Phillies' Mackanin managing to get most out of his players

THERE WAS one out and the bases were loaded in the bottom of the ninth Sunday afternoon when Odubel Herrera came to the plate, the Phillies still trailing by five runs. David Lough had just worked a walk on a 3-2 pitch, a great veteran at-bat, forcing a pitching change and breathing more hope amid a Citizens Bank crowd of 27,869, many looking for yet another reason for another return to the cathedral they once attended regularly.

Herrera, whose improved plate discipline has been one of the many surprising success stories of Pete Mackanin's brief managerial reign, stepped into the batter's box, took a ball, and then hacked at a pitch well beyond the strike zone, grounding feebly back to the pitcher.

An awful at-bat at an awful time to do it in a game. Herrera went back to the dugout looking frustrated, where he was received with . . . nothing. No tirade, no pat on the back.

Next up.

How much credit Mackanin deserves for the Phillies delightfully surprising hot start is hard to measure. Certainly, the pounding of basic fundamentals this spring - bunting, baserunning, plate discipline - has factored into some of those 14 one-run games they have won thus far, as has an outwardly cavalier approach to writing out the lineup, his familiar rationalization already the stuff that makes for a great T-shirt:

"Why not?"

Here's what we already do know: No manager in the game today is better qualified to handle this team. Whether you are talking about his years of experience or the variety of them, Mackanin understands every type of baseball situation and every type of baseball personality, speaks the language of the game and the two dominant languages of those who play it, and understands the game's inherent frustrations both as a former player and talent evaluator.

"I like you a lot," he has told players. "I like my son a lot, too. Doesn't mean I'm gonna play him."

He's made every mistake, and he will tell you willingly about them if you ask. His worldliness makes him somewhat of an oddity inside his petri dish profession, capable of discussing the cultures he has immersed himself over the years for the sake of experience, capable of understanding the game he has given 48 years of his life to as an observer and as a participant.

"My first major league spring training was in '72 at Pompano Beach," Mackanin told me this spring. "Ted Williams was the manager. He was larger than life. And I was 20 years old. I didn't know anything, but I knew who he was. Back then, you're 20 years old and Ted Williams tells you to do something - I'm running to do it."

I told him that I have read that the greatest hitter of all time was not a good manager because he could not understand the limitations of people not named Ted Williams.

"Yeah I know," Mackanin said. "He expected a lot out of hitters and he couldn't understand why hitters wouldn't do what he thought they should be doing. Like if you swung at a first pitch and you didn't hit a line drive? That sent him over the moon. He didn't understand that. But he didn't understand that, a young kid like me, I didn't want to get two strikes on me at that point of my career."

Mackanin is now 64, has played, coached, scouted, worked in a uniform, in an office, driven his car through every baseball-playing state at least 100 times. He's been coached and managed by a wide range of characters, from fiery Billy Martin to cerebral Gene Mauch and Williams the savant.

And, it seems, that he has never forgotten a lesson learned from any of them.

"I'm from the old school," he said. "My first three years of managing, I yelled and screamed. That's the way we did it. Then over the course of my career, I realized that old saying, 'I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to win games' doesn't fly anymore.

"But along with that goes accountability. By the way, you've got to get it done. Because this is a bottom-line business."

And he can tell you all about that, too, passed over in both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati despite improving bad clubs as their interim manager. Restarting again and again after being dismissed from one staff or another, taking a Class A coaching job at one point just to stay in a uniform, stay in the game.

His stories reflect that. They are endearing in their humility, even about his more impressive accomplishments. He taught himself Spanish over the years of managing in the winter leagues by learning the kitchen utensils and fruits and vegetables.

His advice? "Don't be afraid to make mistakes. I think what I sound like to these guys sometimes is like the French-Canadian hockey player. 'I get the puck, I shoot the puck, it's a goal.' But they don't care. They appreciate that I tried."

Which is why he said nothing as Herrera returned to the dugout on Sunday. Not because he would have sounded like a hockey player. But because Herrera already knows his manager doesn't live in a perfect world.

"I want the players' respect," he said as this charmed season was about to begin. "But I'm also going to let them know, especially the guys who aren't playing well or not doing well, that I still like them. That I'm pulling for them. That I'm not mad at them."

@samdonnellon