Remembering the extraordinary career of Sparky Anderson

Updated on Nov. 4 at 2:10 p.m.

 The news came across Thursday afternoon that former manager Sparky Anderson had died in hospice care at his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. because of the affects of dementia. Anderson was 76.

It was sad to learn about Anderson’s demise not only because he was one of the true gentlemen in baseball/life and a hallmark of the era of baseball many of us grew up following, but also because dementia and Alzheimer’s diseases hit all of us. If we don’t know someone with one of these diseases or a friend with a family member suffering from them, we will. It’s particularly frustrating and sad when someone as sharp as Sparky Anderson goes through this. The man lived to talk and share whatever it was he saw and experienced with everyone. It’s a damn shame.

So for those who weren’t old enough to remember Sparky Anderson or forget some of his extraordinary life, this is for you.

Rod Dedeaux, the mentor and developer of so many well-know major leaguers, also gets credit for “discovering” one of the greatest managers in major league history. As the story is told, most magnificently by author Mark Frost in his book, Game Six, George Anderson’s personality and ethics were in place even when he was a nine-year-old boy running around on the campus of USC with his friends looking for a spot in which to play ball.

See, a baseball—a regular old hardball—was not something every kid had in the 1930s as the Great Depression spread. Even today, baseballs are still hand-stitched, one at a time, in an austere plant in Costa Rica and remain cost prohibitive for a lot of kids. Even though approximately 900,000 baseballs are made each year, and it costs roughly $1 to produce one ball, a decent ball still costs about $10.

In other words, if a baseball is found in a park or grassy field somewhere, chances are it’s going to be picked up.

But hardened by the impecuniousness of the Depression and steadfast in his principles of right and wrong, young George Anderson stood up to his companions when they leapt at the misplaced ball near an outfield fence where the USC team was practicing.

“It ain’t ours,” Anderson said as Frost wrote. “We gotta give it back.”

That’s how Sparky Anderson and Rod Dedeaux met. Anderson wrangled the ball away from his friends and returned it back to the coach as he supervised his team’s practice. After a brief conversation with the coach, Anderson was offered a job as the USC batboy and his life in baseball took off.

Part of that was because of Dedeaux’s influence. Long coveted by major league clubs as a manager or coach, Dedeaux stayed at USC where he worked for a token $1 salary from 1942 to 1986 where he won the college World Series 10 times. The list of players he coached at USC reads like a list of Academy Award winners that includes 59 major leaguers highlighted by names like Tom Seaver, Randy Johnson, Dave Kingman, Fred Lynn, Rich Dauer, Mark McGwire, Bill Lee and a left-handed pitcher named Pat Gillick.

Moreover, Dedeaux’s mentor was the legendary and fabled Casey Stengel. It was Stengel who signed Dedeaux out of USC to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers and when he made his playing debut in 1935, Stengel was the manager. Making his home in Southern California, Stengel spent winters with Dedeaux at the USC field where he would talk baseball while young Sparky soaked it all in.

How’s that for a pedigree? Dedeaux and Stengel are like Socrates and Aristotle. From that, it’s no wonder Sparky Anderson won 102 games and went to the World Series in 1970 in his first season as manager of the Cincinnati Reds at age 36. In fact, Anderson went to the World Series twice and the NLCS three times before he was 40. In 1975 and 1976, Anderson kept the Big Red Machine running smoothly to become the first (and last) National League team to win the World Series in consecutive years since the 1921-22 New York Giants.

The Reds did it with an offense that featured three Hall of Famers (Bench, Perez, Morgan), the all-time hit king (Rose), the best fielding shortstop of the ‘70s (Concepcion), an NL MVP and member of the 50-HR club (Foster), and an All-Star Game MVP (Griffey), and a veritable no-name pitching staff that was worked so often and interchangeably that Anderson was called, “Captain Hook.” In fact, closer Rawley Eastwick pitched the fewest innings on the staff and he went 90 innings. By contrast, the save leader of 2010, Brian Wilson, has never come close to sniffing 90 innings in a season.

