The Lasorda/Kennedy conspiracy
UPDATED TWICE, TO REFLECT "FACTS": If we know any two things to be true, it's that Bobby Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel just after midnight on June 6 4 5, 1968, and also that Dodger Hall of Famer Tommy Lasorda is a ... storyteller without peer. How do these two factoids merge? Take it away, Tommy!
It just so happens that I was supposed to be at that dinner. My wife Jo, and I, ate lunch at the Ambassador that afternoon, and my good friend Zach Manasian, who was the food and beverage manager, told me that Kennedy wanted to meet me and talk to me, which was an invitation I was honored to accept.
Before going to the dinner though, I planned to going to the Dodger game because Don Drysdale was on the mound and besides him being one of my favorite pitchers, and a great friend, he was going for his sixth straight shutout. His scoreless innings pitched streak was the big topic in baseball, and I wanted to be on hand to watch. 58 2/3 scoreless innings was amazing.
As I dressed that morning, I put on a brand new pair of shoes. They were CoreFam shoes, and as I wore them around that day, they really started to hurt my feet. So much so, that I had to leave the game, and I walked to my car with the CoreFam's in my hand. That's how badly they hurt.
We decided to skip the dinner at the Ambassador. When we got home, we turned on the TV and saw that Kennedy had been shot.
It was a night of mixed emotions. While I was happy for Big Don, I was sad and angry about the assassination. No matter what your politics are, or which party you align yourself with, an assassination of any elected official, or national leader, is tragic.
Leaving aside the creepiness of that last paragraph, there are only four three things wrong with that story, as pointed out by the smartasses at Baseball Primer:
1) Don Drysdale didn't pitch on June 6, he pitched on June 8.
1) Tommy Lasorda that year managed a team in ... Ogden, Utah.
2) Why would the Next President of the United States single out a little-known minor league manager for a meet-and-greet on a day of some, you know, importance?
3) Would Tommy ever actually turn down a free meal, no matter how tight his shoes were that day?
UPDATE -- COMPLICATING THE ISSUE ... AND THE ALIBI:
* So yes, Drysdale did pitch that day, contrary to the original post. But it was a night game. Retrosheet, however, doesn't list the starting time; if weeknight games started the same as now, it would have been 7:00 or 7:30 ... which means Tommy would have been late for dinner in the best case. A 5:30 game, though, would have him out the door by 7:50....
* Kennedy was shot just after midnight. Tommy testifies that "When we got home, we turned on the TV and saw that Kennedy had been shot." Keep in mind that he left the game early, because of "hurt feet." Even assuming that the start time was 7:30, what was Tommy Lasorda doing between 9:30 and midnight?? Surely traffic wasn't that bad in the summer of '68, no matter how bad the hippies were.
* Yes, Tommy managed the Ogden Dodgers that year (you'll want to stop at this point, and click on that link), but the season probably didn't start until late June, giving Tommy access to the scene of the crime. OK, here's an excerpt from that story about one of the finest rookie-ball teams ever assembled:
Bill Buckner, another talent on the team, remembered his first exposure to Lasorda. He was eighteen when he flew to Salt Lake City and went straight to Affleck Park in Ogden for an intra-squad game. Lasorda was pitching, and Buckner hit a double off the wall his first time up. When he stopped at second, Lasorda threw down his glove and told him he would slit Buckner's throat if he did that again
UPDATE 3: Make sure to read some more good sleuthery in the comments.
Both you and Lasorda are wrong, but you more so. Drysdale set the record on June 4, the day of the asssassination (he pitched every 4th day, and so picthed again on June 8). Kennedy mentioned him in his speech. It is unlikely that Kennedy was excited about meeting this minor league manager, but that some flunky said "He wants to meet you" to Lasorda and 500 other guys is plausible. Kennedy famously had athletes Rafer Johnson and Rosie Greer (get his arm, break it if you have to) with him that night. Lasorda is certainly capable of misremembering, but let's be fair.
Posted by: Jim | January 15, 2007 at 03:35 PM
Thanks, Jim!
