7.Payne and Ratzan, Tom Bradley, 217; Kenneth Reich, “L.A.’s Olympic Bid Not Acceptable, IOC Indicates,” Los Angeles Times, May 9, 1978.
8.“Maniac or Messiah,” Time, June 19, 1978.
9.Howard Jarvis with Robert Pack, I’m Mad as Hell (New York: Times Books, 1979), 277, 278.
10.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 280.
11.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 16.
12.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 21; “Sound and Fury over Taxes,” Time, June 19, 1978.
13.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 17.
14.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 19, 20, 21.
15.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 7.
16.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 24–25, 41.
17.William Endicott, “Property Tax Fighter’s Goal: Get Some Political Muscle,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1970.
18.Payne and Ratzan, Tom Bradley, 193.
19.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 38. In actuality, Jarvis would later learn, either through trickery or “sheer incompetence” the politicians mistakenly disqualified the organization’s petition. “We filed more than 650,000 signatures before the deadline,” wrote Jarvis, “but then more than 200,000 of them were arbitrarily discarded by temporary help: boobs who were hired off the streets by county registrars’ offices throughout the state. More than 100,000 signatures were thrown out in Los Angeles County alone, and about three-quarters of them should have been allowed. . . . [Governor Jerry] Brown wouldn’t extend our deadline and give us a chance to submit more signatures. . . . Nevertheless, we made a great showing that year and came close to getting on the ballot.”
20.Jarvis with Pack, I’m Mad as Hell, 39.
21.William Oscar Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess,” Sports Illustrated, June 26, 1978.
22.Kenneth Reich, “L.A. Officials Conditionally Give in to IOC,” Los Angeles Times, May 17, 1978.
23.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.”
24.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.” In effect, Proposition 13 set property-tax assessment levels back to their 1975 value and limited increases to future property taxes to a maximum of 2 percent per year. Additionally, the proposition prohibited any reassessment of a new base year value (that is, due to an increased property value) except in cases of a change in ownership or the completion of new construction.
25.Kevin Mattson, What the Heck Are You Up to, Mr. President? Jimmy Carter, America’s “Malaise,” and the Speech That Should Have Changed the Country (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), 176.
26.Bernard Galm, “Interview of Thomas Bradley: Tape Number VI, Side Two,” UCLA Oral History Collection, April 13, 1979.
27.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.”
28.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.”
29.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.”
23. Nothing Is Clicking Right Now
1.Gerry Hannahs and Larry Landreth; neither would ever establish themselves in the Majors.
2.He would retire for good from baseball after the 1979 season.
3.Mark Purdy, “Lacy and Cey Go Long Way to Help Hooton,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1978.
4.“Notes,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1978; “Letters: Fans on Dodgers,” Los Angeles Times, May 27, 1978.
5.Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Quiet Down Giants’ Batters, Fans,” Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1978.
6.“Letters: ‘A Poor Loser,’” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1978.
7.Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Hold a Pair of N.Y. Rap Sessions,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1978.
8.Marty Bell, “Don Sutton Does Not Bleed Dodger Blue,” Sport, June 1978.
9.Ross Newhan, “Welch Takes Reds in Stride, 4–3,” Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1978. Sutton would break both of Drysdale’s Los Angeles Dodger pitching records—lifetime wins and strikeouts—in his next start, on June 29.
10.Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Turn This Chinker into 5–4 Win,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1978.
11.Bob Welch with George Vecsey, Five O’Clock Comes Early: A Cy Young Award-Winner Recounts His Greatest Victory (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991), 87; Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Are High on Welch’s Fastball,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1978.
12.Newhan, “Dodgers High on Welch.”
13.Ross Newhan, “Reggie Smith’s Status Clouds Dodger Future,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1978.
14.Tom Hamilton, “Dodger Pitching Rapped by Dodger Pitcher,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1978.
15.“Dodger Notes,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1978.
16.The Minor Leaguers turned out to be Rafael Landestoy and future All-Star Jeff Leonard.
17.Ross Newhan, “Ferguson Is Back as Backup Man for the Dodgers,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1978.
18.Hamilton, “Dodger Pitching Rapped.”
19.Scott Ostler, “Dr. Marshall Wields Scalpel,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1978. Marshall went on to say that while he liked playing for Walt Alston, his manager during his years with the Dodgers, eventually the front-office restrictions on Alston were, according to Marshall, a problem. This was apparently particularly true when it came to how to the manager used Marshall. “Walt Alston was super,” said Marshall. “But they really didn’t let him manage after May of 1976.” Eventually, when the iconoclastic pitcher ran up against some legal troubles (for trespassing at a facility at Michigan State University, his alma mater), Marshall was traded by the Dodgers to the Braves without Alston’s approval. “The team is not noted for its compassion. Instead of saying, ‘What can we do to help a teammate get through a tough period?” they think, ‘Oh, my word, how will this affect the team?’”
