Manuel enters last year of contract

It wasn’t all that long ago when general manager Pat Gillick stood in front of the local press and said that he didn’t think the Phillies would be able to compete for a playoff spot until 2008. To be fair, it certainly didn’t look good for the Phillies from anyone’s perspective after the team had just sent Bobby Abreu and Cory Lidle to the Yankees while dealing away veterans David Bell and Rheal Cormier in a payroll purge that had “Fire Sale” written all over it.

So when Gillick – a GM who has witnessed enough in his four decades in the game to know a salary dump when he saw one – the “wait until the year after next year” was chillingly honest.

“It will be a stretch to say we’ll be there in ’07,” Gillick said on last 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.”

But a funny thing happened on the Phillies’ trip to oblivion. After the trading deadline Ryan Howard emerged as the slugger in the Majors by smashing 23 home runs in the final 58 games. Furthermore, Chase Utley joined Howard amongst the game’s elite and clubbed 10 homers in the last month of the season to form a dynamic duo that should be a staple for the Phils well into the next decade.

A team does not live on homers alone, which is a good thing because heralded rookie Cole Hamels showed glimpses of the brilliance everyone had predicted by going 6-3 with a 2.60 ERA and 76 strikeouts in 69 1/3 innings during the season’s final two months. Those are numbers any veteran would take, let alone a 22-year-old kid who had never completed a full season ever because of one injury or another.

With that, when Jimmy Rollins proclaims the Phillies are the team to beat in the NL East everyone just kind of shrugs and says, “Yeah, maybe he’s on to something.”

“We've improved ourselves, and some other teams haven't really done a whole lot,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “We've cut some ground on the Mets. On paper, we got stronger in our division.”

In other words, despite Gillick’s anti-Knute Rockne speech, the Phillies believed they were good enough to compete for a playoff spot now. With a youthful exuberance that prevents the players from doing something silly by allowing the media or fans to dictate how good they can be, the Phillies took the season to its final days for the second straight season. Actually, the prospects for success changed so much that Gillick backed off his claim from last July and went out and added a couple of veteran pitchers for the rotation, a veteran bat or two for the bench, and just might have another move up his sleeve to get a relief pitcher before the Phillies break camp in Clearwater and head north in late March.

Suddenly, wait-until-the-year-after-next-year became let’s-get-them-now.

This turnaround begs the question, “How did this happen?” Or better yet: “Just what did the Phillies do to go 36-22 after trading Abreu and three other veterans to nearly reach the playoffs for just the second time since Hamels, Howard and Utley were babies?”

Do you really want to know what the players say? Well… it’s the manager.

“He's a big reason the chemistry on this team is as good as it is,” Aaron Rowand said at last week’s media luncheon in Citizens Bank Park. “You guys don't get to see it, the fans don't get to see it, because you guys aren't in the clubhouse all the time. You guys aren't in the dugout during the game when he's talking to the guys, when he's conversing with people, helping guys out, pumping guys up. He's one of the best managers I've ever had a chance to play for, and I would have been very sorry to have seen him go after last year.”

Rowand, who won the World Series with Ozzie Guillen as the manager for the White Sox in 2005, isn’t the only player who says these kinds of things, either. Actually, it’s harder to find a player who says Manuel is not his favorite manager. Any player who has spent time with Manuel has lots of stories to tell with most of the subject matter dealing with something that left everyone in stitches and gets retold in an imitation of the skipper’s Virginia drawl.

In that regard, if imitation is the most sincere form of flattery then Charlie Manuel is the most beloved man in Philadelphia.

Yet for as much as the players love him, and for as much as the writing press respects him, something about Manuel’s down home, everyman persona has missed with the sophisticates in Philadelphia. In fact, a common thing heard from folks talking about the Phillies’ chances is that the team is ready to make a run at the playoffs, but if they don’t maybe they’ll finally get rid of that Charlie Manuel.

And because Manuel is heading in to the last season of his three-year deal, it could be playoffs or bust for him.

Yes, he knows all about it.

“Believe me, that doesn't affect me,” Manuel said. “I want to focus on winning ballgames. It's not about me. It's about our players. The players are the ones who are going to win the game for us, and if we're successful, then I think Charlie Manuel will be successful.”

Make no mistake; there are a lot of people who don’t want the Phillies to be successful for that very reason. Forget that after two seasons in which Manuel won more games than all but one manager in team history through this point in his tenure – a fact first reported on CSN.com. With the Phillies, 173 victories in two seasons in which the team was eliminated from wild-card playoff contention at game Nos. 162 and 161 is borderline historic. Actually, it’s more than remarkable – it’s unprecedented.

This is a franchise, after all, where only two (two!) managers have taken the team to more than one postseason. It’s a franchise that has been to the playoffs just nine times in 123 seasons. For comparisons sake, look at the Atlanta Braves who… wait, nevermind. It just isn’t fair to compare the Phillies to any other franchise.

One thing hasn’t changed from the Phillies’ golden days in the late 1970s and early1980s and that’s the bottom line. In the end, winning is the only thing that matters.

“Ever since I came here, from Day 1, I said I came here to win,” Manuel said. “It's not, ‘I need to win.’ It’s, ‘Philadelphia needs to win.’ ‘The organization needs to win.’ And I understand that.”