Posted by: Matt Welch | January 15, 2007 at 04:19 PM
Drysdale broke the record of consecutive shutouts on June 4 with his sixth, but he had not yet broken the record of consecutive scoreless innings. That came on June 8: he broke Walter Johnson's record of 56, then went on to 58 2/3 before allowing a run. That also was the day of RFK's funeral. Not that I was an obsessed Dodger (and Kennedy) fan, or that the day was etched in my memory, or that I have a recording or that I have committed it to memory. But on the day of the funeral Vin Scully said "What a dreadful, drab and dreary day it is," and "now we turn our attention to a child's game -- a bat, a ball, and men hittting, throwing it and catching it, and most of al, Don Drysdale's big day in baseball." Or words to that effect.
Posted by: Robert Greene | January 15, 2007 at 04:27 PM
Games started at 8 p.m. back then. The game that night lasted 2:20. With 30k+ fans at the park, traffic would have been lighter than normal, but still a bitch. I'm assuming Lasorda probably didn't want to drive back to Mid-Wilshire (about an hour from the stadium with game traffic), so there isn't a lot of time unaccounted for. Considering that this a forty-year memory, his story is at least plausible.
Posted by: Steve Smith | January 15, 2007 at 09:01 PM
Also, the "dinner" that Drysdale, RFK, and others were going to attend was at an after-hours club popular with jocks called The Daisy, in Beverly Hills, that was partly owned by Pierre Salinger.
Posted by: Steve Smith | January 15, 2007 at 09:15 PM
It's no mystery to me that Tommy Lasorda is so full of confusion on this. He never acknowledged that his son, Tommy Jr., died of AIDS-specifically pneumocystis. Everyone around Tommy Jr. knew what he died of even if his father was and has been in full denial. Then he tried to deny his friends at his bogus funeral. His denial was unfortunate on two sides--he denied his son, who he never accepted for being gay, his truth and Lasorda could have possibly have helped prevent others meet the same fate. I guess he doesn't remember any of this, either.
Posted by: Jeffery P. Segall, RN | January 16, 2007 at 05:51 AM
I was at the Dodger game and saw Don Drysdale pitch. After the game ended I went home. I went to bed soon after I got home. About an hour later I awoke to loud noises from my mom when the assassination happened. If Lasorda left early and the assassination happened while he was still in a car, then he must have lived an awfully long way from the stadium.
Posted by: Jeff Yablan | January 16, 2007 at 08:07 AM
Back where I come from, you could always tell if somebody was from somewhere else 'cause at the end of the story they'd ask you whether the story was true.
...as if it mattered.
Lasorda isn't originally from the South, is he?
Posted by: Ken Shultz | January 16, 2007 at 01:03 PM
Lasorda now lives in Fullerton. It's conceivable he lived there then, too.
Posted by: Rob McMillin | January 17, 2007 at 09:38 AM
Did you say Fullterton? Here's a snippet from Jimmy Breslin's L.A. Times column in November about that tragic day:It was a sun-warmed day, and in Fullerton I found a man and wife in a garage running a gun shop. It was a second job for him, the man said; he drove an oil truck as a first job. If he was gone, his wife came out of the kitchen to sell you a good oiled gun.
The guy had all these pistols on a counter. Among them was an Iver Johnson .22. I asked him what he thought they were for. I don't know what he said. I know I said that the only reason you have a handgun is to shoot people in the head.
Later, the night was soft, and the sounds of the people were pleasant as they walked through the beginning of the evening on the lawn of the Ambassador Hotel.
Posted by: Matt Welch | January 17, 2007 at 07:36 PM
I was at home that night, (in Fullerton, CA) doing homework , when the whole thing blew up. I had my radio on listening to music when the annoucer told us that Bobby had been shot. They cut to a live feed and I listened for a while in disbelief. Then they said he was dead. I remember thinking "not again!" I felt hopeless and helpless. I turrned on the TV, but I still had trouble believing it was real.
As for Tommy LaSorda, yeah, he gets things wrong, who, at his age doesn't. and what difference does it matter anyway?
Posted by: Alan Hunter | May 01, 2008 at 01:24 PM