Without added 'genius' label, 'mild-mannered' means expendable

MomSeattle · DadSeattle · SPI · MySeattlePix · My account

Local

US/World

Sports

Business

A&E

Life

Comics

Photos

Opinion

Blogs

Buy Ads

NWsource

Tuesday, September 7, 2004

Without added 'genius' label, 'mild-mannered' means expendable

By JOHN LEVESQUE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Mild-mannered Red Sox manager Terry Jon Francona is at this very moment a genius, a baseball savant.

It happens.

When a team wins 17 of 19 games and closes the gap on the division leader by eight games in 19 days, the manager becomes the sporting version of Leonardo da Vinci. He basks in the reflected shimmer of glowing comments from self-appointed authorities who considered him a moron only a few months earlier.

It's one of baseball's glorious traditions, one that may cost Bob Melvin his job.

Mild-mannered Melvin is not a genius this year because his Seattle Mariners have been uniformly bad from the get-go. Had expectations been lower coming out of spring training, Melvin might not be considered such a loser by the self-appointed authorities. But he stands accused of taking a team of reasonably talented players, an aging but savvy group little changed from the one that won 93 games in 2003, and turning it into silage.

I'm not convinced Melvin is guilty of anything more than being a low-key guy, but low key is the wrong key when you're losing. Better to be a wild man in the key of demented. At least people think you care.

The problem isn't that Melvin is undemonstrative. It's that the Mariners are. What some people don't realize is that this is not Melvin's fault. To suggest that players he didn't hire have become a reflection of the manager is really quite silly. First, it ascribes way too much vigor to the sway of Melvin's personality. Second, if Melvin were such a Svengali, he should be able to mold the team any way he wishes.

Besides, people seem to forget that, in Lou Piniella's last years here as Mariners manager, particularly after the retirement of designated wack-job Jay Buhner, the Mariners were a pretty sedate, businesslike bunch that managed to win a lot of ball games.

Yet it somehow is Melvin's fault that Rich Aurilia and Scott Spiezio couldn't drive in Miss Daisy, that Bret Boone and Edgar Martinez have struggled to find a groove instead of a rut. Too, it somehow is Melvin's fault that the ironman pitching staff of last season developed serious mettle fatigue in 2004.

Melvin may indeed be a bad leader, an ineffective motivator. Francona was hearing similar stuff when the Red Sox were 10 1/2 games behind the Yankees.

What Francona has had to do with Boston's re-insertion into the American League East race will remain a mystery, of course, because the impact of managerial ability on team performance is harder to fathom than why poker-playing is popular on TV.

"You can talk about being confident," he told the Providence Journal, "but until you do it ... that's what confidence is. You've done it and you know you can do it, and we're in the middle of doing it."

While we await a translation of that quote, dare we ask if Francona is responsible for instilling such confidence? I'd be willing to bet that his managerial approach is nearly identical to Melvin's, while the results seem to be nearly opposite.

Francona managed the Phillies to four losing seasons from 1997-2000 and got de-hired for it. Skeptics in Boston wondered if a low-key guy was the right choice to succeed mild-mannered Grady Little, who managed the Red Sox to within one game of the World Series last year but didn't have the chutzpah to lift Pedro Martinez in Game 7 of the ALCS and paid the price.

Right now, Francona is looking more right than Zell Miller. But, then, it helps when you've got Curt Schilling, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek and Pedro Martinez on your side. Clearly the Mariners don't have the kind of lineup the streaking Red Sox will bring into Seattle later this week. They also don't have a Red Sox kind of budget or Red Sox kind of executives.

How that can be construed as Melvin's fault is another of baseball's mysteries. But it will be, just as Francona is getting credit for the contributions of Doug Mientkiewicz, Dave Roberts and Orlando Cabrera, who were pleased to come to Boston when the Red Sox traded shortstop Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs.

Managers sometimes get to weigh in on who gets traded or acquired, but blaming or praising them for personnel decisions promulgated by the general manager or the team's ownership makes no sense. Still, if anyone pays the price for this dismal Mariners season, it will be Melvin. For the Mariners need to create a perception that change is afoot, and it's never enough to conclude that bad playing is what makes a team go bad and good playing does the reverse. If there's someone on the team they call a manager, surely he must be accountable for managing awfully or ably.

Curiously, mild-mannered Dodgers manager Walter Alston won seven National League pennants and four World Series, and I seem to remember reading about his easygoing manner being a boon, not a bane. Ah, but that was then, when fans could wait till next year. This is now, when fans -- and the media -- can't wait to see somebody take the fall.

The good news for Melvin is that if Francona doesn't get the Red Sox into the World Series this year, there may be an opening in Boston, where they seem to like mild-mannered managers.

Sheer genius, no?

P-I columnist John Levesque can be reached at 206-448-8330 or johnlevesque@seattlepi.com