The Mouth That Roared (15 page)

Mr. Cool didn’t have any magic words, however. We went out and committed three errors in a 7–1 loss to Jim Bibby and the Pirates.

As we drifted toward defeat, I decided it would be my turn to have a word or two with the team. Between games of the doubleheader, I kicked all the reporters out of the clubhouse and unleashed the angriest diatribe of my career. Even though the scribes had been banished to the hallway, they could still hear my words through the cinder blocks that separated them from the clubhouse.

“Get off your fucking rear ends and beat somebody!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “You have to stop being so fucking cool! Can you get that through your fucking heads?! If you don’t, you’ll get so fucking buried, it ain’t gonna be funny. Get the fuck off your asses!”

I could feel the blood rushing to my face as I proceeded with my R-rated screaming session.

In the short term, my appeal to the club was just as fruitless as Schmitty’s. In the second game of the doubleheader, we committed two more errors and Pittsburgh beat us 4–1 to finish off the sweep. During the game, the raw emotions of the day bubbled to the surface again. With one run home for the Pirates in the bottom of the seventh inning, I ordered relief pitcher Ron Reed to intentionally walk Willie Stargell with first base open and Bill Madlock coming to the plate. After getting the signal, Ronnie stepped off the mound. Boone went out there to check on him. I could tell by the defiant look on Ronnie’s face that he didn’t want to follow my instructions. He ended up issuing the pass to Stargell, and the inning ended when Madlock grounded into a double play.

When Ronnie got back to the dugout, I got right in his face. I’m a tall man, but Ronnie, who had played in the NBA, had at least an inch on me. He was the strong, silent type who preferred a quiet chat in private. In other words, he was the opposite of me.

“What’s your fucking problem?” I screamed at him.

We went toe to toe, each of us waiting for the other to throw the first punch. Fortunately for me, a couple of guys pulled us apart.

The disastrous series in Pittsburgh put us six games behind the Pirates and the Expos with less than two months left to play.

On our way out of town, I delivered a much calmer message for the press: “I’m just not going to let them quit on themselves. I won’t quit on them. I’m sure the fans in Philadelphia won’t quit.”

That night, my coaches and I went out to dinner and, as we were wont to do, we tore the hell out of the place. We ate, we drank, and we were merry. It was a much-needed release from all the tension.

*

In 1980, our core group of players gave us a chance to win every night. Over the course of their careers, Schmidt had hit a lot of game-winning home runs, Rose had banged out a lot of three-hit nights, and Carlton had pitched a lot of shutouts. I hoped they and our other veterans would continue to perform at a high level.

But unlike Ozark, I planned to rely on young players to give us a positive jolt. If we didn’t meet my expectations, I didn’t want it to be because I had been afraid to shake up the status quo.

When Pope hired me as manager, it was with the understanding I wouldn’t necessarily award playing time simply based on years of service. I helped build our farm system and knew we had several players in the minors who were ready to make an impact with the Phillies. The guys who were coming up through our minor league system were willing to run off a cliff for me. In a clubhouse where a lot of players wanted to throw me off a cliff, the loyalty and enthusiasm of those guys provided an essential balance.

One of those guys was Keith Moreland. I first encountered Keith in 1975 when he was a junior at the University of Texas, getting ready for a game between the Longhorns and SMU. On my recommendation, the Phillies took him in the seventh round of that year’s draft. He later told me his brief interaction with me in Austin helped convince him to sign with the Phillies rather than return for his senior year of college. “You reminded me of my father,” he said. “I had a feeling you were someone I should follow.”

From the get-go, Keith showed he had a bright future in the game. In addition to natural talent, he hustled, played smart, and accepted new challenges without grumbling. A third baseman in college, he needed to switch positions if he wanted to play regularly for the Phillies in the near future. So, he learned to be a catcher.

