tommy lasorda's legacy continues

while the dodgers' pitchers and catchers reported last friday, the astros' batteries report tomorrow. they will be arriving to a new manager now that dusty baker has retired from the position.  i bought the topps now card that was issued after he announced his plans to hang up his personalized sweatbands for my post-dodger dusty baker collection

he has since rejoined the giants as an advisor, but won't be adding to his accolades noted on the back of the card

i hope he considers second place finishes in the national league west "great things".

anyway, with dusty retiring there was a period where there were no longer any major league managers who played under tommy lasorda. a long time ago, i wrote about the tommy lasorda managerial tree and i haven't stopped paying attention. baker's managerial career began while tommy was still leading the dodgers, but there were some years after lasorda's retirement where baker was not managing. fortunately, in 2007 there were lasorda players willie randolph, phil garner, mike scioscia, and ron washington leading teams to keep the tree alive. dusty was also out of the game in 2014 and 2015, but scioscia and ron roenicke were managers during both of those seasons, along with kirk gibson and washington in 2014. in 2018, scioscia was the only one still standing and i was a bit concerned that the end was near.

scioscia stepped down after the 2018 season, so in 2019 we were without a manager who played under lasorda until tom prince got to manage the last game of the season for the pirates. thankfully, baker was hired by the astros for the 2020 season and now here we are.

in addition to the astros, the angels have their pitchers & catchers reporting tomorrow and their new manager will be there, too. that would be ron washington who was hired in early november. i have a managerial card of washington in my dodger collection because he was featured on a 2014 topps heritage ad panel with chris capuano and (future dodger) chris perez

here's the back:

i am actually hoping that washington finds some success in anaheim because mike trout deserves to be playing in the postseason.

i may as well show one of my newest lasorda cards - a 2022 topps chrome platinum anniversary black & white mini diamonds refractor

along with another card i picked up last year for another one of my post-dodger player collections.

that would be a 2002 topps gold parallel card of davey lopes who managed the brewers for a couple of seasons. like baker, lopes is retired from managing and coaching (he was on dusty's staff with the nationals) and so he won't be showing up in any dugouts in the future.