When he retired, Anderson won more games as a manager than anyone except for Connie Mack and John McGraw and that earned him election to the Hall of Fame in 2000. But it wasn’t so much about the wins with Anderson than it was about the idiosyncrasies, the character and the dignity. When the Reds hired him before the ’70 season, very few people had heard of Anderson outside of Southern California or baseball circles. After all, he played just one season in the majors where he was a light-hitting second baseman for the last-place Phillies in 1959. Actually, it was the strangest thing… manager Eddie Sawyer put the 25-year-old Anderson into the lineup on Opening Day and kept him there for all but two games for the entire season. Sawyer did so even though Anderson batted just .218 with 12 extra-base hits and a .282 on-base percentage. The only offensive categories he showed up in at the end of the season where in grounded into double plays (15 for 10^th) and caught stealing (9 for 5^th).

What’s strange about that isn’t just because the stats were so poor, after all, Pat Burrell batted .209 in 600 plate appearances in 2003 and manager Larry Bowa kept sending him out there, and, of course, the infamous “Mendoza Line” was named for Mario Mendoza for a reason. What’s weird is that Anderson played all but two games of the major league season at age 25 and never got another sniff of playing in the big leagues.

It didn’t take Anderson long to figure out his days as a player were numbered. He was just 30 when he got a job managing the Triple-A farm club for the Milwaukee Braves. In 1968 he managed the Reds’ Double-A club in Asheville to an 86-54 record before jumping to San Diego to be the Padres’ third-base coach. Meanwhile, before the California Angels could snap up Anderson as manager for the 1970 season, the Reds swooped in and put him in charge of the Big Red Machine.

Sparky who?

That’s what they said in Cincinnati when Anderson was hired. And to his credit, the young manager was right there with the naysayers. Still, at 36 he was already a baseball lifer and it didn’t hurt that his trademarked white hair made him look much older. It also helped that Anderson made it his task to get to know all of his players and their families, further proving that he was ahead of his time.

“You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to respect me. I’m here to earn your respect,” was how Anderson answered the doubters.

Perhaps his ability to be a leader without ego and a progressive thinking man in an age where those management traits weren’t popular will be Anderson’s legacy. It wasn’t about him, Anderson always pointed out. He made sure to drive that point home during his Hall of Fame induction speech:

I want you to take a look at the people behind me and put it in your brain when you look at ‘em; the people that came before them, and these people, and the people that will come after them. That is baseball. All that other stuff you’ve heard about baseball is just makeup. Those people made this game and those people will protect this game, and I hope every manager that follows me will listen very carefully: Players earn this by their skills. Managers come here, as I did, on their backs, for what they did for me. My father never went past the third grade, but there ain’t a guy who went to Harvard as smart as my daddy. My daddy said this: “I’m gonna give you a gift. It’s the greatest gift to take all the way through your life. And if you with this gift, everything will work out perfect, and it will never cost you a dime, and that gift is this: If every day of your life , with every person you meet, you will just be nice to that person, and treat that person like they are someone.

Guess what? It worked. When news of his failing health spread, the outpouring was overwhelming to read. The amazing part about some of the stories about Anderson was that his former players still kept in touch with him decades later.

"I call him every Christmas season," former Tigers' pitcher Dan Petry told the Detroit News. "I can tell you that he did more to prepare me for life after baseball, for the real world."He prepared me to be a person, rather than an ex-ballplayer."

Long-time Tigers coach and player Dick Tracewski echoed those sentiments in an interview with the Detroit News.

"But I have to say this about Sparky, and it probably is the reason many of them love him to this day: I've never known a manager at any level who liked his players as much as Sparky did. I'm not just talking about the players who could play, I'm talking about all the players. He never wanted to hear a comment from us coaches that so-and-so couldn't cut it."

By the end of the 1970s, the Reds were viewed as one of the all-time great teams and Anderson had become one of the most recognizable (and approachable) characters in the game, willing to talk about baseball non-stop with fans, writers, players and regular folks. On top of that, in an era that produced some of the best and well-known managers in baseball history, with names like Whitey, Earl, Billy, Tommy and even Yogi, Sparky won more games, more World Series and more pennants.

Truth is Sparky Anderson very well could be the best manager in the history of the game.

That didn’t make it easy, of course. Baseball is a game where failure is the most prevalent outcome and that goes for managers, too. The Reds fired Anderson before the 1979 season, but he quickly found work with the youthful Detroit Tigers with players like Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson, who were just making their way in the big leagues. But by 1984, Anderson turned the Tigers into the fiercest team in baseball.

The ’84 Tigers jumped out to a 35-5 record, whipped out the Royals in a sweep in the ALCS before taking apart the Padres in five games to make Anderson the first man to win the World Series in both leagues. He went on with the Tigers for 17 seasons and was pushed into retirement before the 1995 season because he refused to manage replacement players after the ’94 strike. It wasn’t right, he felt, so he wouldn’t do it.

