SUFFERING IN SILENCE
Fiery Bowa adjusting to nuances of dealing with the younger generation of players
NEW YORK » The Phillies had 52 losses in their first 78 games, and Larry Bowa never blinked. He never hollered, kicked, threatened, fought, insulted or argued. He never made a face.
“I keep a lot inside,” Bowa was saying Saturday at CitiField, before the Phillies played the Mets. “There are things I watch and I go, ‘Really?’ But I also understand that it is a different generation.”
Bowa is 71, not 55 like when he managed the Phillies in 2001, not 34 like when he hit .375 in the 1980 World Series. It’s been 51 years since he first rolled into Clearwater and climbed into a pinstriped Phillies uniform, long enough to have seen several baseball generations, how they approached the game, how they were coached.
Things had to change. They did.
“The game was different then,” Bowa said. “Then, if you made a mistake, a manager would bring it up in front of the whole team. And you didn’t want to be embarrassed. So maybe you concentrated a little bit more. I remember my very first spring training like it was yesterday. Gene Mauch. He paid attention to details in spring training. That was his speech to everybody: ‘You young guys, keep your eyes and ears open, and if you pay attention, you might learn something. Every game, you are going to learn something.’ But with players today, if you are going to make a point, it’s got to be one-on-one. It’s got to be behind closed doors. You’ve got to get your point across that it’s constructive criticism.
“A lot of guys take it like, ‘Why are you getting on me?’ But why would a coach get on a player if it is going to hurt his efficiency out there? We are trying to help them. Because as coaches, you want to win as many games as you can. But you have to be very careful of what you say, who you say it to and where you say it to them.”
Bowa doesn’t manage the Phillies, but he advises Pete Mackanin in inning-to-inning options, coaches the infielders and orchestrates the pregame drills that the Phillies do, he insists, longer and harder and more regularly than most teams. And of course he cringes when players are picked off, or disregard stop signs, or hack at third strikes six inches high and just as wide.
Yet what once was an annual entitlement as predictable as Fireworks Night is not going to occur. Not this year. Maybe never again. Larry Bowa, his competitive streak never having been camouflaged during times of Phillies struggle, and there have been plenty, will not erupt. The bat rack is safe. His nerves, too.
“You know why I have a good attitude?” he said. “It’s because I watch other teams, teams with huge payrolls. We just left Seattle, with a payroll of between 100 and 150 million. I watch a pitcher field a bunt and throw it down the rightfield line. Then I watch him give up a hit. And then he balks in the ninth inning and we win that game. I see an outfielder throw to the wrong base. And I’m going, ‘I don’t think it’s just our team.’”
No, the Phillies don’t have a patent on the wasted at-bat, a copyright on the misplaced fastball. Nor do they employ the only outfielder in history to blow off a stop order from a third base coach. Yet no major league team has lost more often, and there has to be some analytical cause-effect.
“It’s tough,” Bowa said. “But it isn’t like we were going in blind. We knew the next couple of years were going to be tough. We got rid of the guys that made this organization successful. We got rid of everybody. We didn’t get caught off guard here. We knew there were going to be peaks and valleys.”
The modern-era Phillies peaked twice, back when Bowa was playing shortstop well enough that he should have been voted into the Hall of Fame, again from 2007 through 2011. Since then, they have been in a valley, and too often, their on-field mistakes dig it even deeper. Ultimately, the blame will cover Mackanin, and perhaps his coaching staff, too. But this deep into his career, Bowa has learned to worry about what he can control. That includes his temper.
“Obviously, I want to win,” he said. “I hate losing. And it will never change. That part of me will never change, and if it ever does and I come in and say, ‘I could care less if we win or lose,’ then I will just walk out the door.
“No matter what kind of people you have — old school, new school, whatever school — my thing is to win as many games as you can any way you can win them.”
So nightly he grabs a fungo bat and an opportunity, working in the afternoon with the infielders, whispering suggestions to Mackanin during the games, keeping some of his thoughts muffled for as long as he can.
“You can’t be like Gene Mauch,” he said. “They are few and far between, put it that way. They don’t do that now. It’s more like the changing of the guard. That’s what people want. They want you to teach. But they also want you to teach at a level where it is more one-on-one than it is 24 guys watching you get on one person.
“Guys are a little more sensitive. They are very talented, as far as being bigger, stronger, faster. But the fundamentals of the game? We are letting them sort of slide through the cracks.”
If so, for Larry Bowa, it will happen with teeth gritted and insides churning. It will happen quietly, at last.