RMJ 2 February 15

Saturday, February 15, 1997 ● Kissimmee, Florida

 

During the winter, I was often asked about the qualities I considered to be important to a manager. One of things I always mentioned was flexibility.

“You have to be able to shift on the fly,” I said.

Situations change. Players get hurt or become ineffective. Making an adjustment, and making it quickly, can stop a losing streak or prevent a personnel problem from festering. A sure-and-steady hand is an abiding servant. But storms brew up in a hurry, and it sometimes takes a strong-and-sudden turn of the wheel to get the ship back on an even keel.

These conceptual truths became reality on my first day at the helm.

 

Back in October, General Manager Gerry Hunsicker told me that one of my offseason duties would be to plan spring training. This seemed a formidable task, because I had no recent experience with the workouts.

As a broadcaster, I watched a lot of games, but few workouts. I showed up in time to watch batting practice, but early drills — Pitchers’ Fielding Practice (PFP), pickoff plays, cutoffs, and relays — were not on my schedule.

“I’ve watched enough practices,” I often said. “The practice games are bad enough.” Honestly, I got my fill of practice games in about a week. The essence of the game was missing for me when neither team was really trying to win.

As a manager, I knew it would be different; I would have only six weeks to figure out which 25 guys we should select to go to battle. So when we assembled our list of players who would be invited to big-league camp, I set about to schedule practices.

Luckily, the Astros had saved workout plans from previous years. These served as my guide, but they were not entirely applicable because of pitcher/catcher ratios.

Typically, a team invites about 20 pitchers and 6 catchers to report a week early, so the pitchers can start getting their arms in shape. But in 1997, we invited 28 pitchers and 6 catchers. When the coaching staff met two days before the opening of camp, this ratio was addressed in no uncertain terms by our AAA manager (and former big-league catcher), Steve “Swish” Swisher.

Swish said, “If you follow this plan, these guys will have to catch 40 minutes in a row. You’ll kill them. I don’t mind catching a guy once in a while if we need help, but I didn’t come down here to catch.” His voice and his expression were challenging.

The room grew quiet, and I was taken aback. After days of forethought and careful planning, I was imperiled on the first day of camp.

I asked the other former catchers on our staff, Alan Ashby and Dave Engle, if this was going to be a problem. They concurred with Swisher, and they started naming some minor-league catchers we could bring in to help. Gerry was in Tampa, presenting the team’s case for the arbitration of pitcher Darryl Kile’s contract; I was on my own.

In this instance, I didn’t have to shift on the fly, because there was another day left before workouts began. I talked to Gerry that night, and he said that we would have to make do with six catchers.

After I reviewed the workout plans again, I determined that the first two days would be the only times when all of the pitchers would warm up. After that, their throwing would be staggered. I asked my pitching coach, Vern Ruhle, and Engle to come up with an acceptable alternative, and they did.

We stretched out the throwing 30 more minutes, which gave the catchers time to rest between pitchers. This lengthened the workout, but I was stuck with no better option.

Everyone seemed satisfied, but I was a little peeved to be corrected so soon. And I was more than a little sensitive to well-founded doubts that must surely have been residing in other staff members’ minds, such as “how can they give *this* guy the job, when a lot of us have worked hard for so many years to get the chance?” I couldn’t blame them, but I still wanted to keep the sessions short-and-snappy.

So much for best-laid plans.

 

Meanwhile, back at the house, old friend Steve Mann was waiting. After my playing days, and before I landed a full-time broadcasting job with the Astros, I doubled as Director of Group and Season Ticket Sales. In was in this role I that encountered Steve. He was working for GM Tal Smith at the time, doing statistical analysis. He was one of the first to invent different analytics. Now he was on the other side, working with the Hendricks brothers, who were representing Darryl  Kile.

My boss and my friend were enemies, and I was harboring the one who could do nothing for me.

Luckily, the team won the case. But I still had to hope that Kile would take the decision as a challenge to pitch better, rather than as an insult.

