In Charlie We Trust

SQUEEZED INTO the suitcase Charlie Manuel carried with him when he joined the Minnesota Twins in the spring of 1969 were the odds and ends of a wardrobe that looked like it had been collected on a stroll through Goodwill: tennis shoes, a handful of T-shirts, some jeans and a sport coat that he would remember as "kind of a burlap thing." To get him through some of his early road trips, for which players back then were obliged to wear a coat and tie, Manuel borrowed some dress shirts and some other pieces of apparel from his teammate, Rich Reese, who was more or less the same size. Chances are Manuel would have kept dressing that haphazard way were it not for the intervention of his manager, Billy Martin, who got an eyeful of him one day and, as Reese remembers, told the young outfielder from Buena Vista, Va., "Man, you got to dress up."

So Martin sent him out shopping in Cleveland. To give him some pointers, Reese went along on the excursion with Manuel, who in a place Martin recommend spotted a gray suit with pinstripes and wide lapels. Sizing himself up in the mirror in the store, Manuel could not have been more pleased with how he looked. "Kind of like a Confederate general," he says. Manuel found a gray shirt to go with the suit, and a yellow-and-green tie. When he got to the clubhouse the following day, the ensemble was hanging in his locker - paid for in full by Martin. It was the side of Billy that few in the public saw, yet it underscored the curious complexity of the man, who with one hand would shower a player with affection and with the other clock him with a sucker punch.

"You should have seen that suit," says Manuel, seated behind his desk at Citizens Bank Park early one day in September. "I guess it cost $190 or something like that. I remember it was double-breasted with eight buttons on it."

Manuel smiles. "I used to walk by the store years later when I was with the Indians," he adds. "And I would always think of that suit."

How far Charlie Manuel has come since those days - and how improbable that journey has been. Long before he donned the Phillies pinstripes and established himself as unquestionably the greatest manager in the annals of the organization, he had worked his way up through baseball the hard way, beginning as a bench player with Twins and Los Angeles Dodgers, then as an American abroad in the Japanese leagues, and then as an anonymous minor league manager and big-league batting coach. With a syrupy drawl that underscored his Appalachian heritage, he came out of rural Virginia with some pop in his bat and a fiery temper that would leave him scrapping with opponents at the drop of a sneer. Perhaps Martin liked Manuel because he could see in him some of himself, even if the ego that both men held up for full display obscured a roiling underside that spilled over with insecurity.

But no one who looked at Manuel back then would have suspected that. To the outside world, he was what he himself concedes was "a happy-go-lucky guy." It was not be until years later that he would be able to say how he really felt: "The truth was I was miserable."

On the day in 2004 the Phillies announced that they had chosen Charlie Manuel as their manager and bypassed the popular fan choice Jim Leyland, no one with even a vivid imagination could have expected the run of success that would come to pass: a World Series championship in 2008 (only the second in the dismal franchise's history), consecutive National League pennants in 2008 and '09, and five consecutive NL East flags from 2007 to '11. Interestingly, Manuel has accomplished this with a revolving cast of players. Only four are still with him from his 2005 Opening Day roster: shortstop Jimmy Rollins, second baseman Placido Polanco (who left and came back); reliever Ryan Madson; and then-backup infielder Chase Utley. First baseman Ryan Howard and centerfielder Shane Victorino came up later that year.

Manuel knew the team had potential, though. He had observed the talent in the organization's pipeline while working as special assistant to Ed Wade in the years before becoming manager. "I knew the players we had coming up because I had watched them play," he says. "I knew Howard and Utley and Madson and Cole Hamels [who came up in 2006]. I would watch them play and I would talk to them. I got a feel for who they were. Of course, you always have turnover on teams. But by the year I took over, even then we were beginning to get our core players in place, guys we figured would be with us and who had the attitude we were looking for. With a young team like that, they needed someone to be patient with them. Let them play. Go out there and have some fun."

