FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, on the day they buried Charlie Manuel's father, his high school baseball team was scheduled to play a game in Charlottesville, about 50 miles away from his home in Buena Vista, Va. His coach, Charlie Kurtz, told him to skip it.
"Let me tell you about that day of the funeral," Kurtz was saying yesterday, on the phone from Staunton, Va. "His father had been a Pentecostal preacher. The family really didn't have much money. When he died, it had been a terrible situation for them.
YONG KIM / Staff photographer
Charlie Manuel sits in dugout just hours after learning of mother's death.
