Former manager Frank Lucchesi died last month at the age of 92. He was best known for being sucker punched and knocked out by second baseman Lenny Randle during spring training in 1977 when he was managing the Texas Rangers after Lucchesi benched Randle and referred to him indirectly as a "punk."
1977 was also the year Rudy Tomjanovich's face was destroyed on-court by Kermit Washington.
There doesn't seem to be any footage of the assault, but this description written in '77 right after it happened describes it vividly enough:
The sequence was all so incredibly swift, maybe four, five seconds at the most, and yet in afterthought, it hung there suspended in time, like slow motion or instant replay or the old newsreel films of the Hindenburg breaking apart reluctantly in dark Jersey skies.
There was the tableau of Frank Lucchesi and Lenny Randle talking, calmly it seemed to these witnessing eyeballs some 40 feet away – the Texas manager and his embittered player, once again debating Randle’s past, present and future with the Rangers. They stood maybe 18 inches apart, Lucchesi in his blue, flowered shirt and gray slacks (he had not yet dressed for the game), Randle in his uniform, some 20 feet toward the Ranger dugout from the pre-game batting cage.
There was no raising of voices, or even these jaded ears would have picked it up; no animation, no gestures, no jabbing of forefingers, no distending of neck veins. It seems to this memory that both men had their hands on hips, not belligerently but naturally as a couple of guys on the street corner argue the respective talents of the Longhorns and Sooners. Three, four minutes and conversation continued while your eyewitness here watched it idly, only vaguely curious at what appeared to be another review of Randle’s discontent that he wasn’t getting a full-scale chance at retaining his second base job from the challenge of rookie Bump Wills.
(The debate surfaced angrily last week when Lucchesi exploded that he was "sick and tired of some punks making $80,000 moaning and groaning about their jobs." The word punk was the fuse.)
Lucchesi had walked on the Minnesota spring diamond, said hello to a few fans, walked away for a private chat with Jim Russo, the Baltimore superscout. (Trade talk?)
The 48-year-old manager was en route back to the dugout tunnel to the locker room to get dressed when Randle approached. So the two men talked while Rangers took batting practice behind them, a cluster of players awaiting turns at the cage.
Suddenly with unbelievable quickness, Randle’s right hand shot forth. No wild drawback nor windup, as a saloon brawler might use, but a straight strike from the body, and here was Lucchesi falling slowly, turning to his right from the force, and there came a left with the same terrible rapidity. This was probably the blow that fractured Lucchesi’s right cheekbone. Then another right and a left, all before the victim finally reached earth some 10 feet from where he was first struck.
In personal reference, I have seen the handspeed of Sugar Ray Robinson and the cobra strikes of Muhammad Ali, but the flurry of Randle’s punches, all landing on the manager’s face, must have broken all speed records.
https://sportsday.dallasnews.com/te...lenny-randles-unexpected-attack-shook-rangers
