Manuel just wins for Phillies

WASHINGTON – There’s a lot more to Charlie Manuel than people see on television. In fact, the Charlie Manuel people see on TV is not the same one the writers and players see every day. That guy is verbose and uncomfortable in his own skin. He isn’t the kind, patient and quick jokester that people behind the scenes see.

Maybe that’s part of the act or part of the homespun manager’s charm? Maybe Manuel’s uneasiness that has made him a target for so many slings and arrows has allowed his players to escape their errors and miscues behind a façade of stutters and malapropisms.

Could he be that diabolical?

Probably not. Often with Manuel, what you see is what you get. But at the same time…

“When it comes down to [crunch] time, I’m going to do what’s right,” Manuel predicted last season.

For the second season in a row the Phillies have taken the season down to one final do-or-die weekend. If they can survive one more game against the Nationals and three in Miami against the Marlins and get some cooperation from the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Phillies will capture the National League’s wild-card spot. If not, well, the Phillies certainly made it interesting. That’s especially so after general manager Pat Gillick jettisoned veterans Bobby Abreu, David Bell, Rheal Cormier and Cory Lidle then told fans to wait until the year after next season.

“It will be a stretch to say we’ll be there in ’07,” Gillick said on July 30. “We’ll have to plug in some young pitchers and anytime you do that you’ll have some inconsistency.

“It’s going to take another year.”

Yet in two seasons at the helm in which the Phillies will be in contention until the very final out of the season, Charlie Manuel has been ridiculed, questioned and put down. His intelligence has been questioned and his Appalachian drawl has been made fun of in a manner that can only be described as mean spirited and personal. It seems as if people believe Charlie is dumb because of the way that he sounds – never mind that some of these critics of Manuel’s baseball acumen have thick, undecipherable accents that can only be heard in Philadelphia.

Hello, pot.

So Manuel takes the insults and keeps going. Aside from leading the Phillies to the doorstep of the playoffs and getting closer than any of his predecessors had in the past 13 years, Manuel has won more games in his first two seasons than every manager in Phillies history except for Pat Moran. More than 90 years ago Moran won 181 games and took the Phils to the World Series in 1915.

But Moran had Grover Cleveland Alexander anchoring his staff, while Manuel has Jon Lieber and Brett Myers – hardly pitchers destined for the Hall of Fame. Sure, Cole Hamels, all of just 22-year old, may one day be a Cy Young Award-caliber pitcher, but right now he’s an inconsistent rookie.

Yet maybe therein lies the genius of Charlie Manuel. Not only can he get the most out of Lieber and Myers, as well as players like Shane Victorino and Chris Coste, but also he can be deemed as a poor manager for winning. When has that ever occurred with the Phillies?

Along those lines, when have the words “Charlie Manuel” and “genius” ever been used in the same sentence?

The secret to Manuel’s success might be the rapport he has with his players. On one side he appears to be everybody’s favorite uncle always picking players up with positivity and kind words when things aren’t going well. Often, when he lumbers with his distinctive gait through the clubhouse, he stops to joke with a player or ask them about how things are going away from the field.

Then there is his loyalty to his players that is sometimes criticized by the fans and media, but always respected by the players. Rarely will Manuel speak poorly of a player in public, and his critique of his team’s sometimes shoddy play is always peppered with language about how “we” have to play better.

Or he’ll make a joke, like with hyped-up rookie Michael Bourn whose excitement and greenness caused the Phillies trouble on the base paths a time or two this week.

“I might have to put one of those shock collars on him,” Manuel laughed.

Though Manuel is an old-time baseball man who speaks fondly of playing with Harmon Killebrew and for managers Billy Martin and Walter Alston, his approach is hardly "old-school" in the sense that former Phillies managers Larry Bowa, Jim Fregosi and Dallas Green wore that label. But as long-time old-school baseball man Johnny Pesky, the 87-year-old treasure for the Boston Red Sox, points out, modern ballplayers don't need a manager to motivate them.

"These guys are making millions of dollars and they don't need somebody screaming at them to make them play better," he said.

Manuel understands that treating a player with respect and a little humanity is the best tact.

That method is hardly fullproof, though.

Perhaps Manuel has stuck with Pat Burrell and Mike Lieberthal longer than he should have in the final month of this season. Perhaps he should have turned to Coste or David Dellucci and Jeff Conine much sooner than he has. But don’t think for a moment that Manuel’s loyalty has gone unnoticed by his players.

But do not mistake Manuel’s kindness for weakness, pitcher Randy Wolf warns.

“Charlie is a great guy. He’s friendly and really cares about his players. He’ll do anything for us and wants us to trust him,” Wolf said. “But he is not soft. You don't want to cross him because he'll let you know about it.”

