The Mouth That Roared Read online

  The problem with Danny Ozark was that he let his players do whatever they wanted. That laissez-faire style of managing had worked, to a point. He took a young team and led it to three straight division titles, a pretty noteworthy accomplishment, after all. But it rankled us how the 1978 and 1979 Phillies had lost focus and discipline. Pope believed I could restore those qualities to the team.

  Danny wanted to be friends with his players. I didn’t care if they liked me or not. My opening speech to the team in Atlanta made that clear.

  “Guys, we all know what Danny has done for us in the past, but I wouldn’t be standing here if you were playing the game the way you’re supposed to be playing it,” I said. “Danny got fired because of you. I’m not here to do anything other than what you say you want to do, which is to win a championship. I’ve been in Philadelphia for much of my baseball career, and I want nothing more than for the Phillies to be successful. I want you to be successful. But I’m not going to sit back and wait for you to wake up. I’m going to push you, and I’m going to needle you, and I’m going to bang you when I have to. We’re going to pay close attention this month to see who wants to continue playing in Philadelphia next year.”

  That was a cleaned-up version of my opening salvo. My straight talk took some players aback. In their eyes, I compared unfavorably to Danny. “There were a lot of tears in the clubhouse,” Larry Bowa told reporters on the day of Ozark’s firing. “He was a players’ manager who always stuck up for you.”

  Bowa felt the team had lost a buddy, one who averaged 97 wins from 1976 to 1978, and gained a bully, one with no experience managing in the majors.

  * * *

  Whereas Danny never criticized his players in the press, I had no intention of holding back in that regard. I refused to lie to reporters. If a player made a mistake, I didn’t believe it was my obligation to protect him. At the same time, if a player did something well, I was the first to pat him on the back. I remained standing almost the entire game, shouting words of encouragement whenever they were necessary. I hoped the players would feed off my energy.

  In my first weeks on the job, I sent a lot of messages through the newspapers, more out of necessity than design. Like Danny, who didn’t have a real knack for words, a lot of players on the ’79 team avoided journalists at all costs. They were notorious for running into the shower or the trainer’s room when the sportswriters came looking for quotes. When the writers couldn’t track down a certain player, they came looking for me. I told the team, “If you don’t want to hear me run my mouth in the press, stand up like men and do some talking yourselves.”

  Mike Schmidt, who played his entire 18-year career with the Phillies, never fully warmed up to Philadelphia writers or fans. In his final season in the big leagues in 1989, he expressed his feelings toward these groups with the type of quote he had withheld much of his career: “It just seems like if you’re a writer there, or a fan there, you have to look for the negative. Maybe it’s in the air or how they’re raised. Maybe they have too many hoagies or too much cream cheese or too much W.C. Fields.”

  Of course, Schmitty made that statement to the Los Angeles Times, and not one of the Philadelphia papers.

  I had a different take. The writers covering the team in the late 1970s and early 1980s were tough and well-respected pros. They knew the game of baseball. And I saw no reason to hide from them.

  * * *

  No doubt the final month of the 1979 season felt like shock treatment to Bowa, Schmidt, and the rest of Danny’s advocates.

  I immediately enacted some unpopular rules. Card playing was restricted and kids were banished from the clubhouse. I could hear the bitching and moaning about arbitrary edicts and the new manager trying to flex his muscles of authority. In their opinion, I needed to lighten up. In my opinion, they were a bunch of underachievers who needed a kick in their collective ass. By minimizing potential distractions at the ballpark, I hoped they’d focus more on the game.

  Change was hard. And I represented change. Being a Philadelphia Phillie was no longer going to be a cushy job. I demanded effort, concentration, and accountability.

