JerryWorld 2010

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I have a feeling we'll be talking quite a bit about on-field stewardship quite a bit this year. So before anyone else can Jerry-mander this conversational territory, I'll carve out a space in which we can discuss all things Manuel.

A nice place to start-- and something of a Rorschach test-- might be found in looking back. What do YOU see when you read the first few pages of this Bill Nack piece, from the March 13, 2000 SI? A still-learning, somewhat-inexperienced manager standing his ground in dealing with an entitled (admittedly selfish-sounding) superstar? Obstinate, horse-blinded jackass, unable or refusing to understand an injured player's understandable self-concern? A failure of communication between manager and player, between organization and employee(s)? The making of a relationship, or the unmaking of one? Long-Ago/Barely-Recognizable Jerry? Same Old Jerry? Something in Between Jerry?

Yet a decidedly real Thomas was in Arizona on that February morning, all 6'5" and 270 pounds of him, rolling to his feet and, like a child trying to get out of climbing the rope in gym class, holding a note from a doctor excusing him from doing certain rigorous exercises, including the dread shuttle�a series of back-and-forth wind sprints between traffic cones set at varying distances. Thomas had undergone surgery on his right foot late last summer, and he was claiming that the foot was still too raw and tender for the sudden stops and starts of the shuttle. But Manuel wasn't buying the excuses. The scene was almost touching. The note was in Thomas's back pocket, folded up, and he was seen repeatedly taking it out, unfolding it, showing it to Manuel and then returning it to his pocket, as if he were nervous and unsure of what to do. "Why aren't you going to do the shuttle?" Manuel demanded. "Jerry, you're not listening to me!" Thomas pleaded. "I'm not 100 percent healthy. I'll run it when I am!" "That's poor, Frank," Manuel said. "That's poor." The two ended up at silent loggerheads. Manuel eventually ordered Thomas off the field, and as the team started running the shuttle, there was Thomas in a place and pose symbolic of his life as a player for much of last year: standing to the side by himself, away from his young team, his giant arms folded across his chest and his face marked by a scowl. General manager Ron Schueler saw the angry, embarrassed player head for the clubhouse and steered his golf cart over to Manuel. "I've got a problem with him not doing the shuttle," Manuel said to Schueler. "I told him he couldn't be on the field. How do you want to handle it?" Schueler thought for a moment. "This is something you have to work out," he said. They worked it out, all right. The manager tracked his star player into the clubhouse. "Come into my office," Manuel said. He closed the door, but one could hear the two men shouting at each other, their voices rising and their words often profane. "That's a bunch of bulls�, and it had better stop!" Thomas yelled. "I'm not having it." "This bulls�is the reason why we are always butting heads!" Manuel said. What happened over the next two hours, during which Schueler joined them and White Sox p.r. men guarded the entrances to the clubhouse like Dobermans to keep out the press, was really an extension of what had occurred last year, from the silent tug-of-war that Manuel and Thomas had waged over Thomas's role on the club-designated hitter or first baseman?�right up to a climactic doubleheader on Sept. 6 in Texas during which a furious Manuel ordered Thomas back to Chicago. On that day a physically distressed Thomas, hobbled by a massive bone spur in his right ankle and a large corn on the disfigured small toe on that same foot, had struck out as a pinch hitter in the first game. "An embarrassing at bat," Thomas says. The right foot is the one he plants for balance and pushes off of for power, and the pain he had been feeling in it since early July had forced him to alter his stance and stroke. "My swing was just screwed up," he says. So he decided to sit out the second game. That Thomas made himself unavailable was not what stirred Manuel's pot; it was that he failed to inform his manager that he could not play at all in the nightcap. When the ideal moment arose for the righthanded-batting Thomas to pinch-hit�in the sixth inning, with two outs and the bases loaded and the White Sox losing 6-3, the Rangers brought in a journeyman lefty, Mike Munoz, to pitch�Manuel sent someone to fetch Thomas in the