Lasorda University: A Recollection of My Summer of '68 with Tommy Lasorda and the Ogden Dodgers

NEW & UPDATED EDITION! It was the summer of 1968 ... Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated, the war in Vietnam raged on, the Democratic National Convention rocked Chicago, we were a year away from Woodstock and landing on the moon, and there I was tucked away in Ogden, Utah. I was a 16-year- old kid spending my third summer as the clubhouse manager for the Ogden Dodgers, an entry level professional baseball team, under the tutelage of the great Tommy Lasorda. For me, it turned out to be a summer like no other. Not only did I get to witness the blossoming of several future superstars of the sport, like Steve Garvey, Bobby Valentine, Tom Paciorek, and Bill Buckner, but I learned about leadership and life from one of the greatest baseball managers of all time. It was to be Tommy’s last year managing a team in the Pioneer League, and the team was engaged in a tough race for the pennant. This is the story of that magical season where those three short months were transformed into a lifetime of experience. It’s many things — my coming of age story, my rite of passage tale, but mostly it pro- vides a highly personal glimpse of Tommy Lasorda as few knew him. It’s his story as well. In the book I recount how I watched as he took a bunch of young, raw, inexperienced players who had never played professionally before and transformed them into a championship caliber team. Please join me as I, and some of the members of that summer’s 1968 Pioneer League Team, recount the remembrances and recollections of the man himself and that one, magical season. It was a time where the boys of summer became men, and Tommy Lasorda began his ascent to baseball greatness. ZACK MINASIAN'S time with Tommy Lasorda was nothing less than an education. His acquired skill poured over into his later roles as the visiting clubhouse manager for the Texas Rangers from 1988-1994; home clubhouse and equipment manager for the Rangers from 1995-2009; and as the administrative assistant to the field manager for the Boston Red Sox in 2012. Having spent much of his professional life in and around clubhouses, Zack revolutionized clubhouse operation and equipment management and set a high bar for the thousands of coaches, ballplayers and staff that he took care of over the years. George Steinbrenner once called Zack’s visiting clubhouse “the best in baseball” and Bo Jackson described Zack’s clubhouse as the “Taj Mahal of all clubhouses."