A baseball blueblood for going on 60 years

AT 50

First in a series of first-person accounts of Tom Lasorda's career in baseball.

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As far back as I can remember I wanted to be a major league baseball player.

Instead of obeying my parents and doing household chores on weekends, I would sneak out to play baseball with my neighborhood teams.

I would take my bucket, soap and scrub brush up to the bathroom on the second floor to clean, but instead of scrubbing I would climb out of the window, shimmy down the pipe on the side of our house, crawl on the ground under the window to the street, run five miles to Elmwood Park and play baseball.

We would wait at the park for the other teams to show up. We would play the Irish kids from St. Patrick's, or the African American kids from the East End, and while two teams played, the third team would wait for the game to end, and then play the winner. And that's how it went all day long. People ask me where I got my competitiveness and I tell them Elmwood Park, because we never wanted to lose and sit on the swings waiting for the next game.

Growing up in Norristown, Pa., I was a Yankees fan, and when I was 13, I used to actually dream that I was pitching for the Yankees, in Yankee Stadium.

I would look around the field and see players like Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and, of course, the Babe.

All of a sudden I would feel my mother shaking me, saying, "Wake up, Tommy. It's time to go to school."

"Why didn't she leave me alone?" I would exclaim. That dream was so real.

I signed a contract with the Phillies at the age of 16. I played for their Class-D team in Concord, N.C., and then spent two years in the Army. In 1949 I was drafted by the Dodgers and sent to Greenville, S.C., where I met my wife. From there I was sent to one of the Dodgers' three triple-A affiliates, the Montreal Royals.

In 1954 I had finally made my way to Brooklyn and was playing for the Dodgers. We were playing the Yankees in an exhibition game, in Yankee Stadium. I was warming up in the bullpen and Yogi Berra was the hitter.

Walter Alston went to the mound and signaled for the left-hander.

As I took that long walk from the bullpen to the pitcher's mound, I looked around Yankee Stadium.

When I got to the mound I had a tear in my eye and Alston asked if I was going to be able to play.

I said, "I have been here many times, but in my dreams."

When I got Yogi out, it was proof that dreams become realities.