Walking into the office of Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda in the 1980s was like walking into a tiny neighborhood Italian restaurant, the back room of a shady saloon, the green room of a television studio, the hold of a ship in which sailors wielded profanity the way watercolorists use paint, the confessional of a worn cathedral, and sometimes–if you timed it just right–actually a place to talk baseball.
I would stand on the threshold of that room and have no idea which realm I would be entering. Lasorda sat behind his desk to the left of the open door, so you had to stick your head in and turn to the left to see if the maestro was in and conducting today’s symphony of entertainment.