Steve and I stayed up late and discussed some information I hoped he could get me on the percentages of various base/out situations, and a reading on the bunt-batting-average of regular players. My suspicion was that it would be well above .300; armed with this number, I hoped I could get our hitters to practice bunting-for-hits with more dedication.

From my perch in the broadcast booth, I noticed a trend of playing the third-baseman farther off the line than normal, and back; it was an invitation to bunt that we weren’t accepting. I wanted to change that, but knowing that players hate to get thrown out bunting, I needed ammunition.

It wasn’t so much that I wanted everyone to bunt as to be capable of bunting. If we could force third-basemen to play closer to the line and in a bit, we would have a better chance to hit the ball by them. That was one of my goals as spring training began.

 

The first week of Spring Training is for pitchers and catchers, so the position players weren’t there for Day One. I had noticed dark clouds gathering as I drove to the ballpark; I knew there was rain in the forecast. So why didn’t I discuss this with the staff before the workout? Why wasn’t I ready to change on the fly?

I couldn’t tell you.

During my 2,300 innings on the mound, there were two times where I threw pitches from the windup instead of the stretch position, allowing runners on first base to advance. So I knew I was capable of a brain fart. In fact, I was known for it.

But how could I do it at this critical juncture of my career?

 

I struck out Willie Mays in the first inning of my first game, on my 18th birthday. After that, things could only go downhill.

The opposite was true on this day, 33 years later. Things could only get better after the deluge, which came five minutes after the workout started.

Sheets of rain poured down upon us. Thunder rumbled and lightning crackled.  Everyone bolted. Some ended up in the dugouts; some took to the batting cages.

I headed for the clubhouse. Shortly after I got there, “Stretch” Suba approached me.

 

I’ve known Stretch since he was a little kid. His dad, Jim, pitched batting practice for the Astros during the Sixties and Seventies. Once, on an off day in my rookie year, Jim’s wife invited me to dinner. I guess she felt sorry for me. I was only 18 years old, and the next-youngest player on the team was 23. The other 23 guys were all over 25, and most of them were in their thirties.

It was nice to have a home-cooked meal, but I wasn’t that lonely. I had been going to the student center at the University of Houston at lunchtime to meet kids my own age. Most of my friends that season were not my teammates.

 

Stretch ended up playing baseball at Oklahoma State, and throwing batting practice for us, as his Dad did. Although he had a teaching degree, he never used it; he became a baseball lifer. He could repair the laces on gloves, fix a pitching machine, throw batting practice for hours, and he could catch in the bullpen all day long. He made himself indispensable.

Before each workout at Spring Training, he checked the workout plan for each field. He made sure all of the pitching machines in the batting cages were throwing strikes. He put buckets of balls in the cages, and on each field. He sounded the alarm when it was time to change from one drill to another.

We couldn’t have done Spring Training without Stretch Suba.

 

On this, my Opening Day, he had already consulted with our groundskeeper, Rick Rausch, about the coming storm. So the tarps were ready: right next to the six-packs (long mounds with six pitching rubbers) and near the infield dirt on three different fields.

“Here’s what you need to do,” he told me. “Get the catchers into the cages. They can hit until it clears up. Get the pitchers in the conference room. You and Vern can talk to them while we wait. If the rain stops, we should go straight into our throwing. That’s the most-important part. We can do the drills tomorrow if we don’t get them in today.”

It was certainly a humbling experience to be taking advice from the bullpen catcher within 10 minutes of my first day as his superior. But that is exactly what I did. We all met again in the conference room, and the catchers were dispatched to cages. Rick Rausch came in and told me that the rain should let up in half an hour, and the pitching mounds had been covered. We could still salvage the day.

The pitchers were already congregated, so I decided to have a chat session. After a consultation with Vern, we launched a discussion about holding runners.