In retirement Anderson continued to talk about baseball and sing the praises of all his former players, coaches and competitors. He truly loved it all and it unmistakable.

“The game is bigger than all of us,” Anderson said during his Hall of Fame induction.

Indeed it is, but Sparky Anderson helped make that so.

Sparky chats with Charlie Rose

A sort of homecoming

Hola, sports fans. There is a lot happening today from the Tigers arriving in Philadelphia for three games, to Freddy Garcia’s shutdown, to the U.S. Open, to the first reviews of author Floyd Landis’ soon-to-be released memoir, Positively False hitting the ether. Since that’s the case, enough yapping – let’s get into it…

Undoubtedly, Charlie Manuel will face some scrutiny this weekend. The reason, of course, is because the American League champion Detroit Tigers are in town for the weekend and that means Jim Leyland is here. Leyland, as most Phillies fans remember, lost out on the managerial job here when then general manager Ed Wade decided to hire Manuel instead. At the time the thinking (at least by me) was that when Jim Leyland specifically campaigns for your job opening, chances are it’s a slam dunk.

How do you pass on Jim Leyland?

Well…

Manuel is in his third star-crossed season with the Phillies, while Leyland, in just one season, turned the Tigers to a World Series team after 12 straight losing seasons. In 2003 the Tigers lost 113 games. In 2006, with Leyland in charge, the Tigers won 103 games, including the playoffs.

Leyland, in these parts, gets a lot of the credit for turning the Tigers into a force in the American League. To degree Leyland definitely had some influence on making Detroit a winner, though it is much more complicated than that. Yes, a manager has an effect on a baseball team. And it really isn’t a surprise that the Phillies have been better with Charlie Manuel at the helm than they were with Larry Bowa.

Leyland and Manuel are similar in that they make it easy for players to want to come to work and do the job as well as possible, while Bowa’s mission seemed to be one of divide and conquer. As was the adage during Bowa’s time, the Phillies are 0-76, but Bowa is 86-0.

But one thing Leyland did not do was sign and develop the players. The rotation of Jeremy Bonderman, Justin Verlander, Nate Robertson, and Mike Maroth would have been great regardless of the manager. Nor does it hurt that the offense leads the American League in hits, runs, extra-base hits, batting average, slugging percentage and is third in home runs.

Certainly the Phillies will know where they stand amongst baseball’s top teams when the Tigers leave on Sunday afternoon.

But more interesting than Leyland’s arrival is Placido Polanco’s return to Philadelphia. Polanco, as most remember, was the Phillies’ steady second baseman that allowed the team to take its time in bringing along Chase Utley. In fact, even when Utley was ready to play every day, putting Polanco on the bench was a very difficult thing to do. In order to find more playing time for Polanco the Phillies used him in left field for a few games, but not nearly enough at third base.

Third base was the position Polanco played when he was traded to the Phillies as part of the deal for Scott Rolen in 2002. But after playing 131 games at third in 2002, Polanco played just 42 games at the hot corner since then. For some reason the Phillies just weren’t willing to unseat David Bell from that spot. The Phillies definitely would have been a better team with an infield of Ryan Howard, Utley, Polanco and Jimmy Rollins, but sometimes things are as easy as simply sliding around names.

Baseball is complicated like that sometimes.

The “what if” game is the favorite past time of the national past time, and though Utley has solidified himself as the best second baseman in the National League, Polanco has done pretty well since leaving town. Currently he’s third in the league with a .343 batting average, led the Majors in the statistic in 2005 and, most importantly, took home the MVP in last October’s ALCS.

Polanco will gladly let Chase Utley and David Bell have Philadelphia if can play ball in October. The same goes for Charlie Manuel, too. As far as Leyland is concerned, losing out on the Phillies job might have been the best thing that happened.

***
Anyway, based on how things were at the time, trading Polanco to the Tigers for Ugeuth Urbina and Ramon Martinez was a pretty good deal. Then, as now, the Phillies were desperate for bullpen help and Polanco was the only real commodity the team had.

To this day I still get emails from readers asking why Wade and the Phillies didn’t trade Bell instead… OK.

Look at it this way – if you don’t want David Bell, what makes you think another team will want him and then give you a relief pitcher like Urbina? The Phillies couldn’t trade Bell for the same reason why they can’t trade Jon Lieber or Pat Burrell…

No one wants them!