Jim Thome liked to tell the story about the time in Cleveland when Manuel removed the ping-pong table from the Indians’ clubhouse when he thought the players were too focused on table tennis than baseball. Then there was the time earlier this season when the Phillies were sleepwalking through another April loss in Florida when Manuel ordered his players back into the dugout before they could take the field and launched into a tongue-lashing that proved to be the impetus to a nine-game winning streak during a stretch where the team won 13 of 14 games.

So maybe there is a method to Manuel’s madness?

Just don’t ask him to explain it with the cameras rolling.

Primeau makes the smart decision

The hardest thing for an athlete to do is to be smart. No, that’s not an insult, nor is it any type of indictment of certain scholastic records. After all, it takes a top-flight engineer to be able to memorize and decipher all of the variables in an NFL playbook. Besides, those things are thicker than phone books and like Rain Man, guys like Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb know the whole thing by heart.

What is meant by smart is that oftentimes for athletes the easiest and most logical decision is usually the hardest thing to come to terms with. Some athletes have no trouble going out and running 20 miles a day without fail, but when it comes time to take a day off to rest the mind and muscles most guys would prefer root canal surgery.

Take Flyers’ captain Keith Primeau, for example. After battling the effects of post-concussion syndrome for nearly a full calendar year with no foreseeable end to his rehabilitation, the erstwhile 34-year old was forced into retirement on Thursday morning. Certainly, after at least four or five concussions during his 14-season NHL career, Primeau made the “smart” decision. At home he has his wife, Lisa, and four children, whom will be around and will need their dad longer than the Flyers will need a captain and a center. In fact, in one of those “get-to-know-the-players” questionnaires that teams like to publish for the fans, Primeau lists becoming a father as his greatest accomplishment to date.

“This decision will allow me to live a normal life and hopefully, with time, few reminders of my injuries,” Primeau said on Thursday.

“My biggest fear is that I’d have regrets and at this point I don’t have regrets.”

But even something as big as being a dad rarely extinguishes what burns inside of a person. For someone like Primeau, a hockey player personified, that flame burns with a lot more intensity. Need an example? Try this out:

It was the second period of Game 2 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals where the New Jersey Devils are skating circles around the Flyers and are on the verge of taking a 2-0 lead in the series. Even though he missed parts of two games after he was carted off the ice on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital after taking a big hit from Pittsburgh’s Bob Boughner and suffering the first of a series of concussions, Primeau called out the Devils’ Randy McKay for a little tête-à-tête.

Now it wasn’t necessarily important whether or not Primeau beat McKay in the fight. The message was loud and clear.

“I thought our team needed a spark,” Primeau said at the time, noting that he envisioned Lisa sitting in the stands with her head in her hands as he brawled with McKay.

“I realize it may not have been the best thing to do,” Primeau said before telling me that he had three prior concussions that he knew of before the one in Pittsburgh, and noting that he probably had others as a kid growing up in Toronto, but nothing so serious that his dad didn’t pick him up, brush him off, and send him back out onto the ice. “I’m a father and a husband, but at the same time I’m a hockey player… ”

Sometimes hockey players don’t always make the smart decision. But in retiring, Primeau did make the smart decision because the term concussion softens what medical folks call the affliction – traumatic brain injuries.

If Primeau takes one more hard shot to the head while skating up the ice at break-neck speed, the result could be dire.

And we aren’t talking about something as easy as retirement, either.

Yet despite Thursday’s announcement and the lingering symptoms from all of those traumatic brain injuries, something tells us the fire still smolders inside of Primeau. Maybe that comes from watching Primeau run up and down the area steps after games at the Wachovia Center. Besides, doing what is smart is one thing, but the human brain is no match for the heart or guts. Worse, that little voice saying, “What if… ” will always nag even if the brain says, “This is correct.”

“He's always going to feel like he didn't get to finish on his own terms,” coach Ken Hitchcock said.

The operative word is that Primeau was “forced” into retirement because trainer Jim McCrossin tried every mind trick he could to get the captain’s head to drill some logic into his heart and guts. The trainer told Primeau he could skate with the minor leaguers on the Phantoms, or he could practice wearing a white jersey with a red cross so that other players would know not to touch him.

What self-respecting hockey player shies away from the contact?

When McCrossin finally told Primeau what he really felt – that he didn’t want to live with the consequences if the hockey player took another shot to the head – it was like getting run over by a truck.

“It was the first real time I'd been in touch with reality the last few months,” Primeau said Thursday. “I didn't want to become a distraction again.”

Primeau was thinking about the team. That’s just what a captain does. But in time, Primeau won’t be a captain anymore, and maybe he’ll start to feel better and get the itch to put those skates on again to see what he can do.

“If they let me go I’d keep pushing through. I’d keep going until they dragged me away,” Primeau said.

