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Tommy Lasorda is synonymous with the Dodgers, but his lifetime in blue might have become a career in brown. For about five weeks nearly 70 years ago, Lasorda spent a spring training with St. Louis.
Heading into the 1953 season, Lasorda was 25 years old, and pitched in the Dodgers’ farm system for four years. The previous three years were with Triple-A Montreal, with Lasorda going 35-17 with a 3.35 ERA in 489 innings.
But he couldn’t yet breakthrough to the majors on a team that won the most games in the National League over the previous three seasons. Opportunity came in the form of a trade, or rather a sale. The St. Louis Browns purchased Lasorda and shortstop Billy Hunter from the Dodgers. The sale price was somewhere between $120,000 (a 2003 article by Rick Hummel in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch mentioned $50,000 for Lasorda and $70,000 for Hunter) and $140,000 (from