Apropos of nothing, it seems as if both Utley and Polanco will be starting in the All-Star Game next month.

***
I wasn’t quick enough to think of it at the time, but Freddy Garcia could end up being the “deadline deal” the Phillies need if they are still in the hunt next month… that is, of course, if Garcia can still pitch.

There is no time table for when Garcia will even throw again, so any plans regarding his return are just a silly exercise at this point. But… he might be able to return.

***
Through the early going of action in the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club in western Pennsylvania, it looked as if Jim Furyk of the Bellair neighborhood in Manheim Township, Lancaster, Pa., was locked in. But then his putter deserted him over the final seven holes. Today Furyk came out and fired a not-so sterling 75 to leave him six-over par.

Despite the score, Furyk still has a shot at winning his second U.S. Open title. Tiger Woods is in it, too, at four-over par, which brings up an interesting point:

Do golf fans want to see the best players in the world struggle to get close to even par as it typically is in the U.S. Open?

Do fans like to see Furyk or Tiger hit a stellar shot near the pin and then have it roll off the green and into the rough?

I’m torn. I don’t like it when a golfer makes a good shot and isn’t rewarded for it, but at the same time I don’t really want to see them take target practice at the pins as if they were at any other course. That’s no fun, either.

Either way, the U.S. Open is the most intriguing of all golf tournaments and it will be even more interesting to see what happens to this little corner of the country when it comes to Merion in Ardmore in 2013.

For one thing, something is going to have to be done about the atrocity that is the Schuylkill Expressway.

***
The New York Times ran a review of West Earl Township, Lancaster County, Pa. native Floyd Landis’ new epic that hits bookstores June 26. In the review it is noted that there is very little new information in the book, however, it was noted that there was a contradiction in some of Landis’ statements about the consequences from the infamous testimony from former Tour de France champ Greg LeMond from the USADA arbitration hearings last month.

To wit:

In an epilogue, Landis writes that he witnessed Geoghegan’s phone call and was shocked by his manager’s attempt to intimidate LeMond by bringing up LeMond’s previously undisclosed history of being sexually abused as a child. So shocked, he writes, that he immediately decided Geoghegan should be fired.

“The only thing I knew right away was that Will needed to go,” Landis writes. “I went to his room and helped him pack his things.

Wait, did Floyd get the same guy who wrote Charles Barkley’s memoirs to work on his?

Regardless, an interesting note is that Floyd is releasing a “Wiki” defense e-book on the same day as the memoirs are released.

Also, I read the first chapter that was previewed on Floyd’s site and it’s pretty much the boilerplate jock autobiography except that I drive past a lot of the places described in the book on my way to Philadelphia. In that regard it's more interesting simply because I may have driven past some of the places described. As I've mentioned in past posts, though Landis and I grew up a short bike ride away from one another, our worlds were as different as night and day. Frankly, even though my roots have been planted in Lancaster since I was 10 years old, it is very rare for me to see an Amish buggy motor past. They don't really come to the urban/suburban area where I live and when they do it trips me out.

Come on, Mr. Stoltzfus, turn on a light already.

Nevertheless, it was interesting reading about a rube from Lancaster County travelling across the country with a cheap car and a tent and then to Europe with the simple hope of being a professional mountain bike rider.

Hopefully my fax request for an advance copy will arrive soon so I can tell everyone all about it.

***
If they have an NBA Finals and nobody watches it, did it really happen?

Apparently the NBA Finals ended this week. Really? And what ever happened to that fun league called the NHL?

It's Game 3!

Here are a few observations from Tuesday night’s Game 3 in St. Louis:

* If I’m not mistaken, commissioner Bud Selig took the “boys will be boys” approach to the controversy regarding Kenny Rogers and his dirty hand during Fox’s pre-game show. In an on-the-field interview with the always-entertaining Penn alum, Ken Rosenthal, Selig said that if Tony La Russa didn’t do anything about it, why should he?

Selig said that La Russa has been known to be combative.

What Selig and player’s union president Donald Fehr were with Rosenthal for was to announce the new labor agreement that will last through the 2011 season.

Selig called the new deal “historic.” You know, like the Treaty of Versailles.

