by Mark Langill
At the peak of his Hall of Fame baseball career, one of Tommy Lasorda’s favorite pastimes was traveling through customs and airport security stations in Japan like the grand marshal of a parade, smiling and waving at onlookers. The only papers in Lasorda’s hands were the slips of paper he was asked to autograph in between posing for photos.
Meanwhile, other Dodgers’ traveling party members readied to show their passports and other forms of identification.
They weren’t a two-time World Series-winning manager who “bled Dodger blue” and at age 72 miraculously led Team USA to the gold medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. They weren’t a global ambassador for MLB’s World Baseball Classic or a commercial spokesperson for countless products ranging from pasta sauce to weight-loss shakes.
Lasorda built his career as the perpetual underdog, the third-string pitcher on his high school baseball team in Norristown, Pennsylvania which only employed two pitchers.
One of Lasorda’s most famous quotes is, “The difference between the possible and impossible lies in a person’s determination.”
But even Lasorda, who passed away in 2021, would be stunned at the frenzy surrounding the Tokyo Dome for the season-opening series between the Dodgers and Chicago Cubs.
When Lasorda made his first trip to Japan 60 years ago, nobody could envision Japanese players dominating the Major League Baseball landscape like Los Angeles designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, who last season became baseball’s first 50/50 player during his National League MVP season, and recent Hall of Fame inductee Ichiro Suzuki, who this summer becomes the first Japanese-born player to enter Cooperstown.
In the spring of 1965, Lasorda and fellow Dodger scout Kenny Myers were dispatched to Japan for two weeks to serve as guest instructors at the Yomiuri Giants’ training camp. Two of the Dodgers’ most prolific scouts were available because MLB implemented a First-Year Player Draft in 1965, ending the chance for Lasorda and Myers to roam Southern California with a silver tongue and fountain pen hoping to sign amateur free agents. Sales pitches to player families and competition among other teams’ scouts were now obsolete.
The Dodgers in 1965 were in the early innings of a goodwill relationship with Japanese baseball. The Brooklyn Dodgers embarked on a postseason exhibition tour of Japan in 1956; other Dodger teams followed in 1966 and 1993. Between 1961 and 1981, the Giants spent five Spring Trainings at the Dodgers’ Vero Beach, Florida facility.
Lasorda and Myers left Los Angeles and stopped for plane refueling in Hawaii before heading to Tokyo. At the airport, Lasorda and Myers were greeted by the Giants players, along with sportswriter Sotaro Suzuki, who helped organize postseason tours of Japan by MLB teams in the 1950s and 1960s.
In a 2007 interview, Lasorda recalled the warm reception by Giants manager Tetsuharu Kawakami and his three standout players — third baseman Shigeo Nagashima, first baseman Sadaharu Oh and pitcher Masaichi Kaneda.
Myers focused on the hitters; Lasorda took the pitchers. Lasorda preached the importance of the curveball and changeup. Lasorda said the Giants didn’t have a clubhouse at their Spring Training facility, so the players changed into their uniforms at the team hotel and took a bus to the practice field. In addition to daily practices, Lasorda lectured on pitching at the team hotel.
Lasorda also found time to schedule to make nightly visits to Japanese restaurants. The lone exception was when Kaneda, Japan’s only 400-game winner games during his pitching career from 1950 to 1969, invited Lasorda to his house and cooked dinner.
After his first Japan trip, Lasorda embarked on another new chapter in his baseball life when Dodger scouting director Al Campanis suggested the extroverted Lasorda should try managing. He started at Rookie-level Pocatello, Idaho in 1965.
Lasorda learned his managerial lessons and gradually moved his way up the ladder, eventually replacing Walter Alston as Dodger manager on Sept. 29, 1976.
Lasorda’s motivational techniques were on display when he managed a National League All-Star team in Japan after the 1979 season. Because MLB also sent an American League All-Star team, managed by Baltimore’s Earl Weaver, Lasorda “confided” to each National League player before the first game that the MVP of the exhibition series was going to receive a new car. There were howls of laughter in the dugout when Cincinnati outfielder George Foster won MVP honors and tour organizers gave him a flower bouquet.
Thirty years later, Lasorda was Hideo Nomo’s first Major League manager when the former Kintetsu Buffaloes pitcher retired from Japanese baseball — his agent found a loophole in the standard player contract — and tried his luck in the United States. During his historic 1995 Rookie of the Year season, Nomo became only the second player to appear in the Majors after beginning his professional career in Japan. The other was reliever Masanori Murakami of the 1964–65 San Francisco Giants.
Lasorda knew the pressure Nomo felt trying to make history in a foreign country. He remembered Kaneda’s gesture of goodwill.
And so during the months of “Nomomania” in Southern California when the pitcher became the first Japanese player to start an All-Star Game, Lasorda and Nomo often shared a quiet lunch in the manager’s office.
It’s now 30 years since Nomo debuted with the Dodgers, and 60 since Lasorda’s trip to Japan.
The Dodgers open the 2025 season in Japan on Tuesday. The next chapter begins.
Lasorda’s 1965 Japan trip set a historic stage was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.