The Mouth That Roared (40 page)

Steroids had clearly become a part of the game before I even recognized it. I can’t help but wonder now whether some of the guys I managed injected themselves with drugs.

It wasn’t until McGwire and Sosa started bashing home runs at an unrealistically high rate that I really put two and two together. Even then, the whole affair was high on speculation and low on proof. That’s because players were adhering to the code of the clubhouse, which says you’re not supposed to talk about what teammates do, say, or ingest in private.

As GM of the Cubs, I pushed for drug testing in the early 1980s. At that time, it seemed cocaine was the drug taking over the game. I got so concerned about it that I summoned several players to my office and confronted them about whether they were using the drug. Cocaine had the potential to destroy lives and careers, but it never was going to fundamentally change how the game was played.

I guess I was naïve about steroids and the other stuff. We all were.

*

In 2000, we celebrated the 20
^th
anniversary of the 1980 World Series team.

Most of the team reunited for the occasion. In an interview with the
(Allentown) Morning Call
, former catcher Bob Boone pretty well summed up the complicated relationship I had with the team that year. “We hated him,” Boone said. “He was driving us. I don’t know if it was a unique approach, but it was a relationship that worked. I don’t know if
hate
is the right word, but that’s irrelevant, because it worked.”

Six years later when I earned a spot on the Phillies Wall of Fame, Booney weighed in again. Asked if any players still felt ill will about our clashes in 1980, he said, “It took a lot of time. Probably, he gets a few more Christmas cards now.”

As far as I could tell, the only guy on the 1980 team who held a real grudge against me was Ron Reed. Ronnie and I had almost come to blows during a doubleheader in Pittsburgh that season. After that, Ronnie got pissed off at me for not using him out of the bullpen as much as he would have liked. To me, Ronnie showed his true colors by declining to take part in the World Series parade after our Game 6 victory over Kansas City. How could a guy turn down the chance to be with his teammates on such a special day? When I see him, we’re cordial to each other. But I know he doesn’t think very highly of me.

Most of the other fences have been mended.

My stormy relationship with Greg Luzinski typified the day-in, day-out battles of the 1980 season. I called Bull out for underachieving and not watching his weight and periodically benched him when I thought rookie Lonnie Smith could do a better job for us. I think Bull was hurt by my actions more than he was angry with me.

I had no qualms about highly recommending Bull for a public relations job he started with the Phillies in 2004. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with him in spring training. I admire how cordial he is with sponsors and fans. He’s a friendly person who likes to share his experiences in baseball. He’s become a huge part of the Phillies family.

Pete Rose, the heart and soul of the ’80 team, is notably absent at team-sponsored alumni events. His lifetime ban from baseball prevents him from making official appearances at major league ballparks. I still see Pete from time to time, however. He hasn’t changed a bit, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Pete had a lot of challenges off the field. Very few ever became public. Though he led a reckless life, Pete was almost always the first of my players to show up at the ballpark. And when he got there, his mind was on baseball and nothing else; he played with more gusto and grit than anybody I ever saw.

Dating back to the 1919 Black Sox scandal, gambling on the game has been considered the worst possible sin for a player, or in Pete’s case, a manager. But he never took steroids or human-growth hormones, and he was the epitome of a guy who played the game the right way.

I respect Pete, but I also respect baseball. I’m torn over the question of whether he should go into the Hall of Fame. I’ve talked to many former greats who are adamantly opposed to Pete’s enshrinement. They feel he committed an unforgiveable sin. I understand that point of view, but if it were up to me, he’d be in the Hall of Fame.

*

At the time of the 20
^th
anniversary celebration, the Phillies were stuck in last place, en route to their seventh straight losing season. The following year, Larry Bowa replaced Francona as Phillies manager. Bowa’s fiery nature contrasted sharply with Francona’s laid-back demeanor.

I sat in on all the interviews of prospective managerial candidates. Everyone in the room knew Bo had tremendous passion for the game. His first managing stint with the Padres in the late 1980s hadn’t gone well, but he had since established himself as an outstanding third-base coach and baseball man for several teams, including the Phillies.

Mindful of his idiosyncrasies, which included body language that betrayed his emotions a little too much, I still felt he was an ideal fit for the Phillies. As a player, he wasn’t endowed with a lot of natural talent. He willed himself into becoming a ballplayer by outworking everybody else. It served to reason that his work ethic might rub off on his players. Bowa fought me like hell when I first took over the Phillies. Seeing the game through the eyes of a manager, I think he got a much better understanding of what I went through with the ’80 team.

In his first year on the job, the Phillies finished in second place, just two games behind the division-winning Braves.

Bowa eventually became his own worst enemy. He often wore a pained expression on his face in the dugout. The TV cameras loved him for that. But after a while, people started wondering about his relationship with his team.

Like me, he clashed with some of his players, most notably third baseman Scott Rolen, whom he took to task for not hitting in the clutch. I decided to chime in when I concluded Rolen lacked the drive to succeed: “Scotty’s satisfied with being a so-so player. I think he can be greater, but his personality won’t let him.”

In the field, I thought Scotty ranked up there with Brooks Robinson and Mike Schmidt defensively. But I felt he wasn’t fulfilling his potential as a hitter. I didn’t dislike Scotty. I just hoped he could give us more. But instead, he wanted more from us. He complained that management wasn’t spending enough money to put a winning team on the field.

My job wasn’t to call out the supposed best players on the team, but if asked, I had no problem sharing my opinion. Scotty was never content in Philadelphia. He had productive seasons for us in 2000 and 2001. His two home runs against the Braves in the first game back after the 9/11 terrorist attacks gave fans at the Vet a final positive memory of him. But when it became clear he had no intention of resigning with Philadelphia after the ’02 season, Eddie traded him to the Cardinals. He’s been booed in Philadelphia ever since.

