Valentine and Lasorda Couldn’t Be Much Closer, but That Doesn’t Mean Mets’ Manager Will Be Coming to L.A

NEW YORK —  “How well did you know Spunky?” Bobby Valentine asked, squinting as he looked into my eyes, measuring whether he could trust me enough to proceed with this line of questioning.

“Not well,” I said.

“Well, “ he said, “Spunky was . . . “

I nodded, encouraging him to go on.

” . . . very special,” Valentine said.

I never expected to be standing on the field last Friday at Shea Stadium, talking to the New York Mets’ manager about Tom Lasorda Jr. I had entered Valentine’s office the day before equipped with a list of questions, only one of which I was truly interested in exploring.

How had the tight bond between Valentine and Tom Lasorda, Spunky’s father, been forged?

In more than five decades of organized baseball, Lasorda has played beside, coached, managed and, now, general managed more than 1,000 players. He has remained close with many, very close with some, such as Charlie Hough, Burt Hooton, Jerry Stephenson, Tommy John and Tom Paciorek; and, until the last couple of years, Bill Russell. But no one is closer to Lasorda than Valentine.

Valentine initially was evasive, probably because he guessed he knew where the question was leading.

Ever since Lasorda became the Dodgers’ interim general manager in June, there has been speculation he eventually will lure Valentine to Los Angeles as his manager.

With Lasorda and the Dodgers arriving in New York the next day for a four-game series, Valentine was bracing himself for a renewed surge of interest in whether he might be managing from the top step of the other dugout next season.

Not that he blamed the media for the speculation, calling it a no-brainer because of his close relationship with Lasorda.

How close is apparent from looking at the photographs on the wall in Valentine’s office. There are only three of him with baseball personalities: one with Joe DiMaggio, one with Mickey Mantle and the other with Lasorda.

But there also are photographs on Valentine’s wall of him with Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton. None ever asked him to become secretary of state.

“It’s a mistake for people to make any assumptions without looking into my contract,” said Valentine, referring to a clause prohibiting him from managing another major league team for the duration of the contract, even if he leaves before it expires after the 2000 season.

“But there are other factors. If the Dodgers have success the rest of the season, that means Tommy has done a good job as the general manager. It also means Glenn Hoffman has done a good job, and they don’t have to look for a new manager. Now, on the other hand, if the Dodgers don’t have success, then maybe Tommy doesn’t get to hire the new manager.

“I just don’t feel it’s a reality for me. When you get to be 48, you try to live in reality more than fantasy.”

Lasorda probably believed he was dealing in fantasy when he was asked last summer, within hours of his induction into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., which manager he would like to hire if he were a general manager.

Lasorda, a Dodger vice president then, named Valentine first, then Russell.

The relationship between Lasorda and Russell had already begun to deteriorate--probably because Lasorda believed Russell was allied with Fred Claire, probably because Russell believed Lasorda was critical of his managing--but Lasorda’s Cooperstown interview did irreparable damage.

Russell, however, didn’t understand that Lasorda’s comment was a reflection of the bond between him and Valentine, not an insult to Russell.

Asked about Valentine last week, Lasorda was careful not to say anything that could be interpreted as tampering. After Lasorda returned last year from Cooperstown, his bosses at the time, Claire and Peter O’Malley, warned him about that.

“It’s never, ever entered my mind that Bobby could become the Dodger manager,” he said. “He has a great job in a great city. He should stay right here.”

Having made that clear, he said he knew Valentine was his kind of player, his kind of guy, the first time they met in 1968. Valentine, from Stamford, Conn., was at USC, which was recruiting him for football and baseball.

“We were at a party at Rod Dedeaux’s house,” Lasorda said, referring to the former USC baseball coach. “Casey Stengel was there, Al Campanis, me. Bobby kept asking Rod to turn on the lights in the backyard and pitch to him so he could show us how he could hit. He didn’t lack confidence.”

The Dodgers made Valentine their No. 1 draft choice that year. For the first three years of his professional career, he played under Lasorda at Ogden, Utah, and Spokane, Wash. Lasorda also managed him in winter leagues in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.

But that’s only half the story of their relationship, the baseball half.

For the other half, I called Lasorda’s wife, Jo, at their Fullerton home.

“How close are we to Bobby?” she repeated, laughing. “Well, he’s been in my kitchen in his underwear, standing at the ironing board while ironing his pants.”

The Lasordas introduced Valentine to his wife, Mary, the daughter of former Brooklyn Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca, during a Christmas vacation together in the Dominican.

As the story goes, Jo used to say she wanted daughter Laura to marry Valentine so he could become an official member of the family. Not true, she said, because Laura, now married and the mother of a young daughter, wasn’t old enough for Valentine.

When I mentioned the story to Valentine, he said, “I wish Jo had told me that.”

“Seriously,” he said, “I had a real kinship with Spunky and I had a real affection toward Laura as a young girl.”

It was the kinship with Spunky more than anything else, Jo said, that brought Valentine into the Lasorda family circle. If his relationship to Lasorda is almost like a son’s, Valentine’s to Spunky definitely was like that of a big brother.

He was reluctant to discuss it when I approached him on the field Friday, concerned that the topic would bring pain to parents who lost a son so young.

I told him Jo brought it up.

“What did she say?” he asked.

“Jo said you and Spunky were different but alike,” I said. “She said you had baseball and Spunky had other things, but that you approached life with the same sort of exhilaration and sensitivity.”

Valentine nodded, softening.

“I was Tommy’s free spirit in baseball,” he said. “Spunky was Tommy’s free spirit in life.”

Lasorda didn’t always understand Spunky. Spunky didn’t always understand Lasorda.

Valentine was the one who explained them to each other, bringing father and son closer together.

Maybe it’s an unfair stereotype, I told Valentine, but there aren’t many career baseball men who would have understood an artist like Spunky. They tend to prefer art with a staple in the center.

“I don’t know,” Valentine said. “I just know Spunky was a very good friend, someone I enjoyed spending time with and someone I miss.”

Valentine spent the last week of Spunky’s life at his bedside. Spunky died on June 3, 1991, of pneumonia and dehydration. He was 33. At the funeral, Valentine delivered the eulogy.