* Kevin Kennedy, one of Fox’s pre-game analysts with a penchant for dismissing everything controversial in the game, was on top of his game on Tuesday night. This summer he debunked all steroid and performance-enhancing drug accusations and controversies with a hand waving, “He never tested positive!” As well as, “Put your name next to it! Stop using unnamed sources!”

OK, Mr. Haldeman.

Much to our surprise, Kennedy was just as dismissive of the Rogers controversy.

“It happens all the time,” Kennedy said. “It’s part of the game.”

Could you imagine what Kennedy might say if he were in Uganda with Idi Amin when people just started disappearing.

“What? It’s no big deal. It happens all the time. That’s just Idi being Idi.”

Yes, I see how silly it sounds comparing a brutal, homicidal dictator to a baseball pitcher with dirty hands and an apologist announcer. Better yet, it reminds me of one of my favorite Tug McGraw quotes.

After escaping from a tough, late-inning jam against the Big Red Machine's Joe Morgan, George Foster, Tony Perez and Johnny Bench with his typical aplomb, Tug was asked by a reporter how he was able to stay so cool. “Well,” he said. “Ten million years from now, when the sun burns out and the Earth is just a frozen snowball hurtling through space, nobody's going to care whether or not I got this guy out.”

My favorite Tug quote is when he was asked what he would do with the money he got for making it to the World Series with the Mets in 1973.

“Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish whiskey. The other 10 percent I'll probably waste.”

* I had Nate Robertson on my rotisserie team this season, Game 3 was the first time I saw him pitch. He’s a lefty… imagine that. He wears glasses, too. He’s also No. 29 like 1968 World Series hero Mickey Lolich and has been driving the same car for a really long time.

At various points of the season, I also had Jason Isringhausen, Anthony Reyes, Jason Marquis, Preston Wilson and David Eckstein of the Cardinals, as well as Pudge Rodriguez, Craig Monroe, Brandon Inge and Sean Casey of the Tigers.

I finished in ninth place of a 12-team league.

* Richard Ford’s new novel The Lay of the Land is out. This is the third of the Frank Bascombe series, which includes The Sportswriter and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day. The reviews look good, which isn’t too surprising since Ford is a bit of a media darling. Nevertheless, I’m anxious to dive in.

* I had the chance to tune into the radio broadcast of the start of the game while running an errand. ESPN radio’s Jon Miller and Joe Morgan handle the call on radio, which is filled with much more insight than the TV version.

Yeah, I know a lot of people are not fans of Morgan’s work for ESPN, but there were a few nuggets from Morgan and Miller that the more superficial TV broadcast would miss.

This is no fault of TV, I suppose. After all, if someone is listening to the World Series on the radio they are seeking it out. A non-baseball fan isn’t going to drive around and listen to the game, though that same non-fan person could tune in on TV. You know, maybe the batteries on the remote died or something.

Anyway, Morgan and Miller pointed out that Preston Wilson could be the key for the Cardinals in Game 3. The reason? Wilson is in the No. 2 spot of the batting order, one place ahead of Albert Pujols. It would be Wilson’s job to ensure that the Tigers cannot pitch around the fearsome Pujols.

Yet because Wilson is hitting ahead of Pujols, the duo pointed out, he should get a lot more pitches to hit than if he were batting in front of, say, Jim Edmonds or Scott Rolen. Plus, they said, Tony La Russa likes for someone with some power to hit ahead of Pujols in the No. 2 spot. That’s why Wilson is so important, the announcers said.

This is interesting, though if La Russa likes power in the two-hole, why not try Edmonds or Rolen there. Certainly they both have much more power than Wilson and strike out a lot less, too.

* In the first inning after Robertson came up and in to Pujols, Morgan made a joke.

“Looks like that one slipped. Maybe he needs some pine tar?” Morgan said.

“He plays for the Tigers,” Miller said. “I think I know where he can get some.”

It made me laugh.

Detroit Rock City (revised)

As you read this sentence, the party should finally be smoldering just south of its apex in Detroit. The Tigers, as it is, still have some work to do and a season to finish. After all, the World Series starts on Saturday night. Not that anyone in Philadelphia knows or cares about Detroit and the baseball renaissance that occurred there this season. It’s a good thing Philadelphia sports fans are so provincial and laser-focused because the sight of Placido Polanco dashing around the field and slapping hands with the fans at Comerica Park with a bottle of champagne in on hand, the ALCS MVP trophy in the other, and a smile that spread from ear-to-ear would be enough to make a Philadelphia baseball fan sick.

