We always tell our students to be good ambassadors to the United States when they are abroad. Here’s why:
We are in the season of celebrations. We celebrate family and thankfulness and the onset of holiday fever, and the end the end of another hard-fought semester. Here in the D.R., we’re also celebrating an anniversary. Anniversaries are a time of remembrance. They’re our chance to look back upon our lives since a certain event and take note of how that event has helped to shape us into the people we are today. They’re also a chance for us to remind ourselves just how wacky we behave sometimes.
It is with this is mind that we celebrate December 5 as the date that, in 1970 (45 years ago), Tommy Lasorda was arrested while manager of the Escogido Lions of the Dominican Professional Baseball League for stripping off his clothes in front of a crowd of thousands.
It was the bottom of the ninth inning and Lasorda’s Lions were winning 2-0 in a game in Santiago against the Eagles. When the first base umpire ruled that a ball hit by an Eagles batter was a home run, edging the Eagles closer to tying the score, Lasorda became enraged and ran out onto the field to argue that the ball in fact had not made it over the fence but rather hit the top and bounced back onto the field. Arguing such a play, and doing so in dramatic fashion, is a typical managerial duty, and it usually leads to the manager’s being ejected from the game. What is not so typical was what followed next: After being ejected by the first base umpire, Lasorda became so enraged that he took his hat off and threw it to the ground. Then he took off his jacket and did the same.
Then his jersey.
Now naked from the waste up, Lasorda continued in his rage, moving further south and taking both shoes off and throwing those to the ground. Luckily at this point he made his way into the dugout and the shocked audience was not subjected to any more of Lasorda’s cabaret.
After the game, Lasorda was arrested, charged with “crimes against modesty,” and spent a night in a Dominican jail. Several days later, he left his position as manager of the first-place Lions and headed home, maintaining that he had not broken any Dominican laws that he was aware of, but citing the uncomfortable experience of his first jail sentence as reason for leaving the country.
Lasorda was no stranger to putting on a good show in the U.S. throughout his years either, but being able to live in infamy in a foreign country always takes on extra meaning. Luckily, some of the more positive actions of players and coaches from the U.S. are remembered with fondness as well, but for many die-hard Dominican fans, the day that Lasorda stripped on the field is forever ingrained in their baseball memories.
Happy anniversary, Tommy Lasorda.
Dre Santos
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