Scioscia to be inducted into Albuquerque Hall of Fame
Former Dodgers player, Angels manager started career with Dukes in late ’70s
Mike Scioscia won a pair of World Series titles as a player with the Dodgers, was the primary backstop for Orel Hershiser’s major league record scoreless streak in 1988, launched an unforgettable ninth-inning home run off Doc Gooden in the NLCS and managed the Angels to their only world championship.
He’s even appeared as himself on The Simpsons — twice.
On June 29, Scioscia will add another footnote to his memorable career when he is inducted into the Albuquerque Professional Baseball Hall of Fame.
A former player and manager with the defunct Albuquerque Dukes, the backstop sometimes referred to as “El Jefe” will be back in the town where he once ate a steady diet of boiled hot dogs in his shared apartment when making his Triple-A debut 45 years ago. The ceremony will take place the night of June 29 on Dukes Retro Night at Isotopes Park.
Scioscia said he has fond memories of Albuquerque, a place where he spent the entire 1979 season and part of the 1980 campaign, hitting .334 in 195 games before getting a big league promotion that had him in Dodger blue through the 1992 season.
He said Wednesday the town he remembers is probably a bit different than the one he lived in, which includes the 1999 season when he returned to the Dukes for one year as the team’s manager.
“I remember 1979 getting there and people were still using horseback for transportation, going down to markets with saddlebags,” he said. “For a kid from Philadelphia that was an eyeopener as to what the old west was.”
Both his Triple-A and major league managers are already enshrined in Albuquerque’s hall; his 1979 skipper, Del Crandall, was inducted in 2008, while legendary Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda was the first person to go into the hall as the lone member of the 2007 class.
It was Scioscia’s relationship with Lasorda that crafted the kind of career he had as both a player and manager. Scioscia was a first-round draft pick of the Dodgers out of high school in 1976
when Lasorda, then the third base coach for the club, traveled to Philadelphia for a series against the Phillies at Veterans Stadium. He called Scioscia, then a 17-year-old college commit to Clemson who was home alone at the time, to say he wanted to visit in person.
Scioscia hung up on him, thinking it was a prank.
“About a minute, no, 30 seconds later the phone rings again,” Scioscia recalled. “He goes, ‘Mike, this is really Tommy Lasorda.’ ”
Long story short, Lasorda pulled up to the family’s suburban home, drove his future backstop to the stadium and had a workout. By the following day, Scioscia had backed out of his college opportunity and was headed for his first professional assignment with the Bellingham Dodgers of the Northwest League, who were in Walla Walla, Wash., at the time.
“It wasn’t so much that I was drawn to sign with the Dodgers because of Tommy Lasorda, it was really Tommy’s influence on laying out what my career path could be,” he said.
Three years later he was in a Dukes uniform, adjusting to the unrelenting summer heat of the high desert. The footprint of what is now Isotopes Park sits on what used to be the Albuquerque Sports Stadium, a place with a drive-in lava rock hill beyond the outfield fence and summer conditions that turned the field into an unfriendly place for anyone with a glove.
Those conditions were still the same when he returned as the team’s manager in ’99, one year before he took over with the Angels.
“That infield got, like, a freeway,” he said of the Sports Stadium. “I mean, it was awful with bad hops.”
So bad, that Scioscia took it upon himself to try to fix it.
“It is, like, 130 degrees out, it’s one of those days where the sun is like a heat lamp right above you,” he said.
He dragged the infield skin, then grabbed a water hose and started soaking the infield. Starting at third base and working his way around, he said he put at least an inch of water on every bit of dirt and grass he could reach.
“I get about halfway done and [Dukes assistant coach] Mickey Hatcher comes up to me and goes, ‘Mike, you see these clouds coming in?’ ” Scioscia said with a laugh. “I go, ‘What clouds?’ ”
As it tends to do in these parts in June and July, the monsoon rolled in and drenched the field. Coupled with the manager’s handiwork it forced a rain delay as the grounds crew readied the field.
Dukes president and general manager Pat McKernan wasn’t in town to see it, but he made sure to call Scioscia to give him the kind of blunt advice Lasorda did when he was a teenager.
“He goes, ‘Mike, I don’t tell you how to write your lineup; don’t tell me how to take care of the field,’ ” Scioscia said, smiling at the memory. “Message received, but after that, the field was a little better. They put a little more water on it.”
As history goes, that was one of his fondest while in New Mexico.
Nearly half a century later, he’ll be back to accept his enshrinement into Albuquerque’s humble hall and see his tribute hanging in the same place as other baseball greats Lasorda, Crandall, Pedro Martinez and, yes, McKernan.