Keith performed well in the low minor leagues, but he hit a bump in the road when he got to Double-A in 1976. One of my responsibilities at the time was negotiating contracts with our minor leaguers. Following his subpar months at Reading, I sent Keith what I considered a fair contract offer. He didn’t see it that way. “I really worked my tail off last season, and I think I deserve a little more money,” he told me. I didn’t blink. “If you had worked your tail off, you’d be getting a little more money,” I said. The conversation made me feel a little like John Quinn, who as Phillies general manager in the late 1960s gave me a similar, if less pointed denial, of a pay raise.

Keith went out the next season and worked his tail off. The following year he was promoted to Triple-A, where he continued to blossom.

With Boone struggling to find his hitting stroke in 1980, I decided to give Keith a shot to show what he could do. In July, he started getting a lot of playing time. And over the final months of the 1980 season, he hit well over .300.

Keith and Booney developed a harmonious relationship. Though he wasn’t swinging the bat well, Booney remained a stellar defensive catcher. During games that Keith started behind the plate, Booney would sit next to him in the dugout and fill his head with knowledge about opposing hitters.

Lonnie Smith, a first-round pick in 1974, also gave us a boost by hitting .339 and stealing a team-leading 33 bases. Lonnie’s play earned him a starting spot in left field on a lot of nights. That caused some friction between Luzinski and me. But Lonnie was hitting a hundred points higher than Bull, so what was I supposed to do?

The emergence of Moreland and Smith gave me additional options when filling out the lineup card. When it came to using young pitchers, however, I was acting out of necessity, not by choice.

In all, we got 24 wins from pitchers 23 or younger, including five in as many September starts from late season call-up Marty Bystrom. Originally, Marty was going to break camp with us, but a hamstring injury at the end of spring training forced him back to the minors. After Larry Christenson went down, Marty, only 22 years old, got thrown into the middle of a major league pennant race.

He didn’t blink.

On September 10, we trailed the Expos by half a game going into a two-game series at Shea Stadium. Marty pitched a complete game, shutting out the Mets and limiting them to just five hits. The next time out he pitched seven scoreless innings against the Cardinals. Over 21 days in September, Marty made five crucial starts and won every one of them, a level of success he never attained again in his career.

Marty kept his composure under sometimes difficult circumstances. In a September game against the Cubs, home-plate umpire Terry Tata squeezed him on several pitches. But the kid kept his cool, working around a season-high four walks to pick up a key victory.

Marty and the other young guys on the team had to pinch themselves when they looked around the clubhouse and realized Schmidt, Rose, and Carlton were their teammates. But while they had enormous respect for those guys, they weren’t going to blindly follow them. The kids were Dallas Green guys, even if some of the veterans weren’t.

*

We faced two possible scenarios after our August sweep at the hands of the Pirates. Either pent-up tension would continue to rise to the surface, causing us to stumble, or we would use the Pittsburgh series as a wake-up call and pull ourselves together.

The day after the sweep, we boarded a charter flight to Chicago, where we started a nearly two-month period that featured both of those scenarios.

Before the first game of the Cubs series, I had a one-on-one meeting with Ron Reed. I told him that my directives needed to be followed without protest. End of story. We didn’t discuss our near-fight in the dugout. Nothing needed to be said about that. It was a case of two competitors letting their frustration get the better of them. No harm, no foul.

That afternoon in Chicago, I went back to Ronnie out of the bullpen and gave him a chance to help us break a 10-game road losing streak. We led 5–3 going into the bottom of the ninth inning, but he coughed up a couple of runs, sending the game into extra innings. The Cubs scored the tying run after I ordered Ronnie to issue an intentional walk. He did so without protest this time.

The game was stopped because of darkness in the 14
^th
inning, but we came back the next day and won the suspended game, as well as the regularly scheduled game. Schmitty hit two home runs and knocked in five RBIs in the two contests.

After a loss to the Cubs in the series finale, we went to New York and swept five games from the Mets.

But the road was still bumpy. I had a helluva time getting some of my players to buy into my program.

