An award-winning sportswriter shows us one of baseball’s most famous and enduring legends as we’ve never seen him before, revealing the secrets of his amazing, unlikely success and his unvarnished opinions on the state of the game.
Tommy Lasorda is perhaps baseball’s most famous and popular figure. At seventy-nine, after twenty years of managing and fifty-seven years with one franchise, this Hall of Famer still suits up in Dodger Blue every day. He also keeps a travel schedule that would dizzy the most frequent of frequent fliers. The embodiment of the American dream, Lasorda went from a scrawny, overlooked Italian kid of average ability to become one of the world’s most recognizable baseball faces. And he fought for it every step of the way.
In I Live for This Bill Plaschke strips the veneer from one of baseball’s last living legends to show how grit and determination really can transform a life. We think we know this jovial manager from the rah-rah style that has always raised eyebrows in the world of baseball. Some view him as an anachronism. Some love him like Santa Claus. But there’s one thing they all agree on: Lasorda is a success.
With gleaming insight and remarkable candor, Plaschke takes us inside the day-to-day world of this baseball great to reveal a side of Lasorda that few people really know. And along the way, we’re treated to some of the most outrageous stories in sports. We also discover Lasorda’s unshakable opinions about what plagues baseball today.
Bravely and brilliantly, I Live for This dissects the personality to give us the person. In the end we’re left with an indelible portrait of a legend that, if Lasorda has anything to say about it, we won’t ever forget.
Library Journal
Tommy Lasorda was a kid who wasn't good enough to get playing time on his high school baseball team, yet he went on to play professional ball. He compiled a 107-57 record with the Los Angeles Dodgers's top minor-league club, but he couldn't eke out a single win in the majors. He later managed the Dodgers, winning almost 1600 games and two World Series, and was eventually voted into the Hall of Fame; however, after he gave up the helm, the team shunted his larger-than-life personality to the background for years. He decries bad manners, yet he complains when members of his granddaughter's youth-league team shake hands with their opponents after games. Although he was known for keeping his players happy, he once suggested that Steve Garvey settle a problem with teammate Don Sutton by slugging him. In short, Lasorda is a man of contradictions, but such men make good biographical material, and Los Angeles Timessportswriter Plaschke has crafted an entertaining study of the man who bleeds Dodger blue. Recommended for all public library baseball collections.<<br>—Jim Burns
