that time are we going to have any further clues as to what demands are truly bottom line for the I.O.C. and where, if at all, the city can make any adjustment in its response.”13

  Negotiations in Mexico City quickly got messy. The chasm between Bradley and his city and the IOC and its president, Lord Killanin (a.k.a. Michael Morris), was vast. The largest sticking point was the notion of the IOC granting local “control” over the Games. Instead of conducting a planning summit in Mexico, then, the two days of meetings turned into an exercise in mutual confusion—the IOC firmly stating that Los Angeles drop its demands for control and representatives of Bradley’s team insisting that the city needed some mechanism to keep the Games in check. The IOC came away from the meeting loudly crowing that Los Angeles had acquiesced in its demands, while representatives from L.A.’s Olympics Committee contradicted that assessment. “We have not given away anything,” said the mayor’s representative Anton Calleia. “We still have the financial control which we insisted upon and at the same time, I think we have made some concessions to the IOC which are very significant to them.”14

  “The city recognizes the supremacy of IOC rules in the organization and conduct of the Olympic Games,” wrote Bradley on April 12, “but the city and/or the Los Angeles organizing committee retains veto power over any and all decisions which may increase the cost of the games.” When asked to clarify what exactly had happened between the two parties at the summit, Bradley explained, with diplomatic (and somewhat syntactically tortured) grace, “The essence of what took place was there were a number of clarifications which were largely semantic and some of which were more substantial which were worked out during face-to-face meetings.”15 Despite Bradley’s show of hopefulness, it was noted that a final decision on the
Los Angeles bid for the 1984 Games had been pushed back—at least until another summit meeting scheduled to take place in Athens in mid-May.

  As Bradley’s Olympics bid highlighted, sometimes good intentions are not enough to bring positive change to the world. The same could be said, ultimately, of the One Love Peace Concert. The event did little to staunch the violence on the island nation over the next few years. Within a few weeks of the concert, Prime Minister Manley, reveling in the sense of connection he had established with the Rastafarians, called for new elections and won by a significant margin. And because of this, however, a new round of fighting broke out between supporters of the two parties. In the end even the two organizers, Massop and Marshall, were both killed within two years of the concert.