*

As young baseball executives, Paul Owens and I watched the last game played at Connie Mack Stadium in 1970. That place held a lot of special memories for both of us. I played there as Pope was rising through the ranks of the Phillies front office. But Veterans Stadium, which opened in April 1971, ended up being the ballpark where we enjoyed our greatest successes. To that point, it was the only stadium where the Phillies had won a world championship.

At the end of the 2003 season, Philadelphia geared up for another changing of the guard as the Vet, considered a state-of-the-art facility in the early 1970s, awaited implosion. Citizens Bank Park, a cozy baseball-only stadium, was in line to host Opening Day in 2004.

On September 28, 2003, I drove in from my Maryland farm to watch the last nine innings ever played at the stadium on the corner of Broad and Pattison. After the Sunday afternoon game against the Braves, several dozen former Phillies were scheduled to gather on the field for a farewell ceremony. We all hoped Pope would be out there among us, but we knew that was far from guaranteed. He had been battling a chronic respiratory illness for many months, and it appeared he didn’t have much time left.

As the game entered the late innings, Pope’s son escorted him into the stadium. Before disease sapped all his strength, Pope was the most hearty and vibrant man I knew. It was difficult to see him in such a weakened state, sitting in a wheelchair. But his presence there that day showed he was a fighter—and a Phillie—to the end.

Longtime Phillies public relations director Larry Shenk did a wonderful job putting together the ceremony, which kicked off with Pope riding onto the field in a golf cart. Ed Wade and I helped him off the cart so he could stand on the field one last time.

Pete Rose wasn’t permitted to attend the event because of his permanent ban from official major league events. To honor Pete, I laid his No. 14 jersey over the first-base bag.

“I’m very, very proud of what we accomplished,” I told the fans, before reminding them of how special they were to me. “I’ve been in baseball for 45 years, in Chicago and New York, but nobody,
nobody
will touch the Philadelphia Phillies fans. We love you!”

The ceremony concluded with Tug McGraw reenacting his celebration on the mound after striking out Willie Wilson of the Royals to end the 1980 World Series. Tugger, too, was battling health problems; six months earlier, he had a brain tumor removed. When he threw his arms in the air just as he did that October night in 1980, the fans went wild. Before we left the field, I posed for a picture with Pope and Tugger.

After the ceremony, I sat with Pope in the Vet’s executive dining room. I wish I could say it was like old times, but it wasn’t. Over the course of our 47-year friendship, we talked a lot of baseball and had a lot of laughs. Now, he was a 79-year-old man using his last reserves of energy to conceal the horrible pain we all knew he was experiencing.

By the time Citizens Bank Park opened in April 2004, Pope and Tugger weren’t with us anymore.

*

Larry Bowa’s hiring before the 2001 season infused life into the team. In his first year on the job, he won the Manager of the Year Award for bringing the Phillies to within a couple games of first place. But despite his best efforts, Bowa couldn’t get his teams over the hump. He led the Phillies to winning seasons in three of his four years in the dugout but could never get them above second place or into the playoffs as a wild-card team. With two games left in the 2004 season—which was supposed to be the year a team other than the Braves finally won the National League East—he was fired.

The following spring training I expressed my disappointment with the team’s performance. “This team has been together for a good amount of time now,” I told the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. “It’s time it played up to its capabilities. It’s time for them to look in the mirror and recognize that they’re the ones who have to perform. It’s not the manager that has to perform. They can blame Larry Bowa for last year, but now there’s no one to blame. I think they’re smart enough to realize that the onus is on them. Quit barking and whining. Stop worrying about the ballpark, the manager, and the pitching coach, and play ball. And win.”

Charlie Manuel, who had managed Cleveland to a division title in 2001, took over for Bo. The fans who flocked to the new stadium were starting to get restless. It had been more than a decade since the team made the playoffs and 25 years since we won the championship.

Citizens Bank Park is very much a hitter’s park. In our first season in the stadium, we hit the second-most home runs in the National League, paced by Jim Thome’s 42 blasts. Thome was one of several players the Phillies had splurged on a couple of years earlier to show the team’s commitment to moving in the right direction. It wasn’t a hard sell to get a slugger to sign with us. But bringing elite pitchers to Philadelphia was a more difficult task. Who would want to pitch in a park where some routine fly balls left the ballpark? In 2004, our pitchers gave up the second-most homers in the league.

Charlie’s first year on the job brought another second-place finish and no playoff appearance. The 2005 Phillies, featuring blossoming stars Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins, showed a lot of promise, however.

*

The mouth could still roar.

During a rough patch for the Phillies in 2006, I offered up a critique of Charlie to Philadelphia radio talk show host Howard Eskin. I said every manager chooses how he wants to run his team and then lives with the results of those choices. I said my predecessor, Danny Ozark, chose to handle his players one way, and I opted to approach the job differently.

It was mild by my standards, innocuous, even. But Charlie, who was getting beat up in the press a lot in those days, viewed my words as a slap against
his
way of doing things. I was on the field before a June game when Charlie confronted me.

“I don’t want you on my goddamn field!” he growled at me.

Most people didn’t see this side of Charlie, whom the press had painted as a good-natured hillbilly kind of guy. I was taken aback.

“I’ll get on the goddamn field anytime I want to, Charlie!” I responded.

It got heated. If a couple of players hadn’t wandered over to see what was going on, I’m not sure what would have happened. Charlie was really mad.