So what happens if the Phillies win in 2007? Does Manuel get a new deal to take him into the next decade, or does the organization allow him to walk away? Of all the intriguing plotlines for the upcoming baseball season, the case of Manuel and his future with the Phillies could be the most interesting. After two seasons littered with hope and promise there is plenty of room for improvement.

But then again, for the Phillies 173 victories in two seasons is nothing to sneeze at.

Calling it a career

It was in July of 1966 when Jim Brown got the call from Cleveland Browns’ owner Art Modell that he should report to training camp immediately. But after nine seasons of hard running where he delivered as much punishment as he received in rushing for 12,312 yards and another 2,499 receiving for 126 touchdowns – excluding five playoff games – Brown decided enough was enough. Just 29-years old and regarded as the best football player ever, Brown couldn’t wrestle up the desire to heed Modell’s call and head to steamy, sultry Ohio for two-a-days.

Instead he remained in France to continue making The Dirty Dozen.

For anyone who has seen that epic film I think we know that Brown made the correct choice. Come on think about it… make The Dirty Dozen with Lee Marvin and John Cassavettes or run around in Cleveland to prepare for the 1966 NFL season. Does anyone remember anything that occurred in the 1966 NFL season?

Does anyone remember 1966?

It is worth noting, however, that Brown likely never would have had the chance to be anywhere near the production set of any motion picture had he not played football. The NFL, and all of professional sports for that matter, seems to be a great proving ground for acting, public speaking, and journalism. Based on generalizations from national and local television appearances, even the most middling careers as a professional jock carries more weight than an advanced degree from some of the country’s best universities.

And just like in national politics, correct grammar, syntax and prowess over the language is optional.

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the spectrum from Brown is Barry Sanders, who had no blockbuster movies or a career as a smiling suit to tackle after 10 seasons of piling up more than 18,000 yards for the hapless Detroit Lions. Instead Sanders acted like a insouciant cool kid who was invited to a party hosted and attended by a group a little beneath his social standing.

Imagine what that conversation sounded like when the Lions called Sanders, then just 31, to ask him why he wasn’t at training camp.

“Hello.”

“Hey Barry, it’s the Lions. We’re just calling to see how your summer was going and to see if you were going to come on out to training camp. We have a lot of people here and it looks like it’s going to be a really good time.”

“Hmmm.”

“Yeah, well, we kind of have everyone here and were hoping you’d show up soon since you’re the best guy we have.”

“Yeah, about that… who else is going to be there?”

“Well, it looks like pretty much all the same guys who were here last year. There are a few new guys, but no one you ever really heard of.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty much the same guys that were here last year.”

“Hmmm. Well, if that’s the case I guess I’m just going to go ahead and retire. I was hoping we’d get some new guys to show up that were really good at football, but since it’s pretty much the same guys as before, I’m going to stay home and never play football again. I think it will be much more beneficial for me to be able to walk without a limp when I go out to pick up the newspaper or heading toward the green at the first hole. That’s the thing – I’m just tired of getting the crap kicked out of me.”

“But Barry, you’re a few yards away from being the greatest rusher in football history. Don’t you want to get the record? Wouldn’t it be neat to be able to tell your grandchildren that nobody ever ran for more yards than you?”

“No. I think it will be better to be able to walk. Thanks for the offer and the millions of dollars, though. I really appreciate it.”

click

Somewhere in the middle of all of this is Tiki Barber, who like Sanders, is just 31 and tired of playing professional football for a living. Like Brown, Barber hopes to have a career in the national media when all of his former teammates report to training camp in the heat and the sweat of July. According to reports, Barber has a very lucrative deal from Disney lined up where he lend his expertise and smile to the television cameras for the occasional football game and on the gabfests like “Good Morning America” and “20/20.”

If all goes well, it’s quite possible that Barber could land a role in something as epic as The Dirty Dozen. After all, he already has a national television commercial for the Cadillac Escalade – filmed on the moody, dark and stylish streets of The City – to his credit. With that, I suppose the endorsement deal from the Concerned Friends of the Environment is out.

Nevertheless, when Barber’s career came to a close after David Akers’ 38-yard field goal knifed through the raindrops and split the uprights at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday evening, the speculation began in earnest. Could that 137-yard effort in a playoff game in Philadelphia really have been his last game? Is he really going to stay retired? Michael Jordan came back – twice. George Foreman couldn’t stay retired, either. Nor could Mario Lemieux.

How could he just walk away?

Well… easy.

You see, most people dreamed of becoming an professional athlete and what could be better than being the running back for the football team in the country’s largest city? But Barber says he doesn’t want to be defined by simply being a football player. There is much more to him, he says. Most people -- not just athletes -- don't think this way because they view themselves by the mundane and pigeonholing labels that societies places on people, places and things. Plus, what skews things is that they often really define themselves by what they do. In fact, most of them say that they will not stop playing until they are dragged away.

There lies the contradiction. Most people do not define themselves by their jobs. Instead, regular folks have hobbies or passions that drive them more than just their jobs and work. Why should people whose job is to play football be any different? Why should athletes be held to a different standard?

Why should Tiki Barber have to live out someone else’s dream?

Besides, more people are going to remember Tiki Barber, Jim Brown and Barry Sanders as something other than a football player.