Tommy Lasorda, an American professional baseball pitcher and manager, who managed the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1976 through 1996. Lasorda won two World Series championships as manager of the Dodgers (1981 & 1988) and was named the Manager of the Year of the National League (NL) twice. The Dodgers retired his No. 2.
He was inducted into Cooperstown, New York’s National Baseball Hall of Fame as a manager in 1997. Three years after being inducted into the Hall of Fame, Tommy guided the only U.S. baseball team to win an Olympic title at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Summer Games. He is the only person to manage World Series and Olympic champion baseball teams.
Many don’t know that from 1947 to 1960, Tommy played baseball in Cuba, “I was playing there when Castro overthrew [𝕱𝖚𝖑𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖎𝖔 𝕭𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 in 1952] to take over the country.” In a 2008 interview with Robert Cassidy of Newsday Tommy described the events of that early morning on January 1, 1959: “When Castro took over the city on the first of January, me, Art Fowler and Bob Allison came out of a New Year’s party with our wives, and it was 3:30 in the morning and I look up and three planes were flying over head,” said Lasorda. “I said ‘Geez who in the world is flying at this time at night?’ It was actually Batista and all his cabinet members. They were getting out of the country.”
During his last 14 years with the Dodgers, he was the special adviser to the chairman. As a result, he wound up spending quite a bit of time on travel in New York City. Tommy became a regular at Harlem’s Papa Juan Cigar Room.
Amid talks of rekindling relations between Cuba and the United States in 2014, Tommy told pix11 News, that he “was eager to smoke Cubans again.” “Those are great cigars,” said the former Brooklyn Dodger. “If it comes from Cuba, you can rest assured they’re great cigars.” Tommy’s favorite Cuban is H. Upmann No. 2 (somehow, quite appropriate)!
