[心得] Scioscia is guardian of the Angels - Tim Brown
心得: Words. Words indeed.
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很長, 絕對值得看。我貼到手斷掉了，請別人來翻譯吧。
Scioscia is guardian of the Angels
By Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports
Jun 24, 1:39 am EDT
ANAHEIM, Calif. – Scott Schoeneweis hasn’t played for Mike Scioscia
in five years and, in the visitors’ clubhouse at Angel Stadium,
there’s no way Scioscia could overhear a conversation from his
office across the ballpark.
Yet Schoeneweis lowers his voice and leans in.
“I was always trying to please him,” he says. “I wanted him to like
me.”
They had met in the spring of 2000. Scioscia, the Los Angeles Dodgers
icon, had replaced Joe Maddon as manager of the Angels. Maddon had
finished up the season before for Terry Collins. The Angels had lost
92 games in 1999 and hadn’t been to the playoffs in 13 years, a
period in which they had employed and dismissed 10 managers.
Scioscia knew a little about Schoeneweis, mainly that the Duke product
was talented but so cocky as to be nearly uncoachable. In his first
team meeting, the “Hi, my name is Mike and I’m the new skipper”
meeting, Scioscia asked players to stand up and talk, answer a couple
questions for the group. But this was no random exercise.
Midway through, he pointed to Schoeneweis, then a 26-year-old prospect
who had glided through the Angels’ farm system, made 31 big-league
appearances the previous season and was on the verge of winning a
place in the starting rotation.
“Hey, Scott,” Scioscia said, “you were in (Triple-A) Edmonton some
last year, right?”
Schoeneweis stood and nodded.
“Tell me,” Scioscia demanded, “who was the biggest jerk on that
team?”
Only he didn’t say “jerk.”
Schoeneweis reddened.
“Uh,” he began.
The room demanded an honest answer.
“Probably me,” he finally said.
The room was satisfied. Players burst into knowing laughter. Having
established exactly where he stood with the new manager, Schoeneweis
sat down.
More than eight years later, Scioscia leaned back in a chair that’s
been his ever since. He is the longest-tenured manager in Angels’
history, this season passing Bill Rigney, who guided the club from its
1961 birth until 1969. There are few organizations that reflect
precisely what their manager is about. The Atlanta Braves are one. The
St. Louis Cardinals. The Minnesota Twins. And the Angels, who play to
Scioscia’s view of the game, to his expectations, to every stinkin’
pitch of every stinkin’ game, or fail trying. They’ve made the
playoffs in four of his eight seasons, in 2002 reaching and winning
the only World Series in franchise history. Schoeneweis made 60
appearances for that team, six in the postseason.
“He had a lot of talent and really pitched well for us at times,”
Scioscia said of Schoeneweis. “But, with Schoney, if we were going to
get what we expected out of him, you couldn’t let him off the mat.”
The imprint of which lingers on Schoeneweis’ cheek. Others bear the
same markings.
“It was everything,” Schoeneweis says. “I was kind of a young punk,
very strong-willed, thought I knew everything. He definitely thought
he knew everything. And we battled.”
He’s still speaking softly, well beneath the din of pre-game
preparations, his New York Mets attempting to organize themselves. The
manager was fired two nights earlier, Willie Randolph here and gone.
Three managers would be fired in baseball over the same week.
Scioscia, though, was sturdy as ever, in first place again, presumably
at that moment insisting on preparation and execution from some other
guy. Five years later, Schoeneweis is still hoping.
It’s like one of those sappy afternoon specials on TV, Schoeneweis
says, where the father is dying and the long-torn relationship with
his son is mended, right there in the hospital room.
“You know,” Schoeneweis says, “I love you, son. I love you too,
dad.”
He smiles. “And then everything’s OK in the world. I think enough
time’s gone by. I think deep down he likes me, cares for me. And
it’s mutual.”
