Tommy Lasorda was born on the first day of fall, the season that matters most in baseball. Many years later he would make a lasting autumn imprint, but on that day, in 1927, the Brooklyn Dodgers lost a doubleheader. Lasorda, from Norristown, Pa., would grow to be a scrappy left-handed pitcher for the team, but he would never win for them, either.
Like Walter Alston, his predecessor as manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lasorda appeared only briefly as a major league player. Alston was hitless in one at-bat; Lasorda was winless in a handful of starts. Yet they managed the team in an unbroken line from 1954 to 1996, combining for all six of the franchise’s championships before 2020.