  The first time my mouth roared as Phillies manager came during a September 20 game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Veterans Stadium. In the sixth inning, Keith Moreland hit a drive to left field that umpire Eric Gregg ruled a three-run home run. As Keith rounded the bases for the first time in his major league career, Pirates manager Chuck Tanner protested that the ball had curved foul. Chuck could complain all he wanted, but back in those days, the call on the field stood. Or at least that was how it was supposed to work. Instead, Gregg sought a second opinion from home-plate umpire Doug Harvey. When Harvey reversed the call, I barreled out onto the field. After hurling every curse word in the book at Harvey, I went back to the dugout and hurled baseballs out on the field. Not surprisingly, I got ejected.

  This was the first time my team saw my truly volatile side. When I was a major league pitcher, I didn’t give an inch to opposing batters. Now that I was managing, I wasn’t going to give an inch to umpires or anyone else who crossed me. And that included my own players.

  I could scream and yell with the best of them, but the team didn’t see too much of that side of me at first. The jabs I took came mostly in the form of matter-of-fact statements about what I perceived as the team’s lack of effort or its failure to play the game the right way.

  I guess I got their attention. We showed signs of life in those final weeks, going 19–11 in September to finish the ’79 season with a winning record. We ended up in fourth place, 14 games behind the Pirates, who went on to win the World Series.

  Our strong September pleased me. Our unhealthy clubhouse dynamics did not. Some of the veterans had formed cliques and shut themselves off from the rest of the team. Danny had no problem with the cliques. But I’ve always been of the opinion that it takes 25 guys united in purpose to go out and win games. A team splintered into groups isn’t united.

  * * *

  The final month of the ’79 season gave me a good look at some younger players on the team, including Moreland, Lonnie Smith, Dickie Noles, and Kevin Saucier. I felt these guys weren’t far off from contributing at the big league level. If I stayed on as manager, they would get more chances to prove themselves. I believed in awarding playing time based on performance, not years of service.

  During the final series of the ’79 season, Pope and I discussed whether to remove the interim tag from my job title. I was still the director of our minor league system, a job I loved, so I wouldn’t have been too bent out of shape if the Phillies had decided to bring in someone else to manage. There were reports that Whitey Herzog, who had recently been fired as manager of the Kansas City Royals, would take the Phillies job if it was offered. Other articles suggested Pete Rose might become player-manager. And Bobby Wine’s name still remained in play.

  I didn’t consider myself the manager of the future. But Pope and I realized 1980 was the future as far as the Phillies were concerned. The core of the team was getting older. By the start of the ’80 season, only two everyday players, Luzinski and Manny Trillo, would be under 30. The window on winning a championship was closing. And if it didn’t happen in ’80, Pope was going to have to make significant changes.

  A new manager would need time to get acclimated. During my brief stint in the dugout, the players had gotten a taste of what I was all about. More importantly, they knew I was a “company man” who had the strong backing of Pope and Ruly Carpenter.

  A few weeks after the ’79 season ended, Pope announced I’d be returning for a full season in 1980. I told reporters that my first order of business was to set up an off-season exercise program for the team. I didn’t buy the idea that guys could play their way into shape during the season. I wanted everyone to report to spring training in good physical condition and ready to work on some of the baseball fundamentals I felt had been negle
cted in recent years.

  The players had returned home for the winter, but I imagine some of them let out a loud groan when they heard I was coming back. My time in the dugout was supposed to be temporary.

  Now they were stuck with me a while longer. Not only that, but I was going to make them sweat during the off-season!

  * * *

  I’ve always believed a manager is only as good as the coaches around him. With that in mind, I made tweaks to my staff. I brought in Lee Elia as third-base coach, Ruben Amaro Sr. as first-base coach, and Mike Ryan as bullpen coach. Herm Starrette, Billy DeMars, and Wine stayed on as pitching coach, hitting instructor, and bench coach, respectively. I felt these guys could help implement my program.

  My program was a tough sell, however.

  During spring training in Clearwater, Florida, I posted signs in the clubhouse that said, “We, not I,” another way of saying, “Check your egos at the door and play team baseball.” That message didn’t sit well with the cliques, which thought of me as some kind of High School Harry. We’re seasoned vets, they thought. How dare this guy try his crap motivational ploys on us.

