Prewriting Stage of Writing an Essay: 2021 ($888) · Snippets · Snippets

As Click wrote, Modern managers make [their] strategic decisions within strict limits.Virtually all of them follow the same ground rules.Many managers don’t play their optimal batting order, but none play the least optimal, either.As we have seen, all have a basic competence in yanking a pitcher from the game at the right time.Talent is the great determinant of team fortune, and in modern baseball, talent is determined by ownership and the general manager, not the manager.If Joe Torre had been manager of the former and Casey Stengel manager of the latter, there would have been minor differences in the way those teams utilized their resources, but the outcome would have been largely the same.Ultimately, those teams were expressions of their aggregate talents as assembled by their general managers, not their field managers.In his autobiography, Mays recounts the famous story of his getting off to a slow start after being called up to the majors and tearfully asking Durocher to send him back to the minors.Ever occur to you tomorrow’s another day?And you’re going to be playing center field tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.So get used to the idea! Mays stayed and a Hall of Fame career was launched.The value of such a moment is impossible to quantify, except in the 659 home runs that Mays hit from that point onward.Durocher wasn’t finished, though.He went on, adding to the inspirational with a practical bit of advice.He turned to leave, then turned [back.Hall of Fame pitcher [Carl]](https://www.transtats.bts.gov/exit.asp?url=https://anotepad.com/notes/868r6tak) Hubbell?I stared at him.Hubbell?The way you wear the leg of your pants, down nearly to the ankles, he said.Pull them up.Why?Because, he said, you’re making the umpires think your strike zone’s down where the knees of your pants are.They’re hurting you on the low pitch.If you do, you’ll get two hits tomorrow.I pulled up my pants.At the end of that season, Durocher took Mays aside.I want to tell you something, he began.You know I love you, so I’m prejudiced.But you’re the best ballplayer I ever saw.There are other great ones, sure.But to me you’re the best ever.Having you on my team made everything worthwhile.I’m telling you this now, because I won’t be back next season.Mays had tears in his eyes.Leo, it’s going to be different with you gone.You won’t be here to help me.Then Durocher told him something he would never forget.Willie Mays doesn’t need help from anyone, he said, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.Mays later described it as his saddest moment in baseball.The normally placid player preferred sudden retirement to continued coexistence with a man he did not like and could not respect.Similarly, the human impact of players on managers is also real, complicating their plans considerably.You can’t relax, Allie Reynolds said.It was what any team would have done, then or now.Examples of the what have you done for me lately attitude abounded on Stengel’s Yankees.Second baseman Billy Martin had as close a relationship to Stengel as anyone on the team, having played for him as a teen in Oakland.The following year he got off to a slow start, so the Yankees traded him to the pathologically pathetic Kansas City A’s .Phil Rizzuto was the anchor for Stengel’s first teams, but once his skills diminished, Stengel would not give him many plate appearances for old time’s sake.Speaking of his signature strategy of platooning, Stengel once said that people alter percentages.They also dictate a manager’s plans far more often than the manager dictates theirs.All three of these examples are indicative of a manager being forced to action by his players.He no longer played every day during that period, but he was no longer worthy of starting.He was finally cut only when the Yankees, confronted with a glut of reserve infielders, needed to claim what had become a wasted roster spot prior to the World Series.Bauer is a similar story.Both of the foregoing are examples of a player hitting the end of the road.The Martin situation was far more complex.He was indeed Casey’s boy, as it says on his plaque at Yankee Stadium, having essentially apprenticed himself to Stengel with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League in the late 1940s.That little punk, he crowed.How I love him! It was he who made sure the Yankees acquired Martin four days after the 1949 World Series, when his own position had been assured.It was Weiss who ordered Stengel to play the kid ahead of Martin despite the manager’s concerns that Richardson wouldn’t hit.Weiss didn’t like that at all, and didn’t think the manager was handling his players right. The matter was out of his hands.When Stengel was asked his opinion about fines imposed on the players in the aftermath of the scrap at the Copa, he answered, with some bitterness, What I thought wouldn’t make a difference.In fact, Stengel hadn’t even been consulted.As The Sporting News reported after Martin was dealt, George Weiss insists there is no feud between him and Casey Stengel.The Yankee dictator is right, as usual.It’s no feud when you take the gun out of the other fellow’s hands.Martin was safe under Stengel’s protection until the Copa floor show busted that.Casey said he was going to study the affair and deal out punishment as warranted.Weiss moved in and Martin’s number was up.Even before Weiss had completed a trade, a sorrowful Stengel told Martin, Well, you’re gone.You were the best little player I ever had.You did everything I ever asked. When the deal was finally done, Stengel was too pained to confront his protégé.Casey just didn’t have the heart to face Billy, remembered team executive Lee MacPhail.I had to tell Billy he was no longer a Yankee.He couldn’t stop