I was in Tommy Lasorda’s office at Dodger Stadium for the infamous “Kingman’s performance?!?” rant of May 14, 1978.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was not the Dodgers beat writer, and I can imagine I was covering the game only because we were giving a day off to our regular guy.

Anyway, Dave Kingman of the Cubs had hit three monstrous, towering home runs, driving in eight runs, to beat the Dodgers 10-7 in 15 innings, and a radio reporter had asked Lasorda a fairly innocuous question: “What’s your opinion of Kingman’s performance?”

Lasorda, the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, erupted.

By no means was it the longest or even most profane Lasorda eruption, as you can discover by listening to this compilation of the Worst of Tommy. (Beware of numerous F-bombs. And the Kingman rant begins at the 1:30 mark.)

To see a transcribed version of the Kingman tirade (with salty language deleted), read it here.

Lasorda was the most casually profane man I have known — certainly in quasi-public settings in his office. In the Kingman rant I believe he shifted into almost “performance art” mode after the first 30 seconds or so. He was not really that angry, and when he got on a roll …

Anyway, coaches lose it sometimes. I saw that again when Walter Zenga, former Italy national team goalkeeper and now the manager of the Al Nasr club here in the UAE, indulged himself in about 30 seconds of madness after the game tonight.

Here was the situation:

Nasr had just been held to a 1-1 tie by the Abu Dhabi club Al Wahda.

Normally, that would not be a bad result and, indeed, it was the first time Nasr had taken a point from Wahda in Zenga’s three games leading Nasr against them. They lost to them 1-0 early in the season.

But Wahda was missing about 10 guys, including two of their four foreigners, and had kids and backups of backups playing in the midfield and along the back four. Even at home, those guys should not have tied a decent team. (And wouldn’t even have tied, if not for a Wahda own goal.)

Nasr is decent, this year. A non-contender for decades, the Dubai-based club, founded in 1946 and the oldest in the nation, is making a push for the UAE league championship for the first time since 1986, which is pre-history in a place like the UAE.

Apparently, Zenga is feeling the pressure of delivering a championship to the Chicago Cubs of the UAE. Ten days before he had been allowed to bring in the Italian striker Luca Toni, an very audacious move for Nasr, and Zenga knew that one point for the draw at Wahda was not going to be good enough to keep pace with the team in first place, Al Ain, which had a game the next day against the last-place club.

Zenga seemed OK when he entered the interview area about 20 minutes after the final whistle. Clearly, however, he was on edge, and we were about to find out.

An Arabic-speaking man, maybe 30 years old, who had an official media credential from the Pro League — he would not have been able to enter the room, otherwise — asked Zenga a question that apparently was about defense. Nasr’s or Wahda’s. It was translated into English, which is what Zenga was speaking.

I led my match report with the anecdote, but in short …

Zenga declared it to be a stupid question. The man suggested it was not, Zenga persisted and eventually called the person asking the question “stupid,” too.

The “reporter” (I’m not sure he was a working journalist, even with proper credentialing; I’d never seen him before and I don’t recall him taking notes) took umbrage at being called “stupid” and got up to leave.

Zenga and the man swapped sarcastic “bye-bye” exchanges, in English … and then as the guy walked out of the room Zenga called after him: “Enjoy your time! I will enjoy my time in football! You are nothing! You are nobody!”

It was curious, to see a 51-year-old man lose it like that.

Parenthetically, there’s just no up side to a foreigner abusing the Arabic-language media here. The foreigner will never win and may make permanent enemies. Also, there’s that global thing about not getting into arguments with people who buy their ink by the barrel.

Before and after, Zenga also made curious remarks about how his team ought to be “respected” … which would seem to indicate a bigger issue and perhaps some paranoia. He mentioned “TV” in particular.

The passage: ” I know what they say on TV, and I would like to have respect. I would like to have respect for me, my club and my fans. Only this.”

Tommy Lasorda’s rant, longer and profane, as Zenga’s was not, did no real damage to him or his reputation. Lasorda, now 84, can be perfectly charming and polite around women and children. But anyone who spent any time with him when he was in uniform knows about his frequent forays into profanity.

Zenga, however, insulted a member of the Arabic-language press, and it will be interesting to see if his position at Nasr will be undermined. Will club executives be more likely to turn against him the moment Nasr stops doing well, because of this?

And, by coincidence, I had been thinking seriously of writing a comment piece about how if the UAE Football Association were considering Diego Maradona as the national team coach (maybe they are; maybe they are not), they ought to consider Zenga, who has been more successful at Nasr with, arguably, less talent than Maradona has at Al Wasl.

But after Zenga had those 15-30 seconds of madness … I think we will hold off on endorsing him for a national team job.