  My tactics really got under Bowa’s skin. Though he didn’t like talking to reporters, he did like to talk. That’s why a local radio station gave him his own call-in show. His favorite topic became me and how full of horseshit I was.

  Luzinski was another guy inclined toward disliking me. We had a long history. I managed him during his first year of professional baseball in South Dakota, and he remembered how much I yelled and how hard I pushed players. In 1979, he didn’t play like the All-Star he had been the previous four seasons. And by midseason, he heard a lot of boos at Veterans Stadium. He admitted that the fans in Philadelphia got inside his head. He ended up hitting over .300 on the road but under .200 at home.

  To his credit, Bull got in shape before the ’80 season. When he showed up to camp, he was 25 pounds lighter than he’d been the previous October. Physically, he looked ready to play. He talked about the importance of going into the season in the proper frame of mind. I think he feared a few insults from me might set him back mentally.

  It irritated the hell out of me at prior spring trainings that a lot of veterans seemed more interested in hitting the links than hitting baseballs. I’m sure a lot of tee times were missed as we worked on hit-and-run plays, advancing runners, and scoring guys from third base with less than two outs.

  In certain situations, I was willing to bend my rules. For example, while all the other pitchers on the team ran their butts off in Clearwater, I let Steve Carlton do his own program. Lefty came to camp in tremendous shape every year and worked out rigorously once he got there. His guru was strength coach Gus Hoeffling. During the off-season, I told Gus to run me through Steve’s regimen, which included a lot of agility and stretching exercises. It worked for me. I came to camp more flexible than I had been in years.

  Rose and Lefty bought into my program right away. Others, like Tug McGraw and Bake McBride, were on the fence. Then there were Bowa, Luzinski, Schmidt, Boone, and Garry Maddox, who saw me as a threat.

  Whether we won, lost, or just ripped each other to shreds, 1980 was going to be a memorable season.

  * * *

  Call me a loudmouth or honest to a fault. Or call me a jackass, as I’m sure a few baseball people have. I like to speak my mind. Always have. I look at it this way: if you’re asked a question and don’t give an honest answer, you’re not doing what you’re paid to do. And I don’t like to lie. Discretion has never been my strong suit, and I credit that for my greatest successes. I also blame it for my greatest failures.

  I’ve worked for teams in the most passionate sports towns in America—Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York (for both the Yankees and the Mets). That’s a chronological list, not one that ranks the cities in order from most passionate to least passionate, or vice versa.

  A long time ago, I was a pitcher for 13 professional seasons, five of them in the majors. I played nearly my entire big league career for a manager who didn’t believe in communicating with players. In my opinion, his inability or unwillingness to connect with his team kept him from being one of the all-time greats. We’re all shaped by our experiences, and playing for Gene Mauch certainly helped shape me. When I managed, I had an open-door policy. Any player who came into my office got an honest evaluation of where he stood.

  Throughout my career, I’ve been accused of not protecting my players by freely and publicly discussing their on-the-field mistakes. I always found that accusation ridiculous. Here’s why: if 40,000 fans in a stadium saw a fielder make an error, and another million or so watched it on TV, how could I be expected to say the player fielded the ball cleanly? If a player struck out three times, how could I have argued he had a decent day at the plate? The alternative would have been to say nothing at all. But that’s never been my style.

  Other than occasionally calling someone an “asshole,” I was never into name-calling. I didn’t see any point in getting personal. I also saw no value in holding grudges. If someone took my criticism personally and decided to hate me forever, well, that was his problem. In all my years, I never beat up on anyone I didn’t think deserved it. Again, I’ve always sought to tell the truth. In some cases, my version of the truth might have been open to debate. But that’s what makes life—and baseball—interesting.

