I LIVE FOR THIS! BASEBALL'S LAST TRUE BELIEVER. By Bill Plaschke with Tommy Lasorda. Mariner Books (Reprint edition). 256 pages. $14.95

He is major league baseball's most colorful character of this era, with a career lasting more than 50 years of a short playing career and a managerial span -- in the big time, all with the Los Angeles Dodgers -- in which his teams played 3,040 regular season games and won 1,599 of them, along with six National League titles and two World Series.

Tommy Lasorda, born into a working-class family in Norristown, Pa., learned early to scratch and claw. A southpaw, as a youngster he had to use a right-hander's glove. Nobody cut him slack. Grit, determination and pugnaciousness took him -- not very far at first. As a major league pitcher, over three seasons he was 0-4.

It was managerial ability that carried him thereafter: He knew how to motivate, which players to scold and which to hug. His highest praise for a young athlete: "I see a lot of me in you!" The player in whom he saw the most of himself was Bobby Valentine, a fearless and feisty infielder who later also managed.

Tommy's weakness has been that he wears his feelings on both sleeves. He is outgoing and generous to a fault, but never forgets a slight -- and inevitably there have been many, including from his beloved Dodgers. He has led an eventful and tumultuous life, enjoyable to read about.

-- Bob Willis is a retired editorial writer or The Roanoke Times