I told him to start running and to keep running until I told him to stop. While he was doing laps, the rest of the team took batting and fielding practice. Then everybody hit the showers. I was under the spray when I remembered the kid was still out there running.
I stressed to my players that they were professionals now and competing against guys with similar backgrounds and abilities. “You’re no better than anybody else until you prove it,” I’d say. “The only way you’re going to do that is to outwork them.”
Other than not winning games, I thought I was doing a pretty effective job running the team.
A couple of experiences in Huron really stand out in my mind. One happened on a summer evening when I was with the team on a road trip. Being from the East Coast, Sylvia and I knew very little about tornadoes. At around 7:00 PM that night, Sylvia and the kids were upstairs in our house when all the lights started dimming. It was an otherwise sunny day, so Sylvia didn’t know what to make of it. A few minutes later a tornado ripped a path through Huron. Somehow, it didn’t cause much damage, though it did knock out a light standard at the ballpark.
Oddly enough, the other incident also involved damage to Huron’s Memorial Ball Park. We had a kid named Allen Bowers, an outfielder who was the fastest player on the team. In one of our games, an opposing player lifted a fly ball to right field that Bowers went after with great gusto. He sprinted toward the outfield fence, and as the ball left the park, he ran right through the fence. The moment was preserved by an almost cartoonish wooden outline of his body.
*
In Huron, I first met Manny Trillo, an amateur free agent from Venezuela. He was 17 years old, skinny as a rail, and didn’t speak a word of English. After taking one look at him, I decided to make my first personnel decision as manager. Manny had been a catcher back in Latin America, but there was no way I was going to put this fragile-looking teenager behind the plate. I tried him out at shortstop and third base that season. Later he found a home at second base.
I had to keep tabs on 38 different players in Huron, but I found time to give Manny a little extra attention. He was one of the few Latin kids on the team. The Phillies didn’t see an influx of Spanish-speaking players until Pope and I hired Ruben Amaro Sr. as a scout in 1973. I could only imagine how difficult it was for Manny at that time. In the lower minor leagues, you make peanuts. Some of the players had pocket money from their parents or past summer jobs. I slipped Manny a few bucks here and there, because I knew he had nothing.
I always admired the Latin players who came to this country with only the shirts on their backs and a dream of making the major leagues. During my first year playing in the minors, I befriended Orlando Cepeda, then 17 and playing for a team in Kokomo, Indiana. I pitched against him one night, and when I saw him off to himself after the game, I invited him out to dinner. I don’t think Orlando ever forgot that. Manny didn’t forget our time together, either. He didn’t hit much that season in Huron and went to the Oakland A’s in the Rule 5 draft two years later. Thankfully, Pope reacquired him a few years after that, and I got another chance to manage him.
Manny and Greg Luzinski took strikingly different paths to Huron. Before he became known as Bull, Greg was a kid from Chicago chosen by the Phillies in the first round of the 1968 draft. He was a natural hitter who slugged about half our team’s home runs that season. He and Manny were the same height, but Bull outweighed Manny by nearly 100 pounds. I thought he was a little heavy, so I worked his ass off with running and drills. If he hadn’t been 17 years old and trying to impress the organization, I’m sure Bull would have told me off. Instead, he was willing to do whatever was asked of him. That wouldn’t be the case later in his career, as I
I stressed to my players that they were professionals now and competing against guys with similar backgrounds and abilities. “You’re no better than anybody else until you prove it,” I’d say. “The only way you’re going to do that is to outwork them.”
Other than not winning games, I thought I was doing a pretty effective job running the team.
A couple of experiences in Huron really stand out in my mind. One happened on a summer evening when I was with the team on a road trip. Being from the East Coast, Sylvia and I knew very little about tornadoes. At around 7:00 PM that night, Sylvia and the kids were upstairs in our house when all the lights started dimming. It was an otherwise sunny day, so Sylvia didn’t know what to make of it. A few minutes later a tornado ripped a path through Huron. Somehow, it didn’t cause much damage, though it did knock out a light standard at the ballpark.
Oddly enough, the other incident also involved damage to Huron’s Memorial Ball Park. We had a kid named Allen Bowers, an outfielder who was the fastest player on the team. In one of our games, an opposing player lifted a fly ball to right field that Bowers went after with great gusto. He sprinted toward the outfield fence, and as the ball left the park, he ran right through the fence. The moment was preserved by an almost cartoonish wooden outline of his body.
*
In Huron, I first met Manny Trillo, an amateur free agent from Venezuela. He was 17 years old, skinny as a rail, and didn’t speak a word of English. After taking one look at him, I decided to make my first personnel decision as manager. Manny had been a catcher back in Latin America, but there was no way I was going to put this fragile-looking teenager behind the plate. I tried him out at shortstop and third base that season. Later he found a home at second base.
I had to keep tabs on 38 different players in Huron, but I found time to give Manny a little extra attention. He was one of the few Latin kids on the team. The Phillies didn’t see an influx of Spanish-speaking players until Pope and I hired Ruben Amaro Sr. as a scout in 1973. I could only imagine how difficult it was for Manny at that time. In the lower minor leagues, you make peanuts. Some of the players had pocket money from their parents or past summer jobs. I slipped Manny a few bucks here and there, because I knew he had nothing.
I always admired the Latin players who came to this country with only the shirts on their backs and a dream of making the major leagues. During my first year playing in the minors, I befriended Orlando Cepeda, then 17 and playing for a team in Kokomo, Indiana. I pitched against him one night, and when I saw him off to himself after the game, I invited him out to dinner. I don’t think Orlando ever forgot that. Manny didn’t forget our time together, either. He didn’t hit much that season in Huron and went to the Oakland A’s in the Rule 5 draft two years later. Thankfully, Pope reacquired him a few years after that, and I got another chance to manage him.
Manny and Greg Luzinski took strikingly different paths to Huron. Before he became known as Bull, Greg was a kid from Chicago chosen by the Phillies in the first round of the 1968 draft. He was a natural hitter who slugged about half our team’s home runs that season. He and Manny were the same height, but Bull outweighed Manny by nearly 100 pounds. I thought he was a little heavy, so I worked his ass off with running and drills. If he hadn’t been 17 years old and trying to impress the organization, I’m sure Bull would have told me off. Instead, he was willing to do whatever was asked of him. That wouldn’t be the case later in his career, as I
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