One of my goals was to get the pitchers to do their own thinking about runners. The recent trend was to send signals from the dugout to the catcher for such things as pitching normally; quick-pitching; holding the ball at the set position a long time; stepping on the rubber, then off it; pitching out; and throwing to bases. I wanted to reverse that trend and reduce the signals to three: pitch normally; hold the runner; and pitch out. How they held the runner would be up to them.

This turned out to be a one-sided “chat.”

When Vern and I asked for feedback, we got none. I suppose some of the guys were happy to try something new. None of them want to talk about it. During the momentary silence, Raush came in and said that the rain had stopped, and we could resume workouts.

There was only one problem: it looked like the rain could come pouring down again, and soon.

“We’ll go straight to the last segment of the workout, where the pitchers throw,” I said. “If it doesn’t rain, we’ll do the early drills when we finish throwing.” This met with general approval, and we started in short order.

There was only one problem: the catchers were still hitting, and the hitting coaches, who were supposed to be in other places during this portion of the workout, were still at the cages.

Somehow we muddled through, and we completed almost everything we planned to do. It was a great relief to me when my bench coach, Bill Virdon — a veteran of 13 seasons managing in the big leagues — said, “I thought it went pretty well, considering. We got the work done. It was a good start.”

 

After a session with the media — a drill for which I had ample experience — I returned to my office and found several staff members there. After I arrived, the rest of the crew crowded into my small office. Each had his own critique of the day. I warmed to every suggestion, and I took notes.

It was comforting to get though the day and find friendly faces where I had seen the eyes of doubt hours earlier. I was impressed with their observations, and with the intent of their critiques. The advice seemed honest, the intentions sincere. As they left, I was elated to have them on my team.

It was about 2 p.m. when Gerry and his assistant, Matt Galante, came in to talk. I have a great fondness for Matt. Until this year, he was the third-base coach and top assistant to three Houston managers. Each time a manager was replaced, Matt was a candidate for the job. Each time, he came up short. I think his only failing was that he is short (5’6”) and soft-spoken. He is as respected a baseball man as there is in our league, and in my opinion — which I expressed even when I was being interviewed — he should have this job instead of me.

(During that interview, it became clear that he was not going to get the job, even if I declined. In the world, they say, “that’s life.” In this game, we say, “that’s baseball.”)

Because Matt had prepared for this job during all the years I was broadcasting, and because he clearly had a firsthand opinion about how spring training should be run, he was full of ideas. I was sort of sad, sitting there listening to him from the boss’s side of the desk, sitting in a seat he was most qualified to occupy. There was a fatherly tone that “spoke” silently behind his words: This is how it should be done, son. This is the way I would do it. I’m okay with this. I only want to help.

His words of advice concerned the workout plans. He said the demands on my time would continue to increase, and I should have the man who replaced him as third-base coach, Mike “Cubby” Cubbage, do the detail work and assign coaching responsibilities. He said that I should just observe the workouts, and tell Cubby what I wanted to cover the next day.

“They’re going to ask you how Berry threw, or how Ausmus hit,” he said. “You need to watch these things, so you can answer the questions. You also need to have an alternate plan, in case it rains. You don’t need to have one every day, but when the forecast is bad, you should be ready.”

I protested that I had only attempted to plan things to inform myself — to become familiar with the mechanics of the workouts. I was sincere; I really had no desire to do the detail work. I was more concerned with the implementation of general concepts, such as the pitchers holding runners, and the bunting. I did the workout plans mostly to reacquaint myself with the process and to show the staff that I was ready to work, not just talk.

Gerry echoed Matt’s thoughts about delegating, and Matt reiterated them. I felt besieged, and I consented without further defense. But I did feel a little hurt that they didn’t acknowledge my good intentions.

As they got up to leave, Matt said, “I know what you were trying to do. It’s like when you’re in college and you take notes. Just taking notes makes you remember. And it’s not a bad idea. It’s good that you did it, and now it’s time for someone else to take it over.”

I cannot tell you how good that made me feel.