clubhouse. The emissary found the player out of sorts and out of uniform, in a T-shirt and shower sandals. Informed that his superstar was indisposed, Manuel began to pace the dugout like a puma, biting off and spitting out a long chaw of expletives and later telling beat reporters that he was as angry as he had ever been as the manager of the White Sox. "I was upset," he told the Chicago Sun-Times. "I was yelling things on the bench. It was like one of my kids had rebelled against me." He finally told his trainer, Herm Schneider, in front of the players, that Thomas would not be traveling with the team from Texas to Anaheim. "Send him home," Manuel said, as he would recall it later to the Chicago Tribune. "I don't want to see him on our plane. If he has a problem with that, tell him he can see me in my office." As the rest of the team winged off to California, a pouting Thomas blew off the press and flew back to Chicago. The next day Dr. Lowell Scott Weil, the team podiatrist, saw the bone spur on an X-ray and confirmed tendinitis through ultrasound. The White Sox were not in contention for a wild-card berth in the playoffs, and given the uproar caused by the Texas incident and considering the presence of all those impressionable young call-ups on the team, Schueler decided that the floundering Thomas should not wait for surgery. Indeed, the pain from the spur and the corn had worsened since the All-Star break on July 13, when Thomas was hitting .323 with 12 home runs and 57 RBIs. In the two months after that, growing increasingly helpless at the plate, he hit .271 with only three homers and 20 RBIs. On Sept. 13 Weil cut the spur off Thomas's ankle, and he was flabbergasted by the size of it. A former podiatrist for the Chicago Bears, Weil says he has treated 30,000 patients during 35 years of practice, and to call that thing a spur hardly described it. "It was the biggest I have ever taken out," Weil says. "It was truly the size of a golf ball." The spur was rubbing on a tendon in the ankle. Weil also removed from the little toe a large corn, which was filled with nerves and blood vessels, and operated on the twisted digit to remodel the bone and reconstruct the ligament. Thomas had come under withering attack in the press for his failure to pinch-hit in Texas and for taking an early exit from the season. He was depicted as a quitter who was tanking it to preserve his eighth .300 season. (He was batting .305 when he went down for the surgery.) He says that the ferocity of the attack was a factor that forced his flight to Los Angeles, where he rented a house in Beverly Hills for the winter. Thomas stewed about the incident for months, feeling that White Sox management had minimized the injury and left him twisting in the wind. He arrived in Arizona 2? weeks ago seeking to unburden himself, and Manuel came prepared to deal more firmly with him. Thomas had been in Tucson for only two days when the inevitable clash occurred, with Manuel confronting him on the field and then in his office. Manuel, a pleasant, soft-spoken man, is an admirer of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., but on his desk that week he had a copy of a book called Cigars, Whiskey & Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant. He obviously stole a page from that and went on the offensive, riling Thomas by questioning his desire to be a team player. "I don't think you want to do what we do as a team," Manuel said. "It's important you do this with the team." Bristling, Thomas reminded Manuel of his foot surgery. "Don't play games with me like that," Thomas said. "I've been here 10 years. I'm going to be 32 years old. I'm a man. Treat me like a man. You don't need to play mind games with me. I've been through all the wars. I'm closing in on the tail end of my career, Jerry. I'm under the gun to get my s�together. So don't question my desire."

[metirish]

What do YOU see when you read the first few pages of this Bill Nack piece, from the March 13, 2000 SI?

First I never heard of this incident before, I see a manager wanting to stamp his authority on a team even if it's the wrong fight and he's going about it the wrong way.Players say Jerry is a great communicator and he may well be but I see a man who can be very stubborn at times , to me Jerry comes across as wrong in the article but that may just be how it is written.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I guess I've seen flashes of that insecurity --- probably more of it in Randolph --- but no, I don't think that's quite where he is now.