Luzinski played with hunger early in the season, but by the time he went on the disabled list in early July, he was hitting just .245. As he slumped, I started turning more to Lonnie Smith. And that’s when Bull went to the newspapers and compared me to the Gestapo.

Bull wasn’t the only disenchanted Phillie, of course. Bowa and Maddox were among those who disdained my tactics. I was too critical, in their opinion. Translation: they didn’t like when I talked about obvious mistakes that everybody watching the game noticed. They thought I should have pretended that nothing happened, or at least kept my criticism out of the papers.

At the end of August in San Diego, Maddox lost two fly balls in the sun after choosing not to remove a pair of sunglasses from his back pocket. In that same series, Bowa also played shaky defense. We couldn’t afford mental mistakes from two guys who were supposed to be team leaders.

Maddox didn’t like his defensive prowess being questioned. By winning Gold Gloves every year from 1975 to 1979, he had earned his nickname, the Secretary of Defense. But he knew many Philadelphia fans still remembered his dropped fly ball against the Dodgers in the 1978 playoffs that may have cost the Phillies the series. I wasn’t trying to pick at an old wound, nor did I want to hurt Garry’s pride by bringing up haunting memories of ’78. I just wanted him to wear his damn sunglasses! It was as simple as that.

*

Losing two straight to the last-place San Diego Padres was unacceptable. In a winner-take-all race, a team rarely backed into a division title. If we couldn’t beat the likes of San Diego, either the Pirates or the Expos were going to leave us in the dust.

It didn’t surprise me that Pope shared my concerns. San Francisco was our next stop after San Diego. On the short flight up the California coast, my mentor pounded a couple of drinks and stewed over the losses at Jack Murphy Stadium.

“Goddamnit, Dallas, we’re playing like horseshit,” Pope moaned. “I think I need to give these sons of bitches a kick in the ass.”

At the hotel in San Francisco, his frustration mounted. We sat in his suite, had another drink, and discussed how to save the season from unraveling. Pope left the door to the room wide open, which gave us a clear view of the hallway. Well after midnight, pitchers Dickie Noles and Kevin Saucier walked by. They froze in place when they got to the open door. Big mistake. Pope let loose on them, not because they had missed curfew, but because they were Phillies players, and goddamn it, he wasn’t enamored with Phillies players at that moment!

Before we called it a night, Pope said, “I’m going to talk to the club.”

After the way he upbraided Noles and Saucier, it didn’t surprise me that he wanted a crack at the entire team.

“Do you want the young kids in there?” I asked. It was September 1, and we had just called up some minor leaguers, including Bob Dernier and Mark Davis.

“I want
everybody
there,” Pope hissed.

The next day, Pope marched down to the visitors’ clubhouse at Candlestick Park and reamed the team for its poor effort and sloppy play. He singled out Maddox and Bowa for particular criticism. Before storming out, he gave out his hotel room number in case anybody wanted to come up and fight him later. Pope’s tirade didn’t make Maddox any less sulky, especially after I benched him for the entire San Francisco series. It didn’t make Bowa any less of a complainer, either. But I think the message got across. We won all three games against the Giants to reclaim first place in the NL East.

*

John Vukovich, a utility infielder, hit just .161 in 66 plate appearances in 1980. And that was hardly an off-year. In fact, his career average was .161.

But every manager, especially one trying to fend off a clubhouse insurrection, needs a guy like Vuke on his team His leadership qualities made him as valuable as any .300 hitter ever could have been.

Drafted in 1966, he came up through the Phillies’ system with Bowa, Luzinski, Booney, and Schmitty. Though he was a pretty decent hitter in the minor leagues, he could never hit a lick against major league pitching. His defense and work ethic were the reasons he kept getting shots in the big leagues.

In 1980, Vuke was my right-hand man among the players. He bought into the idea that I was only trying to accomplish what his teammates all said they wanted: a championship.