The Decision That Won’t Go Away

All the noise about the Jack Clark furor has obfuscated the real reason Tommy Lasorda doesn’t deserve to manage the Dodgers anymore. The reason is not that pitching to Clark was a bad idea, but that pitching to Willie McGee in the seventh was a horrendous idea.

Not since Walter Alston saved Don Drysdale for the World Series, thereby losing the 1962 playoff, has such a blunder been committed. One out, men on second and third, seventh inning and you’ve got a three-run lead. The league’s best hitter is up. Every Little League manager in the land with a double digit IQ would agree that you walk McGee. Double play, force at any base, all that elementary stuff. No, Lasorda’s strategy was to give him a two-run single, thereby setting up Smith’s triple.

Forget Clark not being walked. The game, the playoffs and the season were lost in the seventh inning when a manager who should have been paying attention was obviously praying to his Frank Sinatra pictures.

ED ADDEO

Mill Valley