[ashie62]

I don't see that in Jerry now, time seems to have beaten him somewhat

[Guest Edgy DC]

Seriously, no offense to President Grant, but if you saw this volume on the desk of a guy you were inteviewing with, wouldn't you think, "I don't want to work for this asshole"?

[Ceetar]

I see very much of that still in him, you need to look no further then the first very game he took over. It's actually kind of disturbing that he hasn't grown or learned at all. He jumped at the first chance to put his stamp on 'his team', but asserting his authority over Reyes at first base when he showed signs of hurting himself. Manuel had already decided what he was going to do long before he analyzed Reyes at first, he didn't call for a trainer, didn't ask Reyes to walk it off or test it.

And this wasn't a 'new' manager. Certainly this was a new role on the team, leading it rather than being 'second in command', but he wasn't a stranger to his players, to Reyes. If Reyes recognized or respected him as a leader, or as authority, he wouldn't have reacted to the decision quite the way he did. Following that event, I feel like there have been other signs that suggest that the players themselves aren't confident in Manuel's decision, even if it's as simple as Santana blowing off bunt signs.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Look, if it gets this toxic with any of the embedded players here, Jerry's the one who will be flying solo back to Chicago.

I think he managed like a complete wuss last year but to be fair he seems to be the kind of manager who wants to spend some time character-building at the start of the year and then start pounding with "his guys" when the weather gets warmer. Valentine did that too. Only, Jerry never got that chance last year, since by the time they should have been winning half the team was injured, and they'd wasted too many games pinch-hitting for Castro and bunting in the first inning in the season's first two months to do survive that. He was sort of hoisted on his own petard as that saying goes.

Interestingly, Jerry has said an awful lot about the importance of getting off to a strong start this year, and he knows his neck is on the line, so hopefully he steps on the gas sooner this year.

[MFS62]

Edgy DC wrote: Seriously, no offense to President Grant, but if you saw this volume on the desk of a guy you were inteviewing with, wouldn't you think, "I don't want to work for this asshole"?

As compared to... who? someone with a Robert E. Lee book on his desk?
Seriously, since I like military history (although the Civil War isn't my sweet spot), it might even be a positive. Grant appreciated strategy, winning and a good stiff drink every once in a while. Probably all things necessary to be a major league manager.

Later

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

MFS62 wrote: Edgy DC wrote: Seriously, no offense to President Grant, but if you saw this volume on the desk of a guy you were inteviewing with, wouldn't you think, "I don't want to work for this asshole"? As compared to... who? someone with a Robert E. Lee book on his desk? Seriously, since I like military history (although the Civil War isn't my sweet spot), it might even be a positive. Grant appreciated strategy, winning and a good stiff drink every once in a while. Probably all things necessary to be a major league manager. Later

Grant enjoyed the drink a LOT-- he probably would have had five different kinds of rye on his desk rather than any history book. Also, he relied heavily on patronage and baksheesh in rebuilding the South, and sorta famously tolerant of corruption among his cabinet and other advisors. (Seems a natural soul-counterpoint for someone who seems to have his "guys" in every clubhouse, maybe.)

I'd be a little wary, probably. But conspicuous display of any big-ass self-help book in a workspace hints to me that the guy probably isn't working as much as he should be, or that he's a fan of conspicuous display of self-help books. Either way...

[Guest Edgy DC]

MFS62 wrote: Edgy DC wrote: Seriously, no offense to President Grant, but if you saw this volume on the desk of a guy you were inteviewing with, wouldn't you think, "I don't want to work for this asshole"? As compared to... who? someone with a Robert E. Lee book on his desk?

More like, "As compared to what?" What being a real book. Not some market-driven "leadership secrets of" book that promises to sell you a new personality off the rack for twenty bucks.

[metirish]

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote

I'd be a little wary, probably. But conspicuous display of any big-ass self-help book in a workspace hints to me that the guy probably isn't working as much as he should be, or that he's a fan of conspicuous display of self-help books. Either way...

