Column: Baseball a better game because Lasorda was in it

Tommy Lasorda loved the game of baseball more than anything.

If it was somehow possible, he loved the Dodgers even more.

Lasorda lived his life wrapped in Dodger Blue, and when he took his last breath Thursday night at the age of 93 my guess is he was still certain of one thing

“If you don’t love the Dodgers,’’ Lasorda liked to say, "there’s a good chance you may not get into Heaven.’’

Under that set of qualifications, Lasorda is already there. No need to present his credentials at the Pearly Gates, even if he didn’t show up in his gleaming white uniform with Dodgers scrawled in blue on the front and a big No. 2 on the back.

He lived long enough to see the Dodgers break the drought of his lifetime and win the team’s first World Series since he, Kirk Gibson and Orel Hershiser gave them the most improbable one 32 years earlier. His last wish was to see the Dodgers finally win again and, though frail, he traveled to Texas in October to see it happen.

Still, even in death, there’s one wish remaining.

“I want my wife to put the Dodgers’ schedule on my tombstone,’’ Lasorda often said. “When people are in the cemetery visiting their loved ones, they’ll say, ‘Let’s go to Lasorda’s grave and see if the Dodgers are playing today.'”

Fans will have to wait a few months to do that, but Lasorda’s tombstone figures to be a popular gathering place before games. He was true Dodger royalty and, along with Vin Scully, one of the last remaining bridges between Ebbets Field and Dodger Stadium.

Now he’s gone, even as Vinny mourns the passing of his wife earlier in the week.

“There will never be anybody like Tommy Lasorda,’’ said Steve Brener, the public relations director for the Dodgers during Lasorda’s reign. ”He was like a second...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Column-Baseball-a-better-game-because-Lasorda-15856693.php