That’s until the camera panned to Jim Leyland being carried off the field, coupled with the comments that followed from one-time Phillie Todd Jones who told reporters that Leyland was the only manager he played for during his 14-year career that actually made a difference in the standings.

At in the notion that Leyland should he have been carried off the field by Chase Utley and Ryan Howard instead of Sean Casey and Kenny Rogers and it’s enough sickness for some hospitalization.

At least until the playoffs end or the Tigers are eliminated.

For those too wrapped up in the Eagles season, the Detroit Tigers, managed by Jim Leyland, sent the vaunted New York Yankees and their considerable offense home for the winter in four games in the ALDS as well as the “Moneyball” Oakland A’s in another four games. With just four more victories, the Tigers will be World Champions.

Not bad for a team that lost 119 games three years ago, averaged more than 96 losses per season for the past decade, and had just two winning seasons since 1988.

How does that team come four victories away from the World Series title?

Do I have to say it?

Apparently, Jim Leyland wasn’t good enough to manage the Phillies even though he took the Tigers to 95 wins this season. Apparently the ideas he expressed to president David Montgomery and then GM Ed Wade were just a little too harebrained. Especially the ones about the corner outfielders – remember that? I do. He said the Phillies had too many strikeouts in the corner outfield positions, needed a new center fielder, third baseman and catcher.

Then he went out to the CVS on Broad St. for a pack of smokes only to come back to resume his meeting when Wade told him it would be a good idea to keep his interview date scheduled with the Mets.

Look what happened. The Phillies hired Charlie Manuel, came within a game of the wild card, fired Wade, and hired Pat Gillick. A few months later, Gillick traded right fielder Bobby Abreu, third baseman David Bell, and tried as hard as he could to get left fielder Pat Burrell to waive his no-trade clause. After the World Series, Gillick will allow catcher Mike Lieberthal to limp away as a free agent.

Talk about unoriginal ideas. I wonder if Gillick walked over to the CVS on Broad St. for a pack of smokes.

I may write about baseball and sports for many, many years. Or, Powerball numbers willing, tomorrow could be my last day. Either way, I will never ever forget how hard Leyland campaigned to be the Phillies manager during the winter of 2004. He was as shrewd as any seasoned politician and went above and beyond to the point of kissing babies and returning phone calls. In fact, Leyland wanted the Phillies job so badly that he even returned my phone calls.

Talk about desperate.

Now let’s stop for a minute before this descends into a Leyland-equals-good and Phillies-equals-bad essay. That’s just way too easy and not completely accurate. Surely, Leyland was not the only reason why the Tigers went from 300 losses in three seasons under Alan Trammell to 95-67 and the doorstep of the World Championship this year. Actually, there are many reasons why the Tigers were able to turn it around so quickly.

The biggest one? Someone listened to Jim Leyland.

Apparently, Leyland went into his interview with the Tigers and told them what he would do to the team to make it better in very much the same manner he did with Montgomery and Wade. But guess what? The Tigers bought it and look where it got them.

Yes, I will always remember that day sitting in the conference room in Citizens Bank park listening to Leyland talk about what makes a winning baseball team as Wade stood in the doorway privately seething. Leyland, with his resume padded with a World Series title with the Marlins and all of those division titles with the Pirates, acted like a know-it-all questioning him to the very group of people who questioned him for sport in the papers and talk shows, daily. They had turned the fans against the straight-laced GM and here was a potential employee giving them more fodder?

Who did he think he was?

Leyland had a lot of ideas to make the Phillies better on that chilly November afternoon and he didn’t keep too many of them secret. He explained what he thought his job as the manager should be:

“When you have veteran players who buy into your thought process, it eliminates a lot of nitpicking,” he said. “The veterans set the tone. Leadership is production. Putting winning numbers on the board, that's leadership. The manager is supposed to be the leader. That's not ego talking, that's just the way it is. I've said it all my life, you're either the victim or the beneficiary of your players' performance. That's as simple as this job is.”

And what elements make up a good team:

“[It's about] trying to create an atmosphere that's comfortable,” he said. “I'm not as big on chemistry as a lot of other managers. If it works, it's wonderful. I've managed teams that ate together, played together, prayed together, and we got the [crap] kicked out of us, and I managed some that punched each other once in a while and we won. It's getting the best out of talent. They're not all going to like me. Hopefully, they will, but I doubt it. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you're working toward the same goal -- win.”

