Tom Lasorda Marquee Hall of Fame 1997

His playing record is three seasons, 1954 to 1956, 26 games and roughly 58 innings, no wins and four losses, with 37 strikeouts. He also had one hit in fourteen at-bats. He is supposed to have been the man Brooklyn dropped from the roster to make room for Sandy Koufax, which he mentioned often and did not resent as much as he said he did.

The Los Angeles dugout is the rest of it: 1,599 wins against 1,439 losses over twenty-one seasons, first place eight times, and Manager of the Year from the writers twice. The first of those seasons was four games long, at the end of 1976, and a heart attack cut the last one off after seventy-six. He managed no other club.

He spent sixty-odd years working for one organization and talked about it in terms usually reserved for religion. He managed the United States to a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics at seventy-two. The Veterans Committee elected him in 1997, the year after he stopped managing, and he lived to ninety-three.