Who goofed? We're gonna find out ...
On this date 30 years - June 4, 1976 - a local KLAC-AM radio reporter, Paul Olden, (pictured), fetching sound-bites for the legendary Jim Healy, asked Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda what he thought of Dave Kingman's performance _ a three home-run game in an 11-0 Cubs' victory at Dodger Stadium.
Lasorda went ballistic. He started to swear and ...
Hold on. Check that date again ... And check that score ... Was Lasorda even the manager then?
WRONG...
Say what?
This is the story that the Associated Press moved on its wire services Saturday at about 2 p.m., picked up by many newspapers and put on their websites:
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Tommy Lasorda can laugh about it now. At the time, he was dead serious.
Sunday marks the 30th anniversary of Lasorda's most famous -- or infamous -- postgame tirade as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's become a cult classic on the Internet, with the Hall of Fame skipper at his most profane.
Dave Kingman had just led the Chicago Cubs to an extra-inning victory at Dodger Stadium with three home runs and eight RBIs, when a young radio reporter named Paul Olden asked him, "What did you think of Kingman's performance?"
"What's my opinion of Kingman's performance?" Lasorda said. "What the (expletive) do you think my opinion is of it? I think it was (expletive). Put that in. I don't (expletive) care. What's my opinion of his performance? (expletive). He beat us with three (expletive) home runs.
"What the (expletive) do you mean, `What is my opinion of his performance?' How can you ask me a question like that? I'm (expletive) off to lose a (expletive) game, and you ask me my opinion of his performance?"
Looking back on the incident, Lasorda showed remorse for allowing his temper get the better of him.
"I'm sorry that I did an interview like that, and I'm not proud of it," Lasorda said Saturday. "I've been married now 56 years, and I've never used a word of profanity in front of my wife, my children, or anybody else's wife or children. But on the ballfield, I'm bad. I'm really bad.
"So when that guy talked to me, I was as low and depressed and dejected as you can get. I mean, we lose the game in 15 innings, I had to go into my starting pitchers, and it knocked the daylights out of me. Then this guy comes in at the very moment I sat down and asked me `What is your opinion?' So I proceeded to tell him what my opinion was."
Lasorda didn't realize just how much his remarks would be replayed. Plenty of radio listeners have heard bootleg copies of it over the years -- including some of Lasorda's celebrity acquaintances.
"I remember once when Burt Reynolds walked into a restaurant and saw me with my wife," Lasorda recalled. "He said, `Hey, Tommy, I just came in on my plane and we played your tape.' Then my wife goes, `What tape?' I said, `I don't know what he's talking about.'
"Then the next night we had dinner with another couple and they told me they were at a party where they played the tape, and I told them I didn't know what they were talking about. Eventually she found out, though -- but I didn't want her to know that I did something like that."
Olden has since gone on to do play-by-play for the New York Jets and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and for many years announced the starting lineups over the public address microphone at the Super Bowl.
"I ran into Paul a few times when he was announcing for Tampa Bay," Lasorda said. "I told him, `You didn't do anything wrong. I was the guy who did something wrong.' Eventually it got all over the country -- and I think now it's in Japanese."
What a nice yarn ... . If only the AP writer -- there's no byline on the story -- had the facts right.
Wait. AP sent a correction on the story at about 3:30 p.m. with this note:
Eds: SUBS 3rd graf to CORRECT to Mets sted Cubs.
So the new third graph read:
Dave Kingman had just led the New York Mets to an extra-inning victory at Dodger Stadium with three home runs and eight RBIs, when a young radio reporter named Paul Olden asked him, "What did you think of Kingman's performance?"
Isn't that a clue to someone that something's not making sense?
Pete Weber, the former L.A. Kings colorman ('78-81) and now with the Nashville Predators, was the first to smell something wrong when he read a column on MLB.com about "This Date In Baseball." He emailed us first:
"Dave Kingman DID hit three homers in a game at Chavez Ravine on June 4, 1976 as the Mets beat the Dodgers 11-0, but there is no available recording of what then-Dodgers' manager Walter Alston had to say," Weber correctly pointed out.
FOR THE RECORD: The Olden game, as we'll call it, came after Kingman his the third of his three homers in the 15th inning of a 10-8 Cubs' win at Dodger Stadium. On May 14, 1978 -- two years later. On Mother's Day....
Later in the day, Olden, who now works at KNX-AM (1070) doing sports updates and has his own photography business, sent us an email:
"Just wanted to let you know the AP has pulled a "Who Goofed, I've Got to Know? ...
"They dropped the ball. ... I called the AP and told them to rerun that story in two years when it really IS the 30th year since the interview :)
Somewhere, Healy is having a good laugh, with an appropriate sound-bite to go with it.
---
The postscript:
At 9:13 p.m. Saturday, the AP ran this retraction:
BC-BBN--Lasorda's Tirade, Disregard Advisory,0069<
EDITORS:
Please disregard s0512, BC-BBN--Lasorda's Tirade, which first moved for AMs as s0476 and was followed by a 1st Ld-Writethru.
The premise of the story is incorrect. Sunday is not the 30th anniversary of Lasorda's outburst; those comments followed a game against the Mets in May 1978.
-- AP Sports, New York
L.A. bureau chief Ken Peters adds this explanation:
"(That correction), of course, doesn't excuse the mistake. Our usually solid stringer who wrote the story got confused in his research, then went to a web site to listen to Tommy's blowup, and that site also had the wrong date for it. I can understand, but the stringer still has been put on notice to be more careful."
And that's the rest of the story...
Comments
Tom,
How could it be the 30th Anni of the Lasorda tape - he didn't become Manager until Sept of 1976.
From the Dodgser website:
"Sept. 29, 1976: Tommy Lasorda becomes manager as Walter Alston steps down after 23 seasons and 2,040 victories."
Maybe it was in 77 or 78?
Just wondering
Dave Grudt
I got the link from LARadio.com
Posted by: Dave Grudt | June 5, 2006 10:32 AM