Tommy Lasorda in ICU due to heart issue

The Hall of Fame manager helped lead the Dodgers to two championships, but was anything but a saint.

On Sunday morning, the Dodgers announced that Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, 93, was taken to the ICU in Orange County. TMZ was among the first to report that Lasorda was put on a ventilator and sedated, adding that the health issue is not COVID-related.

Lasorda, 93, had a brief major league career in the mid-1950’s. He later became a scout with the Dodgers and then a minor league manager. Beginning in 1973, Lasorda served as the Dodgers’ third base coach until the end of the 1976 season, when then-manager Walter Alston retired. Lasorda managed the Dodgers from 1977 through the first 76 games of the 1996 season, a 22-season span in which he had a .526 winning percentage and led the Dodgers to two titles (1981, ’88). They won the pennant two other times, in 1977 and ’78.

Among his other achievements, Lasorda managed the United States baseball team in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. He was named the AP Manager of the Year in 1981. In ’88, both Baseball America and the Sporting News named him Manager of the Year. Lasorda received the ultimate honor when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997.

Understandably, many across the baseball world were saddened to hear of Lasorda’s health predicament. Lasorda, however, is anything but a saint.

In 1992, GQ’s Peter Richmond profiled Tommy Lasorda’s son, Tommy Jr. Tommy Jr. was gay and was a friend of former Dodgers outfielder Glenn Burke, also a gay man. Burke’s homosexuality wasn’t hidden well, something which made the Dodgers – and Lasorda Sr. – uncomfortable. Despite Burke’s popularity among his teammates – he invented the high-five along with Dusty Baker – the Dodgers traded Burke to the Oakland Athletics in 1978, Lasorda’s second full season as manager. The Dodgers cited Burke’s lackluster numbers, but Baker recalled talking to then-trainer Bill Buhler. Baker asked, “Bill, why’d they trade Glenn? He was one of our top prospects.” Buhler replied, “They don’t want any gays on the team.”

Lasorda Jr. died in 1991 due to complications from AIDS. Even after Jr.’s death, Sr. refused to acknowledge his son’s sexual orientation and refused to acknowledge that his son died of AIDS, as John Branch of The New York Times noted. AIDS was something that affected gay people at much higher rates than other groups, resulting in bigotry and discrimination. Lasorda Sr. couldn’t keep his story straight, sometimes saying that his son died of pneumonia and at other times saying he died of cancer. Imagine your own father neither acknowledging you when you were living nor after you have died.

Burke died from AIDS-related complications in 1995. He had also battled drug addiction, other legal troubles, and homelessness.

I brought all of this up on Twitter yesterday (more succinctly). Most of the feedback, including from Dodgers fans, was mostly positive (as in, “Yes, Lasorda’s bigotry was terrible”), or involved people learning about this side of Lasorda for the first time. A few, however, wondered why I chose to bring this up now, the day Lasorda was sent to the ICU for a serious health issue. Perhaps you’re wondering the same thing. He may die, after all.

Lasorda Jr. didn’t get the chance to have his perceived sins forgiven or ignored when he died. He never got the approval and acceptance from his father and others he may have been seeking – that he deserved. Neither did millions of LGBTQIA people throughout this country’s history, who had to deal with similar discrimination and hateful rhetoric throughout their lives.

Lasorda, like every other bigot, should suffer this ignominy. Lasorda was responsible, in part, for the decline in the quality of life his son and Burke had. He signaled to closeted LGBTQIA players back then that they were unwelcome and offered positive reinforcement to other bigots in the Dodgers organization.

Burke didn’t officially come out as gay until 1982, after his baseball career was over. While most of his teammates and those in the Dodgers organization knew, it wasn’t something Burke acknowledged publicly at the time. The Dodgers were just as happy to keep Burke’s identity under wraps. Major League Baseball wouldn’t see an openly gay active player until 2015, when 1B/OF David Denson came out to his teammates in Helena, Montana, where the Brewers’ rookie league team played. That’s a 33-year gap between Burke and Denson, fueled in part by Lasorda’s bigotry.

At some point, we will all have to face an auditing of our lives. It is unavoidable. Did we do good or bad for our families and friends, our communities, society at large? Lasorda was put in a position of power. He did not always use his power for good. It would not be fair to his son, to Burke, and to millions of others to ignore that because others would prefer to focus on the two titles he helped the Dodgers win.