LCE 6th grade Electronic Book Review

1. Student Reviewer’s Name: Alyssa S.
2. Date of review of book: February 26, 2008
3. Complete Book Title: I Live For This!
4. Author of Book: Bill Plaschke with Tommy Lasorda
5. Year the book was published: 2007
6. Genre: Sports Non-Fiction
7. Student rating of the book (1 the highest, 5 the lowest): 1!!!

8. Main conflict in the book:
There are several, but one of the biggest conflicts in this book was Tommy Lasorda overcoming a rough and grueling career on The New York (then) and Los Angeles (now) Dodgers over a span of about sixty years.

9. Setting of the book: (place and time)
The setting is mostly in Los Angeles, but when Tommy revisits his childhood, he goes back to his Philadelphia home. He also talks about playing baseball in Spokane, Washington; Montreal, Canada; Kansas City, Kansas, and New York. The time of this book is occurring in the present while Tommy explains his rich baseball history and his personal life over a span of his entire life, which is 80 years.

10. Main Characters and part they play in the book:
(1) Tommy Lasorda -- Tommy is the baseball legend, the grandfather of all his players and anyone who has ever known him, and the man who loves everyone and treats a complete stranger like an old friend. He is also the man who gives speeches to people from firemen to under-privileged inner-city children, and the man who frequently walks into the heart facility who saved his life and treats the patients there like he had known them like a sister, and the man who has never used the internet. There is a side of him that contrasts this; the Tommy Lasorda who screams at his players, swears in every form imaginable, and constantly disputes with the umpires over a missed call.

(2) Al Campanis -- Al Campanis has always been like a father to Lasorda, back from when he was a struggling young Brooklyn Dodger pitcher. He guided Tommy through his faults and miscues; he was the one who recommended Tommy as a manager for the Dodgers after Walter Alston resigned. Al Campanis was the one who led Tommy through the hardships of life, including when Don McMahon, three years younger than Lasorda, died of a heart attack in Tommy’s arms at a batting practice. Al Campanis was one of many of Tom Lasorda’s friends, and broke Tommy’s heart when he died of a heart attack in the nineties.

11. Are the characters believable and interesting?
Yes, I think the characters are very realistic and interesting. The way Tommy Lasorda is displayed in this novel is identical to the way he acts. Plaschke describes him perfectly and really brings out the best of Lasorda. Tommy has two sides of him: the loving, good-natured, fatherly side, or the mean, curser of a brute he can be. From the true stories of Tommy Lasorda to the live action, the characters are very interesting and understandable.

12. One excellent direct quotation from the book: (include who said it, page number, and use
quotation marks!)
“’God, if I ever pitch that bleep Orosco again, may you hit me with a bolt of lightning and kill me dead’… ‘Darn right I mean it,’ he recalls,’ Everyone knows how I like to use my pitchers. If I didn’t make that promise, I would have used Orosco in a minute. I was going to rely on God to keep me from using the one guy who could kill our season.’… Yet a few hours later, it was Lasorda who was going crazy. Within a span of ten minutes, in two of the most important managerial decisions of his career, he broke a promise both to God and to the Bulldog.
It was the bottom of the twelfth inning. The Dodgers had tied the game with a dramatic Mike Scioscia homer in the ninth, then taken a one-run lead on a Kirk Gibson home run in the top of the twelfth. But now the Mets had runners on first and second with one out and two left-handed hitters coming up. There was nobody in the bullpen left but Orosco, who had been ordered chained to his chair for the evening. It was the perfect situation for the left-hander. But everyone on the bench knew about the promise.
Turning to pitching coach Ron Perranoski, Lasorda said, ‘---!, if I’m going to manage this team right, I’ve got to bring in Orosco.’
Said Perranoski: ‘You can’t bring him in. He’s the only guy we’ve got left.’
Said Lasorda: ‘I’ll take care of God. You just go out there and bring in Orosco’…” (pgs. 164-165) This stressful debate occurred in 1988 in the National League Championship Series, or the NLCS.

13. Good reasons to read the book:
This illustrious story depicts the true story of Tommy’s life so far and the past and current struggles he has faced from being a poor Italian-American boy to making game-time decisions that could have decided the fate of his managerial career. I think this book is suitable for those who take pleasure in reading about sports and biographies. This book teaches many lessons about people who many thought were mean, but turned out were nice people and vice versa. In addition, I learned plenty about baseball and Tommy Lasorda as a person. I had many questions about the book before I read it, and those questions have all been answered. I think this book should be read by anyone who thinks they know about Tom Lasorda because they will be stunned by the content of this book. Those people will quickly change their minds about Tommy Lasorda.

14. Any reasons not to read the book?
For the most part, in this book, I think there aren’t any reasons not to read it. However, if someone is squeamish or sensitive to excessive swearing, this is not the book for them. Remember, this book shows both sides of Tommy Lasorda. Not just the fun loving, caring, polite, sweet Lasorda that most people are used to. The nasty, trash-talking side of him is also shown.

Did you like this book or not? And why….
I loved this book. It taught me several important lessons about people I thought I knew about. I also embraced the brutal honesty displayed by Tommy Lasorda in the way he expressed his emotion to certain people at certain times. I was also surprised by the emotion that was passed around through the entire story. In conclusion, I loved this story and would recommend it to anyone.