This....

I'm not impressed and I become skeptical of the person when I read about the books that are "just lying around" on his desk, not just Jerry as in this case." look at me I'm reading books on Mao and the new book by Jack Welch on leadership"....big fucking deal asshole.

[MFS62]

Yikes!
When I replied, I never saw the image of the book cover/title on my PC. I wasn't at home - editing software.
So my comment about leadership, winning and drinking was from what I remembered about Grant.
I guess the author had the same ideas.

As for the drinking, I recall a story about a woman coming up to President Lincoln and asking him if he knew that General Grant drank whiskey. Lincoln replied "He does? Then I'd like to find out what he drinks and send a case of it to my other Generals". (Could be paraphrasing there)

I wonder if that's in the book.

Later

[Guest Edgy DC]

metirish wrote: I'm not impressed and I become skeptical of the person when I read about the books that are "just lying around" on his desk, not just Jerry as in this case." look at me I'm reading books on Mao and the new book by Jack Welch on leadership"....big fucking deal asshole.

That's what I'm getting at.








See it's all about brand advancement and exploiting brand loyalty (somebody must have written a book on Jerry Garcia's Leadership Secrets) in the niche market of "leadership" books, and not about teaching you anything at all. Add in the cross-market synergy of the period* with the whiskey and cigars, as if you too can lead armies in battle to save a nation, and you just have to adopt these bad habits. It becomes distressing that Jerry or somebody who loves him fell for such a weak-assed gimmick.

* We talk about the conspicuous consumption of the Reagan eighties, but there was a nice little run of it in the Clinton nineties too (and I'm sure most every era of economic expansion). Among the expanding markets were SUVs, cigars, and top shelf liquor sold to folks who had previously been beer drinkers. It of course wasn't about leadership, but flaunting your big shot status.

[TransMonk]

Cubs Fans' Leadership Secrets? Really?

"Get drunk early, fade away late."

[Ceetar]

Cubs Fans' Leadership Secrets? Really? "Get drunk early, fade away late."

the subtitle is :learning to win from a cursed teams mistakes:



*snickers*

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Edgy DC wrote: Seriously, no offense to President Grant, but if you saw this volume on the desk of a guy you were inteviewing with, wouldn't you think, "I don't want to work for this asshole"?

I'm sure high-profile "leaders" get these things mailed to them all the time. I'm a complete lickspittle and I get this kinda crap in the mail every week.

[Guest Edgy DC]

That's a good point. If that was on his desk simply because it hadn't yet cleared out his garbage mail, and the author of the article wrote about it, well, one point to the marketing department.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I'm sure high-profile "leaders" get these things mailed to them all the time. I'm a complete lickspittle and I get this kinda crap in the mail every week.

Well, maybe you should get "Lickspittling the Memphis Mafia Way" (w/foreword by Al Sharpton) off your damn desk.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Jerry met the writers today.

Summary of Jerry Manuel's press conference � BY ADAM RUBIN � He very much wants to put Jose Reyes in the No. 3 slot, but won't push the issue if Reyes sulks. Manuel predicts he won't since Reyes is simply happy to be healthy in the manager's estimation. (JCL -- love this idea, now only if the writers and morons can take it) � Daniel Murphy isn't in a true contest for first base, or even facing a legit platoon with Fernando Tatis. That doesn't spell doom for Mike Jacobs. Manuel said he wants a power bat for the bench akin to what the Phillies had with Matt Stairs, even if the player is not a versatile fielder. JCL -- I like that too. � Now that Jon Niese is throwing off a mound, Manuel has revised his assessment of the fifth starter's race. He said it will be hard to keep him out of the rotation. JCL - OK � Henry Blanco is the backup, not physically capable of being the No. 1. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/mets/#ixzz0g0MRyLu2

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Agreed on points 1, 2, and 3.

But isn't the whole point of a "backup" to have someone that you can at least count on as a warm body, more or less indefinitely?