crying. Yet, his grief was ill concealed.I asked him, Who else is in the trade? Then he started talking by saying, We gave up a helluva lot, we gave up Billy Martin, he’s one helluva player, one of the best I’d ever had and you could look it up, and then he just went on and on about Billy for ten or fifteen minutes.I just sat there in his office, not saying a word.I was really upset about my own career and he was talking about Billy.I finally looked up at him, and he had tears in his eyes, he was really in bad shape, and he said, You’re just lucky you’re going over there with Billy Martin.Though the front office insisted that one of the players acquired for Martin, outfielder Harry Suitcase Simpson, was to be a regular, Stengel insisted he would be a reserve and initially used him sparingly, snapping, I’ll play who I want, when quizzed by reporters about the dichotomy between the front office’s take on the trade and his own actions.I have to find out about all those fellows Weiss sends me, he said.I don’t know until I see for myself. He took his time investigating the man who had replaced his favorite.Similarly, Jaffe misunderstood the great manager John McGraw, writing, Though McGraw produced a bountiful supply of quality young players, he rarely guided truly great talents.For example, Jaffe notes, Aside from [Mel] Ott, McGraw’s best position players were Frankie Frisch and Bill Terry.McGraw traded the former away and was not on speaking terms with the latter for several years. Again, the lesson here is in the details, not in the simple fact of the trades themselves.With both Terry and Frisch, McGraw’s habit of riding his stars for both the failings of the team as a whole, as well as his own errors and oversights, proved to be punishingly counterproductive.McGraw once said, With my team I am an absolute czar, but a czar can’t make mistakes or his subjects will start doubting key concepts such as infallibility and divine right.Resultantly, McGraw tended to pick scapegoats and whipping boys.This practice became more exaggerated as he became older and had an increasingly difficult time communicating with his charges.If they manage long enough, that gap expands, year by year, until man and team are literally generations apart.When Joe Torre managed the 2010 Dodgers, he was 40 years older than his average player.As players change from near contemporaries to young punks, common ground becomes a rare commodity.As McGraw aged, his ire found unwilling targets in two of his best players.McGraw had brought Frisch directly from college to the major leagues at 20 and slowly worked him into the lineup over two seasons, teaching the tyro the finer points of the game along the way.The two evolved a close relationship, and McGraw eventually made Frisch his team captain.After one tirade too many in 1926, Frisch jumped the team and stayed home for three weeks, a daring gesture in an era in which players could be blacklisted for the slightest hint of rebellion.McGraw had some good teams in the six seasons remaining before he burned out in body and spirit, but he would win no more pennants after he had chased Frisch away.Any time I was on the bench and the Giants messed up a play on the field, Hogan said, McGraw would turn to me and snarl, ‘Where were you last night?’Terry, a slugging first baseman from Georgia, was a more spirited opponent who rejected McGraw’s hostility even more directly than Frisch did.You’ve been blaming other people for the mistakes you’ve made for 30 years, Terry told McGraw after the latter ripped him for a fielding miscue that was less important to the outcome of the game than McGraw’s tardiness in pulling a faltering pitcher.Whatever the actual words, the two did not speak for the next two years.These partings are not examples of any system, but rather evidence of how McGraw’s own failings could defeat any system he might have had, particularly in his later years, when he had become embittered and ill.Whitey Herzog’s disavowal of slugging first baseman John Mayberry is another example of why you can’t have it both ways, can’t say that managers’ choices are dictated both by their preferences and by human interaction.Louis respectively.Allowed is so bland a term as to be deceptive.In Mayberry’s case, Herzog didn’t allow, he insisted he be traded, and not because he disdained the home run.For a few short years, from 1972 through 1975, Mayberry had been one of the most productive hitters in baseball.In his autobiography, Herzog called him, a wonderful young man.I always loved the way he played.The only thing he ever wanted to know was whether he was in the lineup or not, and then he’d go out and play the best he could.In 1976, Mayberry dropped from .291/.416/.547 with 34 home runs to .233/.322/.342 with 13 home runs despite playing every day.His 1977 wasn’t much better.He compounded this decline with dereliction of duty.Missed final game of playoffs with toothache. This was only half true, a cover story for the press.I finally sat him down in the dugout and asked what the hell was wrong.The man couldn’t even talk, and I knew what was wrong .I told [the [press]](http://www.yantakao.ac.th/index.php?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=8066373) that Mayberry had a toothache and was in a lot of pain, so he’d taken painkillers, which had made him dizzy.Thus was Mayberry sold, which is to say more or less given away, to the Toronto Blue Jays.I told you before, Herzog said to the owner, it’s him or me, and I mean it.Either he’s out of here or I am. Mayberry went.His teams were not powerful, but not powerless.They always had at least some sources of power.With the Cardinals, those sources included George Hendrick, Darrell Porter, and Jack Clark.With the Royals, Herzog had Porter, as well as George Brett, Hal McRae, and others, especially Mayberry.