WHO’S NO. 1?
As Mets struggles grow, Terry Collins reflects on his years in N.Y. just days before becoming franchise’s longest tenured manager
TERRY COLLINS had nothing but time. And it killed him. In the year after he tearfully resigned as manager of the Angels in 1999, Collins poured over every little thing he’d done wrong. Then 50 years old, Collins thought about how he lost the Angels clubhouse and how he lost out on personal relationships off the field as well.
“I sat there and tore myself apart,” Collins said this week. “I just went through everything to figure out what it was that I had to do get better if I ever got the chance to manage again.”
And it wasn’t just about baseball either, the now 67-year-old Mets manager said he needed changes in his personal life, as well. He was arrested for DUI in June 2002, nearly three years after his Angels tenure ended.
Nearly 18 years after his teary resignation, Collins is a different man and manager. And Saturday he will become the longest tenured manager in Mets history, surpassing Davey Johnson, who managed 1,012 games for the Mets from 1984-1990. And fittingly Collins will do it against the team he last managed before coming to the Mets — the Angels.
Hours before the Mets lost their seventh straight game Wednesday, Collins talked about his future in New York, saying he would like to keep going.
But with the Mets mired in a dismal slide, and facing a rash of injuries, Collins has been facing mounting criticism about his job.
“I can’t worry about that,” Collins said of speculation about his job security. “It’s part of the job.”
The Mets extended his contract through this season after he led them to the 2015 World Series, but despite taking a team decimated by injuries to the 2016 wild-card game, Collins’ future isn’t secure beyond this year. He’s been tested by a trying season yet does not feel like it is time to go.
“When Jim (Leyland) retired he told me he just knew. He got off a flight after playing us in New York, they took two out of three so it was a good series for him, and he drove to his condo and just felt he didn’t want to do it anymore,” Collins said of his friend, mentor and longtime manager. “I don’t feel that way. I am tired at times with the travel, but I still enjoy it. I want to see how I feel at the end of the year. I want to talk to (my wife) Debbie. “But I am still enjoying it.” It has not been easy being the face of a team that went through the process of bottoming out and rebuilding in his tenure. He may have lost some of the intensity that rubbed payers the wrong way in the past, but the edge and competitiveness is still there, and he’s still respected in the clubhouse and around the league.
“He’s as good a field manager as there is,” said SNY analyst Keith Hernandez, who played for Johnson. “And all his teams even when they are stinky, hustle for him.”
When Collins accepted the job in November of 2011, he did not see this coming.
Despite having managed two other major league clubs (he also managed the Astros), the former minor league shortstop was in unchartered territory. Once described by his players as intense “as a man at a gas station holding a match,” Collins has changed. A brief conversation with former Angel star Garret Anderson right before Collins resigned his job in Anaheim resonated with Collins in that year of reflection.
“He told me that he respected I was intense,” Collins said. “Then he told me that he was not like that and it didn’t work for him.”
Collins came to a realization that he was still trying to prove himself every day.
“I was small. I had talent (as a player), but I was small and so I had to play harder and work harder than everybody else and I still didn’t make it,” Collins reflected. “That became my personality. If players I managed made a mistake, I was pissed, because I felt like it was on me. That I didn’t prepare them well enough, I wasn’t as good as the other guys. It ate at me.
“And I took it home and it affected other people,” Collins said. “I couldn’t keep it up. I wasn’t happy.”
He reshaped himself by going outside his comfort zone. He went to Japan and managed. He went back to the minors and focused on player development. Collins found happiness off the field with his family. He was getting married again. When the call from the Mets came, he couldn’t let managing baseball take him back. He still won’t. “I didn’t know how long it was going to last,” Collins said. “The only thing I knew was I was going to enjoy it more. I have. It’s a battle trying to, when you are beat up like we are now, it’s a battle to put the right mixes together. That’s just part of managing. That’s what I missed the competition side of everything.
“You never know how long these jobs are going to last,” Collins said. “But, I knew I was going to enjoy it this time and I have.”