--------------------
Mike Scioscia’s tenure with the Angels
Year Record AL West finish/playoffs
2007 94-68 1st; Lost ALDS
2006 89-73 2nd; None
2005 95-67 1st; Lost ALCS
2004 92-70 1st; Lost ALDS
2003 77-85 3rd; None
2002 99-63 2nd; Won World Series
2001 75-87 3rd; None
2000 82-80 3rd; None
These are big jobs, pressurized by impatient owners who require full
ballparks and winning ballclubs to run their businesses, and by
general managers who balance today’s outcome against tomorrow’s
promise and the following day’s employment. The manager runs his
clubhouse, along with his Triple-A clubhouse, along with a few
prospects in his Double-A clubhouse, and then nine innings a night.
The good ones can manage a man at a time.
Chone Figgins claims Scioscia welcomed him to the big leagues in late
August 2002 and that it was the last conversation they had for at
least a year. Not one word, he said, or none that he could recall.
Then, one day, Figgins swears, Scioscia turned to him in the dugout
and asked Figgins to get him a Gatorade.
“That didn’t happen,” Scioscia said, laughing. “Well, if it did, I
was joking.”
Either way, Figgins recalls, the next afternoon Scioscia pulled him
aside and refreshed his scouting report on Barry Zito. Fastballs up,
Scioscia told him, and lots of curveballs. Gotta stay on top of the
curveball. After reasonably successful at-bats that night against
Zito, Figgins said, Scioscia returned and said, “There you go. Now go
back to what you do.”
“With Chone,” Scioscia said, “he had a fearlessness of just getting
out there and playing baseball. You just wanted to wind him up and let
him go.”
As a late call-up in 2002, Figgins watched Scioscia mold and prod and
encourage players such as Darin Erstad, David Eckstein and Adam
Kennedy. He watched them respond, stacking good at-bats upon good at-
-bats, sprinting from first to third on singles, standing in the
proper places on defense, insisting on the same from teammates.
Scioscia’s broad philosophies grew from them, from the accumulation
of their simple yet trained mechanics, and then he watched when the
machinery jammed, and Scioscia’s response.
“It’s how you take it,” he said. “Some young players can handle it
and some can’t.”
Along the way, Figgins said, most of Scioscia’s players have been
better for it, as have the Angels. Those that haven’t probably
wouldn’t have been long for the system anyway, or even long for the
game.
“I think when some guys don’t have the mentality for it, they can’t
take when somebody’s telling them to be better at it,” he says.
“It’s going to be hard. I’m sure a couple players came through here
that couldn’t handle it. Some younger players take things better than
others. It’s not for everybody. For me, who likes to come play every
day and leave it on the field, a line-drive hitter who likes to steal
bases, it works for me. He thrives on perfection, just like I do.”
To this day, Figgins maintains that simple relationship with the only
major-league manager he’s ever had.
“I don’t really talk to him,” he says, laughing. “We don’t talk
much. When it comes to him, I’m really quiet.”
Scioscia gestured to the clubhouse and a room of men stepping away
from a loss, and not a good one. The Angels hadn’t played well, lost
to the Mets and would leave the next day for Philadelphia, near where
Scioscia had grown up to become a first-round pick of the Dodgers in
1976.
“That’s a talented bunch of guys in that room,” he said. “They’ve
gotten to this level for a reason. They’re not in that room by a
fluke. Now we put the pieces together, my staff and I. There are
important things in baseball that get overlooked, things like
secondary leads and going first to third and breaking up a double
play. And always playing defense. That never stops, even if you’re 0
for your last 37.
“Those types of things are laid out very clearly, so there are no
misunderstandings. Those kids we just signed that are in Tempe right
now? They’re getting the exact same message. Philosophically, you
have to give these guys direction. And I don’t do it for any other
reason than, ‘Hey, we want to win, too.’ We bring them together to
win. I didn’t invent it. This was stuff that was instilled in me
since I was 17.”
----------------
Before he retired in 1992, Ace Bell taught and coached baseball for
40 years at Springfield High School, 10 miles from Philadelphia, for
40 years. Mike Scioscia was his catcher for three of those years.
“A natural,” Bell said of Scioscia. “Everything he touched.”
Early in Scioscia’s sophomore season, Bell, as he had for more than
two decades, called the pitches from the dugout, which the catcher
would relay to the pitcher. Between innings, Bell approached Scioscia
about an opposing hitter.