Given to what has become a charming propensity for stepping on his sentences, of going into convoluted explanations in news conferences to more or less straightforward queries, Manuel possesses consummate communication skills within the walls of the Phillies' clubhouse. While he comes across with a grandfatherly air, which caused occasionally irritated fans to refer to him as "Pop Pop," Manuel chuckles and says he can be "as tough on someone as they want me to be. Uh-huh, I can do that." But he also knows that yelling is not always the answer. "Percentagewise," Manuel says, "baseball is a failure game." Even .300 hitters come up short in seven out of 10 at-bats. Consequently, Manuel says that he is not prone to panic but to look upon the day-to-day swings in performance as inevitable. He asks, "Why panic? You cannot be a knee-jerk guy in this job." No one appreciates that approach more than Howard, whose home runs through the years have been offset by big strikeout totals. Says Howard: "Charlie just comes in every day with a positive outlook. He knows how to keep you loose."

But he was not always that way. Signed by the Twins out of high school for $30,000 in 1963, Manuel got his break when baseball expanded by four teams in 1969. Suddenly, there were 100 more big-league jobs available. Manuel had what he calls "a huge spring training" in 1969 but remembers that he had caught the eye of the new Twins manager, Billy Martin, in the Instructional League the previous fall. Manuel had slid into second base and got into a scuffle with the shortstop. Martin walked up to the young scrapper on the bench and assured him with a grin, "You are playing for me next year." Given that the Twins were so deep in talent back then, with stars such as Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew and Tony Oliva, Manuel saw only sporadic action during parts of four seasons with them. Generally - and this would be also true when he played later with the Dodgers - he would be used as a pinch-hitter in late-inning situations. A bad at-bat would eat him up.

"I was a big-time worrier," says Manuel, the son of a Pentecostal preacher and third of 11 children. "I would only get to bat once or twice a week and, you know, if I popped out or something, I would go home and not be able to sleep for 3 or 4 days. I would sit up and watch TV, or walk around. When you get so few opportunities, it seems like it takes forever for you to get another one. So you just dig holes for yourself."

Reese, who later would become CEO of Jim Beam Brands, remembers. "There were only 10 teams in each league, so you never knew when it was going to end," he says. "So Charlie and I worried together. But he could not let it go, even when he sold cars during the offseason. He worried about that."

By playing for Martin in Minnesota, Manuel learned what to do as a manager - and what not to do. In a certain way, it seemed as if there were two Billy Martins. "Good Billy" would buy you a suit and draw on what Manuel says was "a vast knowledge of the game." Manuel adds, "When you sat on the bench, he would have you trying to steal signs. You had to be involved in every pitch." But "Bad Billy" would always emerge. "I loved Billy," Manuel says. "Great manager for a year or so, but then his ego would wear on you. He had to have a lot of attention. He was childish." From Martin, Manuel learned the value of communicating honestly with players, something Martin did not always do. "He would tell you that you were playing tomorrow, and you would not be in the lineup," Manuel says. "But I think he would just get caught up in the moment and forget."

"Bad Billy" also had a drinking problem, which led to a brawl Martin had with his star pitcher Dave Boswell at the Lindell Athletic Club bar in Detroit. "There were six or seven us there - Rich Reese, Bob Allison, Graig Nettles, the pitching coach Art Fowler and few others," Manuel says. "Boswell had not done his running that day and he and Fowler got into an argument over it. When Martin came in at 11 or 11:30 p.m., you could see there was going to be trouble, so Nettles, Reese and I slipped out the door." Later, word circulated back to the hotel of what happened in the parking lot: Allison told Boswell, "If you want to fight somebody, fight me!" Boswell took a swing at Allison, at which point Martin stepped in and began pounding on Boswell. When the action ceased, Allison had a black eye and required some dental work, Martin had a bruised rib and Boswell had to have his face sewn back together with 20 stitches.

Manuel laughs. "Going out drinking with your players is never a good idea," he says. "Of course, the game was more macho than it is now."

Every manager is a composite of the men he once played for. With the Dodgers in 1974 and '75, Manuel became acquainted with Walter Alston, who was the antitheses of Martin in style and temperament. While Manuel remembers that Alston was reserved with his players, he says the manager had "a strong presence about him." But he and Alston seemed to have an easy rapport. Casually, Alston sat down with him one day in the cafeteria in spring training at Vero Beach, Fla. "I had just been traded over there and Alston asked me who I was," Manuel says. When Manuel told him, Alston replied, "Oh yeah, the lefthanded hitter we picked up." Somehow the conversation landed on the subject of skeet shooting - "Alston was a big skeet shooter," Manuel says - and from that point on they always talked. Alston even told him he would manage one day in the big leagues.

