found out all too well when I became the manager in Philadelphia.
A few weeks before our last game, Sylvia, in the eighth month of pregnancy, flew back to Philadelphia. Around that time, Pope and Phillies general manager John Quinn came out to South Dakota to announce the organization was moving its Class-A team out of Huron. So there I was, alone in South Dakota, managing a lousy baseball team in a town the Phillies were about to abandon. The invitations to dinners and other functions suddenly stopped coming. That’s the fickleness of minor league baseball. The town elders could forgive me for not winning games, but they didn’t want to have anything to do with a lame duck manager. The greatest help to me during those days was Lou Kahn. We talked a lot of baseball. Now that I was a manager, I came to see him as a valuable resource. He and Esther ended up becoming good friends of mine.
We went 26–43 and finished next to last in the Northern League. By winning our last game of the season, we moved past the Aberdeen Pheasants and out of last place. Our whole team was proud of that.
You never know how careers are going to turn out. At Huron, my best pitcher was Denny Lortscher, who accounted for eight of our 26 wins. My best hitter by far was John Magnuson, whose average was 50 points higher than anybody on the team who got more than a couple of at-bats. Neither guy made it past Class-A ball. Luzinski and Trillo were two of only four players from that Huron team who ended up making the majors.
*
When Pope and I met after the season, I hoped to hear my apprenticeship as a minor league manager was over. No such luck. Pope still didn’t think I was ready for the front office. He told me he wanted me to manage a year of rookie ball in Pulaski, Virginia.
I wished I could say, “For chrissakes, Pope, I just led a team to a championship! What more do you want from me?” But in reality, I had managed a team that barely avoided last place.
When I got down to Pulaski in the summer of 1969, I couldn’t believe what a mess our stadium was. The grass at Calfee Park was long and the infield was rocky. I called Pope right away, and he dispatched one of the Phillies’ best grounds crew guys down to Virginia. Between the two of us, we redid the entire field and rebuilt the pitcher’s mound.
Crisis averted, I went into the season determined to improve on my dismal record in Huron. We had some quality ballplayers on the Pulaski team. One of them was Mike Anderson, our first-round pick in 1969. He crushed the ball that season, giving me every reason to think he’d develop into a wonderful major leaguer. Because of his athletic ability, some of us thought he had more promise than Luzinski. By the time Anderson was 22, he had been penciled in as the Phillies’ starting right fielder. But during spring training in 1973, he got beaned in the head by Clay Carroll of the Reds. He suffered a severe concussion and that probably curbed his potential as a player. Baseball can be a cruel sport sometimes.
Pulaski was a different kind of place. And by that, I mean it was a redneck Southern town. There’s no other way to put it. Sylvia was working on a research paper the summer we spent down there. The topic was President Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in 1861. She had become an expert on the Civil War and was pretty enthralled with Lincoln and his presidency. Well, one night we were at a cocktail party at the home of the owner of the Pulaski club, and Sylvia happened to mention her thesis to him.
“You’re writing about that sumbitch!” he said, almost spitting out his drink.
This was a time when race relations in the South remained tense.
We had a black base-running coach named Spence Henry. One night he was in the stands watching a game when a black player came to the plate. A guy behind Spence shouted, “Throw him a watermelon!” Spence turned around and scowled at the man. He then surveyed the rest
A few weeks before our last game, Sylvia, in the eighth month of pregnancy, flew back to Philadelphia. Around that time, Pope and Phillies general manager John Quinn came out to South Dakota to announce the organization was moving its Class-A team out of Huron. So there I was, alone in South Dakota, managing a lousy baseball team in a town the Phillies were about to abandon. The invitations to dinners and other functions suddenly stopped coming. That’s the fickleness of minor league baseball. The town elders could forgive me for not winning games, but they didn’t want to have anything to do with a lame duck manager. The greatest help to me during those days was Lou Kahn. We talked a lot of baseball. Now that I was a manager, I came to see him as a valuable resource. He and Esther ended up becoming good friends of mine.
We went 26–43 and finished next to last in the Northern League. By winning our last game of the season, we moved past the Aberdeen Pheasants and out of last place. Our whole team was proud of that.
You never know how careers are going to turn out. At Huron, my best pitcher was Denny Lortscher, who accounted for eight of our 26 wins. My best hitter by far was John Magnuson, whose average was 50 points higher than anybody on the team who got more than a couple of at-bats. Neither guy made it past Class-A ball. Luzinski and Trillo were two of only four players from that Huron team who ended up making the majors.
*
When Pope and I met after the season, I hoped to hear my apprenticeship as a minor league manager was over. No such luck. Pope still didn’t think I was ready for the front office. He told me he wanted me to manage a year of rookie ball in Pulaski, Virginia.
I wished I could say, “For chrissakes, Pope, I just led a team to a championship! What more do you want from me?” But in reality, I had managed a team that barely avoided last place.
When I got down to Pulaski in the summer of 1969, I couldn’t believe what a mess our stadium was. The grass at Calfee Park was long and the infield was rocky. I called Pope right away, and he dispatched one of the Phillies’ best grounds crew guys down to Virginia. Between the two of us, we redid the entire field and rebuilt the pitcher’s mound.
Crisis averted, I went into the season determined to improve on my dismal record in Huron. We had some quality ballplayers on the Pulaski team. One of them was Mike Anderson, our first-round pick in 1969. He crushed the ball that season, giving me every reason to think he’d develop into a wonderful major leaguer. Because of his athletic ability, some of us thought he had more promise than Luzinski. By the time Anderson was 22, he had been penciled in as the Phillies’ starting right fielder. But during spring training in 1973, he got beaned in the head by Clay Carroll of the Reds. He suffered a severe concussion and that probably curbed his potential as a player. Baseball can be a cruel sport sometimes.
Pulaski was a different kind of place. And by that, I mean it was a redneck Southern town. There’s no other way to put it. Sylvia was working on a research paper the summer we spent down there. The topic was President Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in 1861. She had become an expert on the Civil War and was pretty enthralled with Lincoln and his presidency. Well, one night we were at a cocktail party at the home of the owner of the Pulaski club, and Sylvia happened to mention her thesis to him.
“You’re writing about that sumbitch!” he said, almost spitting out his drink.
This was a time when race relations in the South remained tense.
We had a black base-running coach named Spence Henry. One night he was in the stands watching a game when a black player came to the plate. A guy behind Spence shouted, “Throw him a watermelon!” Spence turned around and scowled at the man. He then surveyed the rest
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