20.Ross Newhan, “Dodgers Let 8–0 Lead Vanish,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1978.
21.Newhan, “Dodgers Give Astros a Win.”
22.Newhan, “Dodgers Give Astros a Win.”
23.Lasorda said, on the off day before the All-Star Game, that he was writing personal letters to several National League players—including Garry Maddox of the Phillies, Ken Griffey and Dan Driessen of the Reds, and Bill Madlock of the Cubs—for being unable to add them to the team. (Both he and Billy Martin, the AL manager, expressed the opinion that the roster should be expanded from twenty-eight players to thirty.) “All-Star Notes,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1978.
24.Dave Distel, “MVP: ‘I Don’t Hit with My Chin,’” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1978.
24. The Grapple in the Apple
1.Rich Roberts, “Lasorda Tape: A Bleeping Mess,” Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1978; Scott Ostler, “Fight Banded Dodgers Together,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1978.
2.“Dodger Notes,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1978; Scott Ostler, “Monday Resurfaces; So Do Dodgers, 5–4,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1978.
3.Scott Ostler, “Dodgers vs. Giants: Born Again,” Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1978.
4.Scott Ostler, “Temper, Temper . . . Mets Beat Dodgers,” Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1978.
5.Fimrite, “God a Football Fan.”
6.Fimrite, “God a Football Fan.”
7.Thomas Boswell, “As Smith Goes, So Go Dodgers, 5–4 over Phils,” Washington Post, August 16, 1978.
8.Boswell, “As Smith Goes.”
9.Boswell, “As Smith Goes.”
10.Boswell, “As Smith Goes.”
11.Plaschke with Lasorda, I Live for This, 127.
12.Milton Richman, “Dodgers Garvey, Sutton Have Fight,” Milwaukee Journal, August 21, 1978.
13.According to Tommy John, the teammates were Lopes, Smith, Russell, and Monday. John with Valenti, My Twenty-Six Years, 224.
14.Fimrite, “God a Football Fan.”
15.Plaschke with Lasorda, I Live for This, 128; Fimrite, “God a Football Fan.”
16.Plaschke with Lasorda, I Live for This, 127–28.
17.John with Valenti, My Twenty-Six Years, 224.
&nb
sp; 18.John with Valenti, My Twenty-Six Years, 224; Ostler, “Fight Banded Dodgers Together.”
25. Is the Force with Us?
1.Lynne Bronstein, “Underwhelmed by the Word, ‘Awesome,’” letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1977.
2.Despite the struggles of the decade, in 1976 the economy had grown by an unremarkable, but still solid, 5 percent and had followed up with similar numbers through 1977 and 1978. The jobless rate, which had peaked at 9 percent midway through 1975, declined to 7.5 percent by January 1977 and then to 5.9 percent in August 1978. Real median household income grew by 5 percent between 1976 and 1978, and all sorts of industries and businesses reported steady growth, even if it was generally mitigated by the high inflation of the era. (In 1978 inflation reportedly was 7.65 percent.)
3.Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa (New York: Touchstone. 1990), 42. The Pal studio was known among music aficionados of the time for having one of the few available multitrack tape recorders, which Buff had built himself. In 1962, for example, a then unknown band of young musicians had driven from its home base in Glendora to record two songs at Pal—a droll number called “Surfer Joe” and a secondary tune meant to be its B side called “Wipe Out.” In May 1963 the B side reached number two on the national Billboard charts. Pal also was the locus for a number of other regional and national hits: “Memories of the El Monte” by the Penguins (1963), the original demo of “Pipeline” by the Chantays (1963), “Tijuana Surf” and “Grunion Run” by the Hollywood Persuaders (1963), and so on.
4.Zappa had written a movie script called Captain Beefheart vs. the Grunt People, which was loosely based on the life of the parents of Zappa’s friend Don Vliet, who performed as a musician under the name Captain Beefheart.
5.Zappa with Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa, 55, 60.
6.Martin Rossman, “Recall the ‘Star Wars’ Hype? You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1978.
7.Cohn, a British-born transplant to New York who was often called the “English Tom Wolfe,” would later joke that he had “hated” Wolfe at the time of his arrival. Neil Spencer, “Arts: Mr. Saturday Night,” Independent, May 19, 1998.
8.Nik Cohn, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” New York, June 7, 1976.
9.On July 12, 1979—a.k.a., “the day disco died”—promoters with the Chicago White Sox held an event called Disco Demolition Night. Scheduled to take place between a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers, the event asked fans to bring their disco records and pile them in center field, where they would then be exploded. Meant to attract young fans of rock music, the event ended with a major riot, during which the raucous crowd tore out seats and pieces of turf and caused other damage. The White Sox, like the Indians before them on 10 Cent Beer Night, were forced to forfeit the second game to the Tigers.
10.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.”
11.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.”
12.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess.”
13.Johnson, “A Flaming Olympian Mess”; Kenneth Reich, “Bradley Set to Drop Olympic Bid If Offer Is Rejected,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1978.
