 Welcome you back once again here on Yankees Hot Stove as we share some reflections on Tommy LaSorta who passed away last week at the age of 93, larger than life. His love of the game showed everywhere he went. Everybody he spoke to, a great ambassador of the game, Jack and a man who by his own account bled Dodger Blue. Yeah, I think of that word ambassador when I think of Tommy LaSorta, Bob. And I actually had the good fortune of meeting him while I was still in college. I'm a junior at Fordham University and Tommy is giving a speech on campus. So since my buddy Mike Zuccarello and I were the school sports editors, I had the opportunity to interview him and meet him beforehand. That was good enough. He was a major league manager who with the Dodgers had those back and forth with the Yankees. That was terrific to just even speak to him. Well, then he gives the speech and in the course of giving the speech, he talks about Frankie Frisch who of course he knew the Fordham Flash. He talks about Vince Scully, who was revered at Fordham when you were a sports journalist like me. And then he throws my name in the mix and starts talking about me as enthusiastically as he spoke about those two icons. So I was never a big man on campus like Flash was at GW. But for those five minutes when Tommy LaSorta name dropped me in the middle of his speech, I was, I've been a fan and he was a great man ever since. Well, I can honestly say that I've never met Tommy LaSorta and Tommy LaSorta probably never mentioned my name in a speech like Jack. So congratulations on that. But when I think of Tommy LaSorta, I think of the iconic managers in the game. Sparky Anderson, Earl Weaver. When you walked into a major league clubhouse and they were leading your team, you knew exactly who the boss was, right? There weren't at a Linux departments. There weren't the computer guys in the clubhouse. It was Tommy LaSorta making out his lineup and motivating his team. And if you go on YouTube and you listen to stories about Tommy LaSorta, it's all about motivating his team, almost making them better than what they physically actually were using some information from the media to get it into his clubhouse to get his team fired up. I think about 81 beating the Yankees after going through some hard aches at the end of the 70s. And I think about that 88 team with Kirk Gibson and that amazing run to a World Series title. Tommy LaSorta was able to motivate people and just a great character of our game. And again, in that 88 World Series, you could have made the argument as much as teams are protective of players now. Kirk Gibson had the bad left hand, the bad right knee was not supposed to play. And you don't need analytics or anything. All you need is motivation and a speech to say, this guy has something left in the tank, put him in and he won the World Series for him. A memorable home run off Dennis Eckersley and the Dodgers sail from there. They beat a team that people probably didn't think they could beat. And to Flash's point, even in the previous round against the Mets, in our buddy David Cohn, Ghost wrote a column for the Daily News and criticized the Dodgers. Who do you think made sure that that column was on a bulletin board? Tommy LaSorta and Coney has said that when he went out there and pitched, his legs felt like Jello. That's how nervous and tense he felt because everybody at Dodger Stadium was against him. That was inspired by LaSorta. Well, in the speech he delivered at his Hall of Fame induction. LaSorta said that he would go to sleep as a child. He dreamed he was pitching for the Yankees, playing with legends like Bill Dickey, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio. Though he never wore pinstripes in the majors, he became synonymous with a Dodgers franchise equally steeped in history and tradition. LaSorta will forever be remembered for his huge personality and the impact that he made upon the game he loved so much.