Hopefully, making the smart decision will be a lot easier if that itch needs to be scratched.

The greatest of all time?

I don't know if this is a trend or simple marketing of sports so that people will not only stay tuned to the game (or whatever), but also will think they are watching something historically significant, but often it appears as if I have tuned in to watch an "all-time greatest of the game."

It seems like such a debatable hyperbole, yet often there is no debate. It just so happens that I, luckily, have tuned in to something historic.

Mostly this occurs with individual sports like golf and tennis, but lately the G.O.A.T./history trend has morphed into mainstream team sports as well. Take Ryan Howard for instance -- last week in Washington I was sitting in the press box for a supposed historical occasion when the slugger tied and passed Mike Schmidt's franchise record for home runs in a season. It was something to see because the shots Howard hit were magnificent and I remember watching Schmidt hit a lot of those 48 homers during the 1980 season. So to be there when the record changed hands was pretty cool.

But it wasn't historical despite how it was being billed by certain media types. Not even close. If I had been outside of the Appomattox Court House on Palm Sunday of 1865 when Lee surrendered his army to Grant, now that would have been historic. Had I been alive to watch Neil Armstrong hop off the Apollo and onto the moon, that would have been historic. Waking up five years ago to desperate phone calls from my wife to, "TURN ON THE TV! NOW!" That was historic. This is just baseball. A nice milestone and definitely something very cool, but not anything I can brag about seeing. Not when half the people I know don't care.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I'm just being one of those uptight guys who likes to toss a wet blanket over everyone's fun. Well... yeah. Sometimes I enjoy being iconoclastic and "brutally honest." But mostly I just don't appreciate being misled. Even in the insular world of baseball, Howard passing Schmidt was barely a blip in its history. Maybe for the Phillies Howard's homers are significant since the franchise's history is pock-marked by losing season after losing season and overt racism during the game's "Golden Era" in which the team failed to integrate its roster long after nearly every other team.

Along those lines, Howard is already being referred to as potentially the greatest Phillie ever. Hell, he ought to just retire now. He almost has one full season in the books; he ought to hang 'em up. What else does he have to prove?

Certainly those who call Howard the G.Ph.O.A.T. acknowledge their silliness. Let the man have a career first. But that didn't stop anyone from waxing exaggeration in regard to Roger Federer during the finals of Sunday’s U.S. Open.

For anyone who saw it, Federer was often brilliant and mostly dominant in cruising to a four-set victory over Andy Roddick for his ninth Grand Slam victory. That's within the range of Tiger Woods, Federer's Nike brethren, who was sitting courtside with the Swooshes blazing for all of the close-up shots that stopped being about a celebrity watching a tennis match and more about selling over-priced athletic gear and shoes. Hey, if you're going to be a corporate shill, go all out... right Tiger?

So as Federer cruised, the debate started. Actually, it wasn't a debate, it was history.

It also got me thinking, which is probably not what CBS, the USTA, or Nike wanted anyone to do. But the idea was out there -- was Federer the greatest tennis player of all time?

Certainly the way he pushed around Roddick on Sunday made the debate easy for that day. Federer is easily the greatest tennis player out there now, but whom is he playing? Andy Roddick? Rafael Nadal? Lleyton Hewit?

Please.

But when I saw Federer blast balls from the baseline, daring anyone to approach the net against him, I thought, "this kid watched tapes of Borg play."

Who can forget Bjorn Borg? For as great as the "Super Swede" was -- and he is on the short list for G.O.A.T. -- he was even more of an enigma. But perhaps that's the way Borg had to be since he had John McEnroe always buzzing around and trying to knock him off. When it wasn't McEnroe, it was Jimmy Connors -- a guy who was No. 1 in the world for 160 straight weeks -- gunning for him.

Then came Ivan Lendl. Then Boris Becker. Then Pete Sampras, who re-wrote the record books.

Beneath the top layer guys like Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander, Pat Cash and Michael Stich always seemed to be hovering around the top ranks for decades.

These days Federer isn't the king of the hill; he's a man on an island.

That's not Federer's fault, of course. Since you can't pick your parents, you can't really pick when you are born, either. Blaming Federer for being dominant in a weak era is a lot like judging Wilt Chamberlain for being bigger than everyone else during the infancy of the NBA. Any competitor like Federer wants to measure himself against the very best.

Eventually, Wilt had Bill Russell as his nemesis, which often brought out historical performances from both men. It remains to be seen whether or not Federer will develop a big-time rivalry with Nadal or Roddick, just like it's still up in the air whether or not the slugging Phillie will ever fall to mere mortal status against a tough lefty pitcher.

Then again mere mortality never seemed to happen for the golf-swatting Nike billboard sitting courtside for the tennis clinic on Sunday.

Where's the hype?