Perhaps Gillick had similar thoughts going through his head after he traded away Abreu and Bell and when he was ironing out that deal to send Burrell to Baltimore?

Maybe.

More interesting to ponder is if things would have ended differently the past two seasons if Leyland were the manager instead of Manuel? Well, it’s not as easy as simply replacing one guy for another, despite what Todd Jones says. There’s no telling how all of the personalities would have blended if anyone but Manuel were skippering the Phillies. Besides, if Leyland were in Philadelphia it would be unlikely that Pat Gillick would be the GM, too.

Maybe Wade sealed his own fate by not hiring Leyland when he campaigned so hard for the job. But then again we should have all seen the handwriting on the wall when Wade stood at the podium after Leyland’s cleansing tell-all and said:

“Even if you’re polling the 3.2 million people who came to watch us this year, I don’t think you can get hung up on this people’s commanding lead in the votes 320 to 112 or anything like that. We’re going to hire a manager we hope our fans like, but at the same time we’re going to try to hire a manager that is going to get us to the World Series.”

Hindsight being what it is… well, you can fill in the rest.

But make no mistake about one thing – Philadelphia is barely a blip on Leyland’s rear-view mirror now. Actually, it’s hard to look back at anything when champagne is stinging the eyes.

Apropos, how would the Phillies' seasons have ended in 2005 and 2006 if Placido Polanco had been the third baseman instead of David Bell and Abraham Nunez? Just curious...

Haven't we seen this before?

It looks as if Tony La Russa figured out what to do with Scott Rolen, which makes one wonder if he read a few of the previous entries here… hey, it could happen. I know a player or two who said they read this blog.

Then again, I haven't been punched in the face by a player yet, so I guess they were just blowing smoke.

Anyway, Rolen batted sixth and played his typical third base in Saturday’s Game 3 rout which put the Cardinals and their 83-regular season victories just two more wins from the World Series and a rematch of the 1968 Series. Scott Spiezio, Rolen's replacement at third base in two post-season games also started (left field) and contrubted with his second, two-run triple in as many games.

But Rolen snapping his big, post-season slump with a walk and a single mixed in with his Brooks-Robinson-and-Mike-Schmidt-all-rolled-into-one defense isn’t even half the story. Apparently, as I assumed (yeah, there’s that pronoun again. Hey, it’s my blog!) Rolen and La Russa may need some counseling.

Gee, no one saw that coming.

Jim Salisbury, for my money (what there is of it) the most interesting baseball writer out there, rightly analyzed the rift in the Inquirer today and even asked Rolen if he would be interested in a return to Philadelphia. If there is anyone who can offer an astute read on the situation it’s Salisbury since he’s seen it all before. Plus, there are very few writers that I have come across who the players respect more than Salisbury.

But enough of that… let’s get back to Rolen.

Next to Randy Wolf and Doug Glanville, Rolen is the smartest ballplayer I’ve met. However, he’s also the most sensitive. As Salisbury points out, Rolen is high-maintenance. He needs to be kept in the loop and also needs self-assurance and what he deems as fairness. I recall a time where Rolen and Larry Bowa had a long, pre-game meeting because Bowa, looking for a spark, moved Rolen to the No. 2 spot in the batting order. At the same time, Bowa shifted Bobby Abreu over to center field, but with Abreu all the manager did was walk over to his locker and ask him if he was OK with playing center field.

With Rolen, it took a closed-door meeting for a batting order shift.

As one Phillie management type once told me: “Scotty worries about everything. He cares about how the cars are parked in the parking lot… ”

The Phillies, not exactly the most astute in reading situations, placating feelings or being sensitive to others, weren’t too far off here.

Because of that Rolen, like any classic high achieving, high-maintenance person, not only expects a lot out of himself, but he also has high standards for others.

Pardon the dime store psychiatry, but as someone with similar traits – excluding the high achieving part, of course – it’s easy to understand that Rolen needs a lot of understanding. Perhaps that’s why he is the most entertaining player out there. His neurosis is on display constantly from his habits in the batter's box to how he takes the field and his human cannonball style. What makes all that more than shtick is that he can actually play.

I can’t think of a player I’ve ever enjoyed watching more.

But through the neurosis, stubbornness and sensitivity, Rolen has to know he can’t win a battle against La Russa. Come on… he’s smarter than that. It’s not about leverage or public opinion or anything like that. It’s that La Russa is right. Sure, La Russa has an ego as large as every successful baseball man, but he isn’t Larry Bowa. It might be wise for Rolen to get past his natural tendencies and all of that other stuff and try to iron it out with La Russa.