Manuel replied, "Seriously?"

Jump ahead 36 years and here is Charlie Manuel in the incarnation that Alston foresaw so long ago. Three or so hours before a game in September, he strolls down the hallway that leads into the Phillies' dugout at Citizens Bank Park and encounters Roy Halladay, the 2010 Cy Young Award winner who is the cornerstone of a starting rotation that has been hyped as one of the finest ever assembled. Seeing Halladay in the dugout with a bat in his hands, Manuel breaks into a smile.

"Whatcha gonna do with that bat, Roy?" Manuel asks. "Go up there and take some batting practice?"

Halladay grins. "What for?" he says. "I'm already hitting .100."

Manuel laughs. "Uh-huh, I know," he says. "But even if you were hitting .350, you would still have to get up there and get your BP."

Given that the Phillies were then in the process of running away with yet another division flag, it would have been a shock if Manuel had not been upbeat on this day. But as he playfully interacted with his star pitcher, it was hard not to ponder the odds that no one appreciates how special what has happened to him in Philadelphia more than Manuel. Whatever else he has learned on his journey through baseball, it is that the sport can break your heart into a thousand pieces, especially when you love it the way Manuel does. He sees it when he has to sit across his desk from a player and explain to him why he is sending him back to Triple A. That was once him sitting in that chair, so angry and disappointed. Manuel has seen the downside of the profession enough to know that baseball will take your measure as a man. Says Manuel, "When someone goes 0-for-20 or blows a save, I know how they feel."

It was not until Manuel went to Japan to play that he accumulated a degree of wisdom. In parts of six seasons with the Twins and Dodgers, he had a career batting average of just .198 and just four home runs. Had he been able to look at himself candidly then, he would have conceded that he was not just a worrier but "a whiner." But that changed when he signed to play in Japan for the Yakult Swallows in 1976. While he became the star player he had hoped to become in the United States - he slammed 42 and 39 home runs in 1977 and '78, respectively - Manuel clashed with his manager, the authoritarian former shortstop Tatsuro Hirooka. "They try to break you down over there; the better you are, the better they expect you to be," says Manuel, who became known to the fans as "Aka-Oni" (The Red Devil). "Hirooka told me, 'You can play, but you have to change your way of thinking and become more upbeat.'

"So what happened is I did a 180-degree turn," says Manuel, who played in Japan until 1981. "I realized there were more people in the world than Charlie Manuel."

Were it not for the experience in Japan, Manuel is certain that he would not have become a big-league manager. When he came back to the United States, he decided he wanted to stay in the game and teach young players. From 1983 to '87, he managed in the Twins organization, and in 1988 became the batting coach for Cleveland. When the Indians fired him at the end of the following year, he experienced what he would call "the lowest point in my career." Told upon his dismissal by team president Hank Peters that he had done "a good job," Manuel fired back: "If I did a good job, why are you firing me?" When he called around for other jobs, he was told by the organizations he approached that the Indians planned to give him a job in their system. Upset, he says he occupied himself by building two porches on his house back in Virginia.

"Ever lay brick or slate or something like that before?" Manuel asks. "I never had, but I was so angry that I just started mixing mortar."

Given a job by the Indians as a roving batting instructor, Manuel found himself one day the following spring pitching batting practice to a young man who would change the course of his career: Jim Thome. In extended spring training in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1990, Manuel was working with an older player, Mike Davis, as Thome looked on. "I had to pitch BP to both of them, but Davis was the one I was interested in," says Manuel, who remembers that Thome had a "closed stance, looked stiff and was greener than hell." But Thome absorbed some of the tips that Manuel had been giving Davis. By the end of the week, Manuel says that Thome was "squared up at the plate and balanced through the zone." Manuel remembers thinking, "I have been working with the wrong guy!"