Let’s play a little game of make believe, shall we?

Like, let’s make believe there is no such thing as androstenedione. Or better yet, let’s pretend that the scientists who came up with “The Cream” and “The Clear” never told anyone that their little invention had sports performance-enhancing traits. How about if they figured out ways to make the ointments cure cancers or diseases instead of making over-muscled men hit baseballs farther or run faster?

While we’re at it, let’s pretend Bud Selig, the Major League owners and the players’ association all worked together to put effective, and Olympic-quality drug testing in place during the mid 1990s. Or how about if the athletes who used (and use) human growth hormone thought, “You know, I could use this and it would make me stronger and recover faster so I can work out twice as hard and hit those baseballs really far. That would probably mean a few extra million dollars in my next contract, but you know what? There’s some sick little kid who might need this more than me.”

Let’s pretend that because of everything listed above, Mark McGwire didn’t hit 70 home runs in 1998 or 65 in 1999. Or that Sammy Sosa didn’t hit 66, 63 or 64 homers in ’98, ’99 or 2001, respectively. Suppose Barry Bonds didn’t hit 73 homers in 2001, and continued to average his 33 homers per season like he did prior to the 2001 campaign. At that rate – if he were still playing – he might be threatening the 700-home run plateau. Maybe then there would be some excitement about Bonds’ feats instead of the collective yawn his homers receive as he approached Hank Aaron’s all-time mark.

Pretend all of things happened, or didn’t happen.

Now pretend you’re a Phillies fan watching Ryan Howard. How excited would you be right now?

Though the Phillies’ smiling slugger is on pace to become just the third player in Major League history to reach the mythical 60-home run plateau and not sit in front of a Congressional sub-committee or grand jury so that a bunch lawyers could ask what he took to hit the ball so far, there could be so much more excitement. Philadelphia could be the focus of the sporting world right now as Howard zeroed in on Babe Ruth and Roger Maris. He would be a national icon instead of just the guy who beat Mike Schmidt’s record for most homers in a season by a Phillie.

Remember how everyone checked the box scores every morning or stayed up late to catch the sports highlights to see if McGwire or Sosa smacked another one during the ’98 season? Remember how they said that chase rekindled the nation’s interest in baseball and turned the casual fans into degenerate seamhead stat freaks? That could all be happening right here, right now.

Thanks to his player-of-the-month August where he slugged 14 homers, and this past week where he hit six bombs in seven days, including three in consecutive plate appearances against the Braves last Sunday, Howard needs eight more home runs in the final 24 games to tie Maris’. In fact, Howard’s output has been so prolific that his slugging and the Phillies’ wild-card chances have become the talk of the town instead of the Eagles’ season opener this Sunday in Texas somewhere. Questions like, “Do you think he can hit 60?” have been the focus of conversation instead of “Do you think the Eagles can get back to the playoffs?”

Phillies games are now divided into three, quick need-to-know categories:

Did he hit one?

Did they win?

How far back are they?

But it’s Howard and the “what if” game that is the most intriguing. Because we have to wonder what happened in those darkened corners of baseball before there was serious drug policy, it kind of throws a wet-blanket over Howard’s season. For instance, since Howard is not chasing the record, as he very well could be, his season will be memorable only in our little provincial world. Sure, he could win the MVP Award this season, but we’re still missing out on the daily media frenzy.

Worse, because it is assumed that Bonds, Sosa and McGwire were cheaters, people will always wonder about Howard, too. Indirectly – even with power exploits going back to when he was 12-years old and hit a home run that went so far that it crashed into a Red Lobster – Howard is a victim of the steroid era.

Columnists and talk-show types, who never show up to the ballpark to chat with Howard even though he is always waiting in front of his locker on the front right side of the clubhouse, can flex with no-it-all poses about how Howard is under suspicion. Very easily, those people can show up at the park and walk right up to the easy-going and accessible slugger and ask him, point blank, if he’s juiced.

The answer, as reported by Paul Hagen in the Daily News:

“People are entitled to their opinions,” he said, rolling his eyes. “But it does bother me. It casts a shadow on the game.

“I know I'm not using steroids. This barrel right here [pointing to his stomach] is proof enough. People are going to say what they want to say. I thought about it once and then it was like, ‘Well, whatever.’ I'm not doing it. If they want to test me, they can test me.

“I just think it sucks. The thing about it is, if you're going to make those kinds of comments, have proof. Otherwise, you can ruin people's reputations.”

Howard is already making his own glowing reputation. Aside from the huge numbers – he has a chance to become just the fifth player in history to hit better than .300, smash 50 homers and drive in 150 runs – Howard is accountable. Not just for the media, but for his teammates, too.

Count on this: Howard will never sit in front of a Congressional committee and say: “I’m not here to talk about the past… ”