14.Kenneth Reich, “Olympics Tell L.A. ‘No,’” Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1978.
15.Dave Smith, “L.A.’s Vitality: Is the Force with Us?,” Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1978.
16.Smith, “L.A.’s Vitality.”
17.Smith, “L.A.’s Vitality.”
26. Clinching
1.Called Ball Four, the show was meant to be a fictionalized version of his famous, tell-all book of the same name. “We wanted ‘Ball Four,’ the TV show, to be like ‘M.A.S.H.,’” said Bouton some years later. “Instead it turned out more like ‘Gilligan’s Island’ in baseball suits.” Jim Bouton, “Ten Years Later. . . . Ball Five,” in Ball Four, 412.
2.Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 435.
3.Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 415, 437.
4.“Morning Briefing,” Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1978; Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 441.
5.Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 442.
6.Joshua Gilder, “Creators on Creating: Tom Wolfe,” Saturday Review, April 1981.
7.Carole Iannone, “A Critic in Full: A Conversation with Tom Wolfe,” National Association of Scholars website, August 11, 2008, https://www.nas.org/articles/A_Critic_in_Full_A_Conversation_with_Tom_Wolfe.
8.Gilder, “Creators on Creating.”
9.Iannone, “Critic in Full”; Gilder, “Creators on Creating.”
10.Kenneth Reich, “IOC Willing to Renew Talks, Bradley Told,” Los Angeles Times, July 20, 1978.
11.Payne and Ratzan, Tom Bradley, 222–23.
11.With his late-season heroics, Garvey began to be mentioned in discussions regarding the 1978 season’s MVP voting, a fact that was inconceivable as late as early August. Garvey would eventually finish second, behind Dave Parker of the Pirates.
13.Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 442.
14.Scott Ostler, “Bat Day for Angels, Dodgers,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1978.
15.Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 443.
16.Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 443.
17.“Morning Briefing,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1978.
18.Interestingly, during his comeback attempt while playing with the Portland Mavericks a few years earlier, the ever-resourceful Bouton had been involved in the invention, along with a teammate named Rob Nelson, of a brand-new product. One day, while sitting in the bullpen and passing time by “drowning bugs in tobacco juice,” Nelson told Bouton that there should be a suitable substitute for chewing tobacco that would allow ballplayers to keep their swarthy image while remaining relatively healthy. The two sent away for some gum base, mixed up some recipes, and shredded it like chaw. In time a division of Wrigley bought the idea, reformulated the gum, and eventually released it as Big League Chew—giving the world yet another novel reason to appreciate Jim Bouton.
19.Bouton, “Ten Years Later,” 445.
27. The Inevitable Yankee Miracle
1.Scott Ostler, “A Happy Day for Dodgers Is Also a Sad Day,” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1978.
2.Ostler, “Happy Day for Dodgers.”
3.The Dodgers had scored sixty-one runs against Pittsburgh and given up just forty-four runs, while the Phillies had actually outscored them, 48–55.
4.Mahler, Ladies and Gentlemen, 243.
5.Sparky Lyle and Peter Golenbock, The Bronx Zoo: The Astonishing Inside Story of the 1978 World Champion New York Yankees (Chicago: Triumph, 1979), 156, 170.
6.Lyle and Golenbock, Bronx Zoo, 169.
7.Kayla Webley, “Hiring and Firing Billy Martin—Top 10 George Steinbrenner Moments,” Time, July 13, 2010. Martin was referring to Steinbrenner’s conviction in 1974 for making illegal donations to Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign.
8.Though Steinbrenner did replace Martin with Bob Lemon, less than a week later, oddly enough, the Yankees’ owner, perhaps influenced by the sentiment of Yankees fans, announced that Martin would remain on salary with the team as an “adviser” and, oddly, that he would become the team’s manager again in 1980, when Bob Lemon would be moved to the front office.
9.Richard L. Shook, “Memories of ’78 Red Sox Collapse Hang Heavily over Boston,” Los Angeles Times, July 20, 1986.
10.Mark Newman, “’78 ‘Boston Massacre’ Revisited,” mlb.com, August 21, 2006, http://m.mlb.com/news/article/1621531/; Lyle and Golenbock, Bronx Zoo, 216.
11.Newman, “’78 ‘Boston Massacre’ Revisited.”
12.Lyle and Golenbock, Bronx Zoo, 243–44.
13.Scott Ostler, “New York Claims a Home Away from Home in Boston,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1978.
28. Chronic Hysteresis; or, Another Yankee-Dodgers Rematch
1.“Royals Blame Third-Base Umpire,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1978. Whitey Herzog had
been signed as a high school ballplayer in 1949 by, of all teams, the New York Yankees, and he had had a relatively undistinguished, journeyman eight-year career as a ballplayer before becoming a scout and coach for the Kansas City A’s.
Dodgerland Page 53
