Rough welcomes to managers is a sorry habit for Philly fans
PHILADELPHIA » Charlie Manuel went through it, after using odd lineups, then confessing that the National League’s double-switch requirements had him a little overwhelmed.
Brett Brown went through it, caught as he was with a front office willing to surrender professionalism and making him try to win major-league basketball games with minorleague talent.
Dave Hakstol. He went through it. So did Doug Pederson. So did Jay Wright, just three years ago, and don’t deny it, either. Hazing. That’s what through.
Hazing. Bullying. Unnecessary badgering, heckling, criticism.
They all went through everything Gabe Kapler is going through in the first 10 games as the Phillies manager, though in various degrees. Manuel’s assault was instant, literally starting with his first game in Citizens Bank Park, when he chose to bat career topof-the-order force Kenny Lofton sixth. He was ridiculed for the way he talked, on the radio, in print. He was booed. they went
Brown enjoyed a little more patience at the beginning, with the fans realizing that the Sixers organization was doing something revolutionary and that he was caught up in the process. Hakstol heard it through a 10-game losing streak. Wright was a fan target after Villanova had lost to a couple of mid-majors early in NCAA Tournaments.
Pederson was laughed at for his early-career choices as a rookie NFL head coach, including his belief that surrendering after three downs, not four, was not necessarily the ideal way to manage a football game. He was considered an overmatched, under-prepared Andy Reid plant.
That’s Philadelphia. That’s other places, too. But it’s Philadelphia, and it’s Philadelphia to rotten core.
So it’s Kapler’s turn to go through the fraternity rush, to march to the mound wearing a “Kick me” sign slapped to his back, to be hassled every time he makes a pitching change. Reasons? Some. He yanked Opening Day starter Aaron Nola after 64 pitches without having surrendered a run and lost the game. He’s made some pitching changes since, some curious, most reasonable. But he does not, cannot bob out of the dugout without hearing the howls of disapproval.
Kapler was in that dugout Monday, before a game against the Cincinnati Reds, talking baseball a in his own way. It’s a different way than Pete Mackanin talked baseball, or Ryne Sandberg, or Larry Bowa or Charlie Manuel. Like them, he is a career baseball man who had a majorleague playing career, but he prefers defensive over-shifts and quick hooks of the pitcher, whom he often will bat eighth, not ninth. His lineups change regularly. He starts players at positions they may not prefer. None of that brought him popularity, not that his 3-5 start would have inspired the papers to start printing the magic number. So with that, it has begun: The Charlie Manuel Treatment, take 2.
“I’ve talked to Charlie on several occasions,” Kapler said. “We just sort of talked hitting or whatever was on my mind and on his mind. The other day, we had a little exchange, and we’re hoping to sit down and connect about exactly what you are asking about. And I think that time will come.”
He pretends his quick unpopularity hasn’t bothered him, stressing that the customers pay to watch and cheer the players. And he is right that the young Phillies have not been badgered by the fans; indeed, they have been embraced.
Maybe they will all succeed, Rhys Hoskins and Scott Kingery, Nola and J.P. Crawford, Jorge Alfaro and Maikel Franco, the farmraised nucleus projected by many as being worthy of succeeding Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley and Cole Hamels. If so, Kapler can be like Manuel, too. For as difficult as he had it early in his Phillies career, no one was as beloved late as Manuel, the manager once slapped by the cruel nickname “Elmer Befuddled.”
“We haven’t had specific conversations about what it is like to go through tough times as a manager,” Kapler said. “But I think I can lean on him for advice and support in that way. And I am looking forward to it.”
He talked to Pederson already, on Opening Day, when the Super Bowl-winning head coach received an upper-deck-rattling ovation for throwing a 63 mph ceremonial first pitch. It was a strike. But Philadelphia fans would have cheered him had he air-balled it like Garo Yepremian.
“We discussed communicating relentlessly,” Kapler said. “He used the words, ‘over-communicating with clarity.’ Those are things that I buy into. He talked about staying the course and staying positive. of Those are buy into.
“I buy into how the Eagles went about winning a Super Bowl. And I trust that over the course of time, I won’t get caught up in a fouror five-game stretch. I won’t get caught up in a 20-game stretch. It’s a really, really long season. We’re going to stay the course. We’re going to be strong. We’ll trust that will create confidence over the long haul.”
Philadelphia fans back off. But it took Brown most of a 50-win season before his critics weren’t prone to screaming that his team often wasted big leads. Two national championships helped stabilize Wright’s popularity. There won’t be many “Fire Hak-stol” chants during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Hazing head coaches and managers is a Philadelphia tradition. But it happens. It’s Kapler’s turn. But that doesn’t make it right.
It was crummy with Manuel. And it’s crummy three managers later. things that I will