Rookie Manager’s Journal

The 1996 season ended with a thud in Houston, when a team-record losing streak in September dashed any playoff hopes the Astros had.

As a broadcaster, this was quite a challenge. In September, football was cranking up; sports fans were moving on from baseball.

I tried to hold their attention with stories, paying less-than-usual attention to the details of the game. This was my way of making the broadcast enjoyable. It’s the same tactic I used when we got way behind early, and never made a bid to catch up. But one game of diverting attention is easy, compared to a whole month trying to do it.

I was injured at the time; I had a cast on my right hand, and so I was keeping my scorebook left-handed. After it became obvious that we wouldn’t make it to the postseason, I lost interest in the games, and it was hard to give the broadcasts the energy they deserved.

 

One night in Miami, toward the end of our fall from grace, the camera panned our dugout, and every player was looking down — as if they were at a funeral. That’s when I blurted out a suggestion that the team needed more Hawaiian shirts. The idea was to loosen up, and have a good time. A few fans brought me shirts when we got back to the Astrodome. We used that shtick quite a bit in the ugly games — and there were a lot of them.

At the end of the season, I just wanted to get the cast off and float down the Guadalupe River with my hand dangling in the cool water. All I wanted to do was forget baseball.

But nooooo!

 

I got a call from my wife, Judy, telling me I had to get back to Houston to meet with Astros president Tal Smith the next day. When I tried to wiggle out of it, she said it was very important. I drove home, and I met with him the next morning.

Tal wanted to discuss the team, and what we could do during the offseason to get better. I didn’t have to come back from Austin for that; I could have done it a few days later.

It wasn’t unusual for him to seek my opinion on something. But after I told him what I thought that morning, he suggested that maybe I should manage the team. I thought he was joking, and I said, “I’d try just about anything to get away from Milo (Hamilton, one of our broadcasters), but that’s pretty extreme, don’t you think?”

We laughed about that — and then I saw Astros General Manager Gerry Hunsicker in the lobby.

Tal said he had invited Gerry for lunch. Sandwiches were brought in, and when we continued the discussion, I knew something was up. Were they actually considering me to be the next Astros manager?

I had never coached a game in my life — not even Little League.

Then I saw the owner of the team, Drayton McLane, pacing back and forth in the lobby. That’s when I knew this crazy idea might become my reality. As Drayton joined us, I started thinking about what I would do or say. I decided to buy some time by telling them I would have to talk to Judy  about it — though I knew what she would say.

Drayton asked me some questions that confirmed my suspicion about the manager’s job; they were going to let current manager Terry Collins go. Now I understood why I had to come back from Austin. Even so, surely it wasn’t so urgent — right? It was only two days after the end of the season.

When they finally asked me if I would manage the club, I was really excited; after I told them I would have to talk to Judy, Gerry told me he would call with the details after dinner, because if we were going to do it, they would have the press conference the next morning.

Now I really understood the urgency.

 

We went to my son Ryan’s baseball game that night, and we sat in the bleachers with our friends, as usual. The next morning, the press conference was the talk of the town. Gerry announced that Terry Collins had been let go — and the next Astros manager was in the room.

There were twenty or thirty reporters, and they looked everywhere, but there was no manager in sight. When it was revealed that I would be coming down from the broadcast booth to take over, smiles brightened the room. It was a great story, no matter what happened in 1997.

Someone asked me if I was worried or scared, and I said, “not exactly.” But I said it was like if the President called to see if I would be willing to take a ride on the Space Shuttle; what would I say? How could I say no?

Yes, it was a little scary, but it was also uplifting. I knew we would have a good team. In fact, I was probably more familiar with our talent than any experienced manager they could have hired.

 

Later that afternoon, two TV stations went on location with Astros manager Larry Dierker in his own front yard. Neighbors emerged from their houses. It was big news — even beyond Houston.

That night, we went to another game of Ryan’s, and we sat in the same bleachers with the same parents. A few of them wanted to take pictures with me. Then a few asked for autographs. Then people from the bleachers across the field, and even different fields, came over to share the good news and get a little piece of it on a scrap of paper or on their phones.

I was cool with it; I knew where my many blessings came from. It was the fans.

One afternoon, early in my broadcast career, the team bus pulled up to Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, where a line of autograph seekers hoped to get a few guys to stop and sign. When I got off the bus, one of them pointed at me and said, “didn’t you used to be somebody?”

I was somebody again, even though I was just another guy in the bleachers the day before.

 

The next day, I started talking calls. The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and on and on. I already knew a lot the columnists from my playing days, and from the pressboxes around the league as a broadcaster. Sports Illustrated called to arrange an interview. I drove to a recording studio in Houston to tape an interview with ESPN.

It was a big deal when I pitched my first major-league game on my 18th birthday. And this was the same: almost unprecedented.

During my last ten years as a broadcaster, I wrote a weekly baseball column, starting in spring training and running through the World Series. I had also written and narrated 500+ Larry Dierker’s Baseball Library podcasts (listen to them here) that we played in the pregame shows on Astros radio.

I had spent 18 years learning how to share the world of baseball with the fans. If this is such a big story, I thought, why not get personal with it?

I decided to keep a journal of the 1997 season — twenty-five years ago. Each day, I recorded my feelings. Some of those feelings strayed from the ballpark — like when my daughter got married and I missed three days at the beginning of spring training. I missed three more days when my father died near the end of May.

In some situations, I showed how naïve I was; in others, it shows how I learned to be a decent manager. We won our division that year, and we were beaten by the Braves in the League Championship Series. 

 

Many years ago, someone came up with a T-shirt: Baseball is Life. What follows is the inside of a baseball life, twenty-five years ago.

Enjoy!

Larry Dierker

February 2022