Sam Donnellon: Manuel says mother would have wanted him to finish season
LOS ANGELES - Out on the field, the Dodgers were finishing up their prep work. Some Phillies had already trickled out onto the field, kibitzing with acquaintances from the other team in that odd baseball routine. The late-afternoon sun had already cast streaks of darkness over the dimensions of Dodgers Stadium, providing a little cover for the solitary figure sitting alone on a bench at the top of the visitors' dugout.
"I like being by myself a lot of times," Charlie Manuel had said just minutes before, when he met with the media for the first time since his mother's passing. "And I think any time right now, any time that I can get away, I feel better that way. But we've got things to do."
Things to do. His job. His life. A baseball man, a baseball game, a playoff game. The most important games of Charlie Manuel's managerial career so far, games that can once and for all establish his authenticity at the job.
Joe Torre, 68 and headed to the Hall of Fame someday, managing on the other side. Charlie Manuel, who has spent too much of his 64 years on this earth proving that his mama didn't raise no dummy, with the early advantage.
Another big game. Another big moment. But this one, like the last one, missing one big element.
No June Manuel. No phone call.
"She called me about four, five times a week," Manuel said of his mother, who died Friday of complications from a heart attack at age 87. "I'd say about the last 8 or 10 years she's always made a point to call me quite a bit."
June Manuel took a keen interest in her oldest son's managerial career. More and more as the years mounted, he said later while sitting on that dugout perch, so proud of what he had done with his life.
She watched all the games. She questioned some of the moves, especially the ones that didn't work.
"I never listened to her anyway," he said. "I'd just say, 'Yeah, Ma, whatever.' Sometimes I might get a little upset. I'd say, 'One of these days I'm going to bring you up here and let you tell them.' "
She had 11 kids, including an older brother who died in his first year of life with a heart abnormality. Manuel spoke of him on the dugout seat, too, of how she was really glad when Charlie came along, and the three brothers who followed. They worked jobs in high school to supplement the $137 a month in Social Security his mother tried to feed the family on.
He was proud of that number, maybe more than any number from his career.
They never had much, he said, but it felt like they had everything.
June Manuel made them feel that way, made them feel like they could do anything. Somehow they all played sports, too, all kinds of sports. Charlie was the best, probably a better basketball player than anything else. He could rebound, he could bring up the ball, he could score.
Penn wanted him to go there, the University of North Carolina wanted him, too. He had the grades for both, humping it up in his last 2 years of high school. June Manuel sold him on that, too.
It's a constant in his life, the hard work. He played for years in the minors and in Japan, toiled, they say, for years in the minors for a few brief tours at the show. He is a good hitting coach because he understands its difficulty firsthand. He is a good manager because he understands how difficult it is to play the game.
He is a good man because he was raised to be that way.
"You're only as good as your players," he said at the onset of this postseason, a recurring theme of his. "I saw Tony La Russa when his team won only [83] games and won the World Series say, 'My players played great at the right time.' He gave the players all the credit. They're the ones who do all the playing. You can make all the right moves, but what is a right move?
"The right move in baseball is the one that works."
Last night, for the second start in a row, Jamie Moyer pitched badly at the wrong time. He allowed six runs before recording his fourth out. Manuel's decisions from then on were about damage control, about managing resources for the rest of this series.
Clay Condrey got some innings. J.A. Happ pitched well in his postseason debut. Maybe it will mean something down the road. Maybe not.
But it took his mind away from where it has been for most of the last week, distracted it from the awful task that still lay ahead. June Manuel will be buried Friday.
Her oldest son will be there.
"I know that she would definitely want me to finish the season, if possible," he said. "Like there's no way I'd miss her funeral, but at the same time I never thought about not managing a game or our team, because we've come this far, and like I just want to be there." *
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