Even before he developed a taste for major-league cuisine, Tommy Lasorda lived to eat – and to schmooze.

No, you wouldn't find Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis, Jr. at his table when he managed the Spokane Indians in the early 1970s. But you could find him holding court over the lunch hour at the old Town and Country not far from the Fairground ballpark. And after games, there was a big plate of Chinese and a big table for guests at Jack Louie's.

He was already bleeding Dodger blue in those days, even though the logo of the Indians – the Dodgers' Triple-A farm club – was actually red and black. And he was already skewering his second-guessers with a disarming irascibility.

Take the pitchers who had the temerity to grumble about Bobby Valentine, the jewel of the Dodger system whom Lasorda was trying to polish into a shortstop. In two seasons in Spokane, Valentine committed 93 errors. Lasorda heard about each one from the critics in the grandstand; he didn't have to take it from inside his own clubhouse.

So he called a meeting to clear the air.

"I hear you guys are a little upset at my choice of shortstops," Valentine recalls Lasorda saying. "So what I'm going to do now is give everyone two minutes to get up off your stools and walk across the room and get that guy's autograph. Because he's going to be in the big leagues when you guys are out carrying a lunch bucket, and you'll be happy to tell your grandkids you played with him."

At the time, Lasorda could have been speaking of any of a dozen players.

For in the 25 years it was a Triple-A baseball town, Spokane was a rest stop on the freeway to the major leagues. But in 1970, it was a launching pad.

Valentine, Steve Garvey, Bill Russell – all joined the Indians that spring and found themselves in Los Angeles Dodgers' uniforms the next year. Charlie Hough, Bill Buckner, Doyle Alexander – all used their summer in Spokane as a springboard to major league careers that lasted more than 18 years. Lasorda himself apprenticed for the Hall of Fame in the Fairgrounds dugout.

The 1970 Spokane Indians were, in every respect, out of their league. They won the Northern Division of the Pacific Coast League by an absurd 26 games, going to the extreme of "losing nine of 10 at one point and still picking up a half a game," as Garvey noted. In the playoffs, they swept a Hawaii team sodden with older veterans 4-0, outscoring the Islanders 36-9.

"That's a major league team you've got there," Hawaii manager Chuck Tanner told Lasorda.

Well, in most respects. The playoff bonuses they earned amounted to about $200 per man. Pretty minor money.

But if the Indians weren't truly major league, they were the best minor league team in post-World War II baseball history – or so Baseball America magazine determined in a 1993 retrospective. The publication's rankings were based not only on how teams dominated their opposition but also on how many alums went on to major league stardom.

And a walk through the Baseball Encyclopedia reveals a remarkable graduation rate. The average big-league career from Spokane's most regular starting eight position players was 14 years, and the Class of '70 wound up playing parts of 217 seasons in the major leagues. Hough, the ageless knuckleball pitcher, was still active in 1994. Ten others had careers that spanned 10 seasons or more.

All told, they account for 23 World Series appearances, 21 All-Star selections and one Most Valuable Player award – Garvey's, in 1974.

And those numbers have almost nothing to do with how first baseman Tommy Hutton assessed that '70 team's baseball I.Q.

"I don't think we had signs that year," said Hutton, who went on to become a broadcaster with the Toronto Blue Jays and ESPN.

No signs?

"We were having a meeting and Lasorda told us that if we demonstrated to him that we didn't know to take a strike when we were a couple of runs down or when to drop down a bunt, then we'd have signs.

"Having looked at the game from a broadcaster's angle now, I see more often than not young players who don't know how to play the game. The guys on our team had reasonable talent, sure, but they all knew how to play."

And they made it obvious.

By the beginning of June, the Indians already had a six-game lead on second-place Portland – and promptly won nine straight. But it wasn't as if they didn't grapple with their share of setbacks.

Buckner, playing the outfield, fractured his jaw in a collision in early May and played with it wired shut for a month. Hutton broke his hand in a head-on at first base June 11 and sat out until August. On June 17, the Dodgers called up Russell, who was leading the PCL in hitting; in July, Garvey would go up temporarily to fill in while Russell served a military hitch.

And still the Indians rolled on, a near-perfect blend of steady role players and can't-miss prospects plucked by the Dodgers in 1968 in what still ranks as possibly the best draft class of all time.

"There were a group of us, I think, who were destined to be Dodgers," said Garvey, "and guys who had been in the minors for a while who filled in when we were called up. Tom did a great job of making sure everybody knew their role. And maybe being part of a juggernaut helped add some years to some guys' professional careers."

Garvey, Russell and Davey Lopes would go on to form three-fourths of the Dodgers' infield for the next decade; the other fourth, Ron Cey, wouldn't crack the Spokane roster until 1971. Buckner would blossom into one of baseball's best hitters. Hough would win more than 200 major league games in 24 seasons, and Alexander would come up just short of that milestone.

So thick were the Dodgers with farm-system talent that some players became frustrated at not moving up faster. Outfielder Tom Paciorek stewed through three 100 RBI seasons in Triple-A. Hutton was in Spokane for five years.

"One spring I thought I'd made it and I got sent down again, and I was going to quit," Hutton said. "Tommy (Lasorda) told me, 'Go ahead – they'll still open the gates in Spokane. They'll still open the gates at Dodger Stadium.' It took a couple of days, but it sunk in that I wasn't going to accomplish what I wanted by quitting."

A few didn't wait for the frustrations to build.

Backup catcher Steve Sogge was a special case. As a senior at the University of Southern California, he quarterbacked the Trojans to the national championship in football – and captained the team that won the College World Series that next spring. Spokane was just his second stop in pro ball, but he retired after spending 1971 loaned out to the Chicago White Sox organization.

"At spring training, you'd see guys who had been in the game a long time and never made it, just sort of hanging on, and others trying to get back," he said. "That didn't appeal to me."

Ironically, the most talented and popular of the Indians – Valentine – became one of those players destined to keep hanging on, his star dimmed by a broken leg suffered in 1973 when he crashed into an outfield wall. But in 1970, he was the league MVP, batting champ and leader in 10 statistical categories.

Including, ominously, hit by pitch.

The defining moment of the '70 season was a first-pitch fastball in the final playoff game that got away from Hawaii hurler Greg Washburn and struck Valentine just below the left temple, fracturing the cheekbone.

"We replaced him with Marv Galliher," Hutton recalled, "and he hit for the cycle."

Not quite. Two singles, a triple and a two-run homer were Galliher's contribution to Spokane's 16-2 romp. One of those unsung role players, Galliher once joked that he'd been signed by Lasorda "for $250,000 . . . worth of good advice."

And if it's one thing Lasorda excelled at – both in Spokane and in Los Angeles, once he became the Dodgers' manager in 1977 – it was dispensing advice.

"That group you saw in Spokane," said Garvey, "basically was the group that bridged the gap in Los Angeles from a team that was essentially the old Brooklyn Dodgers to one that was the real Los Angeles Dodgers – the Big Blue Wrecking Crew. And Tom was the catalyst of it."

And the ultimate example that the best minor league team had major league stuff.

© New Media Ventures, Inc.