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Jimmy Scott's High & Tight: The Lary Sorensen Interview

If you used to collect baseball cards as if they were more important than your next breath, then you remember more names of baseball players than just about anything you were supposed to learn in 12 years of public schooling. In fact, if 9th grade English started with Alou and ended with Zisk, it would have been a heckuvalot easier to get through. Instead, they gave us Beowulf.

When I got to speak with Lary Sorensen recently, it was more than a pleasure. It was an opportunity to have a one-on-one with one of the young faces that used to look back at me from a small piece of colorful cardboard; in this case, a 54-year old face that's seen and been through more than most of us can imagine. There was the All-Star season with Milwaukee in 1978. There were the trades and there was money. There was also involvement in the 1985 Pittsburgh Drug Trials, at the time one of baseball's most significant scandals of all time. And then there was the alcoholism that took over his life and helped him lose his wife, his job as the Tigers radio announcer and more. Lary Sorensen has been through the wars and he's come out alive. In the Jimmy Scott's High & Tight Interview with Lary Sorensen, we'll find out the how and the why.

PART I

1978 was his best season and also Lary's All-Star season. He reflects upon those late'70s Milwaukee Brewers teams and then talks about how he felt being traded away. Then there was the 1981 strike. What did Lary do during the inactive time? How much money did he lose? Finally, we talk about how Lary ended up in Cleveland, years before Jacobs Field and the team's renaissance and how terrible it was to play there.

PART II 16:00

If 1978 was a great year for Lary, the early-80s were the opposite. His career downturn and free agent contract with Oakland are discussed, as are the teammates he played with over the years. Then we get to 1985 and The Pittsburgh Drug Trials. What was his role? What was the penalty? Lary describes the situation and also his relationship to Keith Hernandez, the player who snitched on Lary and started his whole involvement in this piece of MLB history.

PART III 30:00

We finish up with the Drug Trials by comparing it to The Steroid Era of the next generation of players. Then we get into the end of Lary's career and the transition from player to broadcaster.

PART IV 39:15

By now, you'll understand why Lary was a perfect voice for the Detroit Tigers. He'll explain how he lost that coveted radio gig with the team and how alcoholism destroyed his professional career, his marriage and his life. But Lary isn't crying. Instead, he's rebuilding his life and pursuing his ambitions. He talks about what he's doing to get back into the game and also give us a scouting report on Mark Sorensen, his son, a pitcher in the Tigers farm system.

This is one of those interviews you'll want to bookmark. It's history. It's human interest. And it's a man opening his life to us so we can try to possibly figure out our own. Lary Sorensen, on Jimmy Scott's High & Tight.

THE MUSIC

John Lennon - Nobody Told Me

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

David Bowie (w/ John Lennon) - Fame

Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Lucky Man

Bob Marley - Redemption Song

Dan Fogelberg - Tullamore Dew

Peter Frampton - Do You Feel Like I Do

The Eagles - I Dreamed There Was No War

Traffic - The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

The Cars - Moving In Stereo, All Mixed Up

Jeff Beck - Cause We've Ended Up As Lovers