“I already got it, coach,” Scioscia told him. “I know what you’re
thinking.”
Bell grinned.
“Mike, you’re on your own,” he told him and, indeed, did not call
his next pitch until after Scioscia graduated.
After the 2002 World Series, Scioscia called Bell.
“Mr. Bell,” he said, “it’s unbelievable the way this team played.
You would have loved it.”
They reminisced about Bell standing in front of the team at that old
blackboard, shooting balls into gaps with chalked line drives,
challenging every player to align themselves against that screeching,
gritty arc. Everybody wants to win, Scioscia conceded. But Bell was
the first to provide him with the steps to win, the first to talk to
him about the focus necessary to make the next play and forget the
last mistake, “the first guy I was around who preached the finer
points of baseball to me.”
“I knew,” Bell said, “he was destined for something.”
-------------
Scioscia played 13 seasons for the Dodgers, batted .259 and won two
World Series. His ninth-inning, game-tying home run against Doc Gooden
in Game 4 of the 1988 NLCS remains one of the pivotal moments in
Dodgers history, and his savage plate-blocking is still recounted in
the corridors of Dodger Stadium. Now, however, 14 years since he
retired, going on eight since he left a dead-end job with the Dodgers
to become one of the premier managers in the game, he has crossed a
career bridge. He is no longer an ex-player managing, but a manager
who once played. He’s reminded that that’s not so bad, as Joe Torre,
a one-time MVP, has covered the same ground.
Scioscia got a laugh out of that.
“I crossed that line a lot earlier than Joe did,” he said.
Among active managers with at least 1,000 games of service, Scioscia
is third in winning percetnage, behind Bobby Cox of the Braves and Ron
Gardenhire of the Twins. His staff has produced two current managers,
Bud Black in San Diego and Maddon in Tampa Bay.
“He always believed that he managed to win and did not manage to
prevent losing or to cover his butt,” Maddon said. “I considered him
fearless and prepared, with a sharp mind that was able to stay ahead
of the game. His strength lies in his passion for winning and the way
he goes about it.”
In a corner of the Angels’ clubhouse, Garret Anderson listened with
some amusement to the stories of Scott Schoeneweis and Chone Figgins,
the manner in which Scioscia managed them, how he dragged one along
and simply pointed the other to the ballfield. It speaks to Scioscia's
versatile leadership, he said, even while demanding the same game from
them all.
“The day they hired him, that’s when things changed,” Anderson
said. “The attitude changed. How we go about our business changed.
How we’re viewed as an organization changed. He played in L.A. They
won. They were an arrogant bunch of guys who knew they were going to
kick your behind every night. That works in this sport. You hear it
enough, you start thinking, ‘I guess we’re going to get it done.’
You have no choice.
“In my mind, there is no perfect manager. But, one thing I can say
honestly, he’s fairly consistent with his demeanor and he’s fairly
consistent in how he treats people. It’s tough to perfectly manage 25
people. But, he’s fair. His demeanor on a daily basis is a positive
thing for this team.”
Though he’d played for only the Angels, he’d been around long enough
to hear all the speeches. By the time Scioscia walked in, Anderson, in
parts of six big-league seasons, had reported to four previous
managers.
“It was different coming from him,” he said.
Certainly it was for Schoeneweis, for others like him, for those who
have come along since. The Angels don’t always win and, indeed, they
are 4-12 in the postseason since 2002, advancing out of the division
series once in three Octobers. But, the baseball is familiar and
reliable and end-to-end assertive. It is Scioscia’s game, Scioscia’s
way. It’s made something of the Angels.
Schoeneweis shrugs. It’s almost time to go.
“I don’t want any of this to sound like a negative,” he says.
“It’s what he expected. And I didn’t know any better. What he’s
done here and what I was a part of, it’s tremendous. They just win.
They find a way to win. Those teams, especially that World Series
team, they weren’t the most talented teams. But, they found a way.”
Besides, he says, “He’s got his own style. I’ve talked to a couple
of the older guys, they say he’s changed. Softened, maybe.”
He looks back and shakes his head. “Probably not,” he says, smiling.
Probably not.
Tim Brown is a national baseball writer for Yahoo! Sports.
--
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