  After all my years in baseball, I still adhere to the same philosophy: play the game hard, play the game right, and play up to your potential. Any player who follows these instructions gets along with me pretty well.

  Over the course of my career, a lot of people have asked me about my loud voice. I do seem to talk (and scream) louder than most. My mom, Mayannah Green, often said I cried and screamed louder than any youngster in the neighborhood. She claimed it was colic—I think it was just practice for the future. Throughout school, I maintained a good, loud voice. But it really became an instrument all its own during my time in professional baseball.

  Time and again, I asked players to “look in the mirror” and to judge whether they were getting the most out of their abilities. When I look in the mirror, I see six decades of triumphs, defeats, and heartbreak in the game I love. And while there are certain things I wish I had handled differently, I see no real regrets.

  2

  Before I became an ogre, I was a middling ballplayer just trying to keep my head above water.

  In 1964, I was almost 30 years old and going into my fifth year in the big leagues.

  Too young to be considered a journeyman and too banged up to be touted as a player with a bright future, I wished I could have looked in the mirror and seen a more seasoned version of the 21-year-old flamethrower who had blazed his way through the minors.

  But that wasn’t what reflected back at me. I still looked like a pretty good ballplayer, but my lame pitching arm told a different story. Every day, I wondered if I still had what it took to be a major league pitcher.

  I set a goal for myself in 1964. Through hard work, I would stay in the majors and find a way to contribute to my team, the Phillies.

  I didn’t know what my role on the team would be. Phillies manager Gene Mauch, “The Little General,” wasn’t big on assigning roles. If he handed you the ball, he expected you to get hitters out. That was your role. In my first four seasons with the team, I pitched in short relief, long relief, and started some games. Thanks to the team’s improved pitching rotation in 1964, I realized without Gene telling me that I was destined for the back end of the bullpen.

  Sure enough, I became a mop-up guy. But there’s always a place in baseball for the mop-up guy.

  Some days I was able to keep us in ballgames. I made quality pitches and got outs when I needed them. I started the season with a nine-inning scoreless streak and notched a win in the process.

  When I was bad, however, I had a helluva time retiring anyone. A May night in Pittsburgh
when I gave up six runs in just 1⅓ innings provided evidence of that.

  I accepted the fact that I’d rarely get the ball in pressure-filled situations. We had an experienced sinkerball pitcher named Jack Baldschun who closed most of our games. And if Jack didn’t come in to earn the save, Ed Roebuck, who the Phillies purchased from the Washington Senators early in the season, usually got the job done.

  I tried to hang in and battle, because from a team standpoint, we were looking awfully strong. Jim Bunning, who we picked up in a trade with Detroit the previous December, threw a perfect game at Shea Stadium on Father’s Day. At the top of our pitching rotation, Bunning and Chris Short gave us a reliable chance of winning every time they took the mound. And Dick Allen and Johnny Callison had emerged as two of the best young hitters in the game. We lacked the experience of other teams in the league and didn’t have an established star along the lines of Willie Mays or Henry Aaron. But a Phillies team that had lost 23 straight games just a few seasons earlier had started to look like it could compete with anybody. We went 9–2 in April, 16–13 in May, and 18–12 in June and found ourselves at the top of the National League standings at the All-Star break.

  Gene stressed the importance of playing smart baseball. By bunting and scoring runners from third base with less than two outs, we won games that otherwise might have been lost. Gene had plenty of faults, but focusing on fundamentals was one of his positive qualities. Otherwise, he was a tyrant who made the whole team jumpy when he was around. He had his favorites, like Callison and some of the veterans, but the rest of us felt barely acknowledged, except for when Gene barked at us for doing something wrong. I didn’t feel it was an atmosphere conducive to long-term success, but we were doing well, so I didn’t question it too much. Later, when I became a manager myself, I barked a lot, too. I tried to pound into my players that they needed to play the game the right way, with focus and energy, and alert to game situations. They weren’t going to be able to simply out-talent opponents anymore.