Thome remembers how impressed he had been by Manuel. "I was young, but I listened to him and applied what he had said to Davis," says Thome, who has gone on to become one of the greatest home-run hitters in the game. In a certain way, Manuel reminded Thome of his own father. Thome says that Manuel not only helped him to become more confident but also pushed him hard to become an everyday player. Manuel says, "Sure I was tough on him. If he had a blister or something, I would tell him he had to get out there." Manuel stressed that Thome try to hit for average and the home runs would come. He explained: "Home runs are just long fly balls that go over the fence." Thome became a star with the Indians in the 1990s and Manuel followed him back to Cleveland as a batting coach again in 1994. Even as Manuel battled some significant health problems, which included a heart attack and kidney cancer, the Indians appointed him manager in 2000. Cleveland won the American League Central under him in 2001 but fired him the following July in a contract dispute.

How Manuel ended up with the Phillies is a story that once again involved Thome. The Phillies signed Thome as a free agent before the 2003 season, and Manuel followed him here as a special assistant to Wade. In that vague capacity, he became acquainted with the young stars who were coming up through the organization: Howard, Utley, Hamels and others. Howard remembers Manuel was "always very helpful, upbeat and positive." Says Howard, who replaced Thome in 2006: "He would work with you. I remember he was always very warm and open. And you could go to him if you had a question." When the Phillies chose Manuel over former World Series winner Leyland to replace Larry Bowa at the end of 2004, he became a target of fierce derision from the fans. Looked upon as some hick bewildered by the big city, Manuel handled the ugly criticism that came at him with consummate poise.

"I knew it would be fine if we won," he says. "And I knew we would win because of the players we had coming up."

The people who work for him appear to love him. Pitching coach Rich Dubee says that while Manuel has the final say on what to do with the pitching staff, Manuel has given him authority in a way that Leyland never did when they worked together in Florida. "Jimmy would say, 'Get them ready and turn them over to me at game time,' " Dubee says. "Charlie asks me what I think we should do . . . I prefer it this way."

As far as the players are concerned, Manuel delegates authority to police the clubhouse to veteran players such as Rollins, Howard and Utley. Former Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer says that Manuel is "very observant," and is apt to come up to a player on the bench and say: "Did you see what I just saw?" Victorino says that while Manuel "knows how to put his foot down if he has to," the manager knows also when to give a slumping player a day off to ease the pressure or to stay with him even when the fans are howling for him to be benched. Occasionally, he does hold team meetings, if only to impart a piece of wisdom that could help them relax.

"I played with Rod Carew in Minnesota," he once told them. "And the only difference between Rod Carew and me was this: Carew went up to the plate to get a hit. And I went up there not to make an out."

Outside, the rain is falling hard on Citizens Bank Park, where the infield is covered with a tarp. Batting practice has been called off and it remains unclear if the Phillies are going to be able to get the game in that evening against division rival Atlanta. Because of poor weather, the Phillies could be forced to play 25 games in the final 23 days, which would upset the plans Manuel had reworked for his pitching staff. He leans back in the chair behind his desk and says, "Hopefully, we can find a way to play. Another cancellation would screw things up."

Had the Phillies not played that evening (and they did, beating the Braves, 6-3), it would have been only a minor annoyance to Manuel in the big picture. Because even with the rain, nagging injuries that have plagued the team this year, and the eight-game swoon the club had as it headed into the playoffs, Manuel could not have asked for a greater abundance of good fortune. No manager has the pitching, or the group of core players, that the organization assembled for him. For only the third season in their 128-year history, the Phillies this year won 100 or more games (they won 101 in 1976 and '77 under Danny Ozark). Given that Manuel signed a 2-year contract during the offseason, it is possible that he chose to go out on his own terms at the end of next season. Few managers ever get to do that.

But Manuel is not sure what his plans are. "I will be 69 years old, and I want to take an inventory of what I want to do," he says. Currently, he lives in Haddonfield with his fiancée, Missy Martin, and says that he enjoys it there, even if his schedule during the season consists of "going to the ballpark and back and then to the airport." His health is better than ever, owing to the 58 pounds he shed a year or so ago. Conceivably, he could just go off and retire in Florida or Arizona, when he could spend his days on the golf course. But whatever he chooses to do, he says he is not going to worry about it. He stopped doing that a long time ago.

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