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"I like for the team to do the celebrating," Manuel said. "I congratulate them - most of them on the field, some of them in here. I go around. But then I get out of the way. First, I don't like champagne in my eyes. But it's about them. I want them to enjoy it . . . They earned the right to raise a little hell."
Overlooked, underappreciated, basking alone - that is Manuel's fate and that is Manuel's decision, even on the day his team wins the National League Division Series over the Milwaukee Brewers. And it's fine.
He is 64 years old, the prototype baseball lifer, and the people in his profession know what he does and how well he does it. The proof is in the way his teams approach their business, how hard they play and how they play to the end. This year, the proof is in the champagne spray.
Manuel knows it, too. He could not stop smiling as he sat there and talked, amused by his exploding cell phone. The guy is a fascinating character. He has a
really hard shell but he also has a quiet
interest in vindication. He does not admit it, not exactly, but you can tell sometimes that the people who dismissed him early on as some kind of a bumpkin did draw blood, at least a little. And when you ask him what he would want people to say about him today, he does not hesitate.
"You know?" he said. "Know what I'd like people to call me? A winner, that's what."
He is headed that way; next up are the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. And Manuel has done things for this team that only stupid people could not appreciate.
After losing Game 3 of the series on Saturday night, Manuel would not permit a hint of a whiff of panic to be perceived. Joe Blanton was pitching because that was the plan. Pat Burrell was playing, even though he hadn't had a hit in the first three games, 0-for-8. He was playing, Manuel said, "Because he's a run producer for us, and I also think it's important I show confidence in him. It's kind of a guy thing - he's my guy. He's the one I've stuck with for 4 years. He's my guy."
Blanton pitched great in Game 4. Burrell hit two homers. The Phils moved on. Manuel shrugged.
"It's a great feeling," he said. "I enjoy this, but my problem is I think too damn much sometimes. Right after we won, I was thinking about the Dodgers, and how we've played them this year. We've crossed two stages, we've got two more to go."
Which brought us back to that word again.
"Winner," Manuel said, repeating himself. "You know? Winner. If you get a World Series ring, you're automatically a winner. That's the symbol of what you achieved, that you're a winner. I think of someone like [Dodgers manager] Joe Torre, and how he's won so many times, and that's how people look at him - he's a winner."
It is what Manuel wants but, oddly, it does not seem to be the reason he does what he does for a living. It is simpler than that. It is that he is the game and the game is him, and that they are somehow inseparable.
"I do it because it's the next best thing to playing," he said. "Look, I'm just a baseball nut. I'm all ball. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't in the dugout.
"To win it would be the best. But it's even more than that. When I was in Cleveland, they hadn't won in forever. The Phillies haven't won in a long time. That would make it sweeter than anything, because it's been so long. At my age, that would probably be the greatest thing I could ever achieve."
But then he stops himself, as if he had heard what he just said and didn't like it - not the words but the tone. We were in that little office. The cell phone was jumping around on the desk, but Manuel wasn't answering it. The desk phone rang about a dozen times and he just ignored it. The quiet remnants of the clubhouse celebration remained outside. The office door was still closed.
"I've always said that I've been very fortunate to have talent around me," Manuel said. "It isn't about the manager. I've always had good talent here and I've always had good attitudes. The players make you . . . They make it good for me. They put in the time. I might talk the game but they do all the work. They make you." *
Send e-mail to
or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at
http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.
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