And Lord love stuff like this:

Manuel said he intends to put an extra focus on �the fundamentals,� this spring, specifically, �pitching, throwing strikes, defense and base running.�

So THAT's what they were doing wrong last year, Doctor? Well, fuck me twice and leave my money on the hope chest-- if they'd stopped walking dudes and dropping balls, we could have had something there!

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

How's he getting them to throw strikes? Here's how:

One of the most interesting aspects of the Mets' first pitchers and catchers workout Saturday was the sight of pitchers charting each others' pitches during bullpen sessions. Pitchers were paired together on a bank of mounds near the back of the Tradition Field complex -- Johan Santana with Oliver Perez, John Maine with Mike Pelfrey, etc. While one pitched, the other stood behind him with a pen, paper and clipboard and recorded balls and strikes thrown. Then they alternated. Normally, a pitcher throwing a bullpen session will just fire away at the catcher. He has an idea of how well he's throwing, as do the coaches, but no one is counting balls and strikes. Now, Manuel hopes pitchers will be more conscious of the strike zone whenever they're throwing off a mound. "The guy that is performing knows now that he is being held accountable," Manuel said. "He's not just getting up there and just flinging it anywhere. He's being held accountable for throwing strikes."

This makes perfect sense, of course, since wild pitchers are wild because they think they can get away with it.

Really, though, this is all pointless, unless you start getting tough re: enforcement. Suck on walk fines, scofflaws!

[Benjamin Grimm]

I know that strike-throwing is a good thing, in baseball as well as in bowling, but there could be a danger in over-emphasizing this. If it becomes all about strikes, the result could be a big increase in hittable pitches over the plate.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Let's cut down on the walks anyway, what do you guys say?

[metirish]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I know that strike-throwing is a good thing, in baseball as well as in bowling, but there could be a danger in over-emphasizing this. If it becomes all about strikes, the result could be a big increase in hittable pitches over the plate.

Yes , just like last season emphasizing to the hitters to get on base more , they even had that drill that Jerry rigged for the players to hit 80 balls to the same part of the field , over and over......

[Ceetar]

metirish wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: I know that strike-throwing is a good thing, in baseball as well as in bowling, but there could be a danger in over-emphasizing this. If it becomes all about strikes, the result could be a big increase in hittable pitches over the plate. Yes , just like last season emphasizing to the hitters to get on base more , they even had that drill that Jerry rigged for the players to hit 80 balls to the same part of the field , over and over......

And to that effect, even the depleted 2009 Mets were near the top in league OBP weren't they? (goes to check). Close, they were tied for the NL lead with a .270 BA. Sounds like something focusing on singles to the opposite field would do.. (they were 7th in the NL with OBP.

[metirish]

Yes , emphasized that to the detriment of power. something Hojo has acknowledged and will hope to right this Spring Training.

I guess my point is to not overly focus on one thing ,like throwing strikes or hitting to all fields....yyybbb

[Ceetar]

complete players for the win?

I think the smarter/older players have learned what Jerry does and does not know, so hopefully they'll have learned when to listen, and when to ignore. I hope.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Ceetar wrote: complete players for the win? I think the smarter/older players have learned what Jerry does and does not know, so hopefully they'll have learned when to listen, and when to ignore. I hope.

You've got to know what's a rumor, know when to humor
Know when to swing away, know when to bunt

You never talk 'bout nuthin', when you're sittin' with an owie
There'll be time enough for healin', when the season's done

[ashie62]

Throw strike one

[MFS62]

metirish wrote: Yes , just like last season emphasizing to the hitters to get on base more , they even had that drill that Jerry rigged for the players to hit 80 balls to the same part of the field , over and over......

I remember watching Alex Johnson take batting practice.
He would hit a ball to left, then a ball to center, then a ball to right. Then he'd keep repeating that drill.
IIRC, he led the league in batting that year.

Later