Besides, the Cardinals won both of the playoff games where La Russa benched Rolen.

It's the playoffs!
It may be a knee-jerk reaction, but the Cardinals might have the Mets right where they want them. This series might not be going back to Shea.

Reason? To borrow and paraphrase a political campaign mantra, it’s the pitching, stupid.

When Steve Traschel is your team’s Game 3 starter, there’s trouble. When reliever Darren Oliver gets two (two!) at-bats, there’s trouble. When Oliver is pitching six innings in one game, there’s trouble. When Endy Chavez… well, you get the idea.

The fact of the matter is the Mets’ injuries are just too much to overcome. If they can comeback and win the series, I’ll sing New York’s hosannas, but I just don’t see it happening.

At the same time, I don’t see the Tigers losing the World Series. In that regard, here’s the question I posed a couple of the Phillies writers:

How can the Tigers go from losing 119 games to winning the World Series and the Phillies can only make the playoffs once in the last 23 years?

Anyone?

Apropos...
... of nothing, is it tacky for a media member to dial up other media outlets to "volunteer" his "expertise" on their airwaves? I think so.

Who's at third? Not Polanco

Note: this was written a few innings before Placido Polanco was named MVP of the ALCS.

It’s always unfair to play the “what if” game, but it’s also part of the fun (or agony) of being a baseball fan. No, in this case it isn’t second-guessing or weighing your smarts against those of the manager or players, it pushing ahead the sands of time.

Imagine for a moment if Pat Gillick would have been the Phillies’ general manager during the 2005 season instead of Ed Wade. That was the year when Placido Polanco famously started at second base ahead of Chase Utley on opening day and garnered a bunch of starts – as well as late-inning defensive replacement duty – much to the chagrin to certain segments of the media and the fans.

I believed then as I believe now that Polanco ahead of Utley was the right move. Utley, as some of us recall, was still viewed as a raw free-swinging hitter who also needed work in the field.

That didn’t last too long though.

Polanco then, as he is now, is about as fundamentally sound a ballplayer there is. From a sheer, basic baseball-geek standpoint, Placido Polanco has to be your favorite player. He does everything right.

So imagine that Gillick is in control of the Phillies roster in 2005 when the team had Polanco, Utley and David Bell. Do you think the Phillies would still have Polanco if Gillick were in charge? Do you think Bell would have ended up in Milwaukee or some other baseball port-of-call sooner than July of 2006?

I do. I bet a lot of other people do to.

What if the Phillies had Polanco at third base instead of David Bell in 2005 and Abraham Nunez in 2006? Can you imagine a team with an infield of Polanco, Utley, Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard? Polanco in the No. 2 spot in the batting order, with just 43 strikeouts in his last 860-plus plate appearances?

Man… it’s just not fair.

Trust me here: Ed Wade was asked about all of this. So, too, was Charlie Manuel. For some reason they had a unbending loyalty to Bell as the third baseman. Maybe it was the $17 million they were paying him for four years to hit below .200 against righties in 2005? Whatever it was, the common answer we heard was that “Polly is a second baseman … ”

Or something like that.

Well, if that’s true, why has he only committed 15 errors in 322 games at third base during his career, including just a league-leading eight in 131 games during 2002? How come he played five games in left field when Pat Burrell was banged up during ’05?

What kind of pictures did David Bell have of the Phillies’ brass?

Ultimately, Polanco was sent to Detroit on June 8, 2005 for Ugueth Urbina. Since then, Polanco has hit .313 for the Tigers, not including the .412 in the ALDS or .529 in the ALCS with a key, two-out single to bring up Magglio Ordonez in the ninth inning.

All Ordonez did was smack the pennant-clinching homer to send the Tigers to the World Series.

Urbina, on the other hand, remains in a Venezuelan prison for an alleged Pulp Fiction re-enactment gone awry.

At the time, as I recall, many of the scribes hailed the trade as a good deal. The thinking was that since the Phillies weren’t going to use Polanco as an every day player, they might as well get something for him. There were a few others, however, who thought this logic was faulty. Why shouldn’t Polanco play every day in Philadelphia? The goal is to win and go to the playoffs, right? If so, keep Polanco and get rid of Bell.

Who cares if he’s a second baseman?