Montreal Gazette - October 23, 1980
Green’s way with champs hailed by impressed Expos
The difference, as much as I don't want to admit it, was Dallas' discipline throughout the year. That had a lot to do with this team not quitting. We needed a guy to come in when we were watching a football game and say, 'You're watching a stupid-assed football game and missing batting practice?' A guy who yelled at Mike Schmidt, making $600,000, and John Vukovich, making the minimum. I don't think it's fair to say the whole ball club needed discipline, but you would think veteran players knew when to turn off the TV. – Larry Bowa, after Game Six
By Michael Farber of The Gazette
Dallas Green has the shout heard 'round the world, but it might have been the simple click of recognition when the tube was shut which made the Philadelphia Phillies the champions of baseball.
Amid the champagne shampoos after the Phillies had dispatched the Kansas City Royals, the players granted as much. Their yacht had been torpedoed by a man who had tested the cut of their jib and all that other nautical stuff which means he booted them in their fannies.
They loved it.
Sure, if the Phillies had lost the World Series to Kansas City, or if they had not squeezed past Houston in the stunning playoffs, or if Bob Boone didn't hit a two-out single one rainy Saturday at Olympic Stadium, Dallas Green may have been remembered as one of the biggest boors in the world. But he/they did win, and being given the boot apparently is the best thing which ever has happened to the S.S. Phillies.
"It's like when you are in school," said Expo shortstop Chris Speier, involved in some baseball Philosophy 101 with a caller yesterday. "You had certain teachers who let you get away with a lot, and others who were pretty rough on you. But you probably respected the teacher more who didn't let you get away with things. Vou probably produced more for her and got better grades."
All of which may reflect on the Expos, who no longer are the over-achievers in the National League. They have enough talent to win; indeed it might have been they playing in prime time instead of Philadelphia, should have been they if you talked to Speier or Warren Cromartie or Elias Sosa yesterday.
And all for the want of discipline... and a few new players, of course.
Expo manager Dick Williams and Green attended different managerial schools. Williams, once the supreme drill sergeant, believes players should be treated like men; Green thinks they sometimes have to be treated like little boys.
Well, they call it a kid's game, don't they?
"We need discipline, no question," Cromartie said. "You just can't come to the park when you want to. We had three guys this season who just came and went as they pleased."
Ron LeFlore, Ellis Valentine and Rodney Scott?
"Aw, you know," Cromartie said. "You've got to have rules enforced for everybody. It's what you do on the field that counts, but in the long run you got to do your work. Dick's already said he's not out to make friends, so what the hell?
"The Phillies hated his (Green's) guts, but maybe that helped them. They all got ticked off enough and played together. Ultimately they respected Dallas for it; not everything he did, but he got respect because he was willing to say things. That's what happened to. Sparky (Anderson, the former Reds manager) in Cincinnati. Towards the end, he let Bench and Morgan and those guys do things on their own. They got a little lackadaisical, which is why he got fired."
"Dick is fairly lax," Speier said. "I'd like to see things like mandatory infield practice on our club (Green offers players a choice of infield or a $100 contribution to their favorite charity), although I'm one of the guys who sometimes asks for it off. On our club it might be good because we're basically young, and you like to get into good habits that you can't develop just by spring training and in game situations. Not that our guys aren't professionals and don't do their work. But you want to see one rule for 25 guys, and I don't think you have that on the Expos."
Major league baseball is nothing if not trendy. A few years ago, the trend was towards the young, "players" manager – Joe Torre with the New York Mets, Tony LaRussa with the Chicago White Sox, Ken Boyer of the St. Louis Cardinals. Now with the success of Green and Billy Martin, who returned to the whip in Oakland, perhaps the vacancies in Boston, Texas and St. Louis will be filled with some more "screamers and hollerers," as Green, at his posturing best, calls himself.
"I suppose the best manager is one who strikes a balance," Speier said, "a combination of both. You really can't be a Marine sergeant, but you have to be consistent in your dealings. Have the same rules for everybody. You can't go overboard one way or another."
Meanwhile, back in Broad Street, Philadelphia, US of A, folks were going overboard for the S.S. Phillies.
"We're a good team, not a great team' Larry Bowa had said in the clubhouse as Tuesday night turned into yesterday morning. "This isn't a dynasty by any means. We won because we did all the little things, made the right plays when we had to, and never quit. And dammit, Dallas was right. I didn't always go along (When Bowa saw the 'We, Not I' sign in the clubhouse during spring training, he said, "Where's the pom-pom girls?), but he was right."
John Public ignored by too many stars
By Tim Burke
It was interesting to hear Joe Garagiola, the baseball commentator, take it upon himself Tuesday night to defend Philadelphia pitcher Steve Carlton's longtime policy of refusing to talk to the media. "He has a perfect right to protect his privacy," Garagiola, the instant champion of human rights, declared.
Wrong, Joe. While he certainly has the right to protect his private life from media scrutiny – as long as that private life isn't threatening the integrity of baseball – he has, as a public figure, the duty to answer questions about the craft the public pay to see him practice.
Sealed off from reality in his TV booth, Garagiola apparently has forgotten about the people responsible for providing ballplayers with some of the world's biggest salaries. They are the fans who pay their way into the stadiums and the ones who buy the products hawked by his and the other networks. Without the fans and the media, Steve Carlton, as good at throwing a baseball as he is, would probably be playing softball for the company he was driving a truck for.
Carlton, with his dismissal of the media as some form of nuisance not worthy of his haughty acknowledgment, has started a disturbing trend in baseball, and now the Fifth Amendment syndrome is being picked up by all manner of sullen mediocrities around the circuit.
Co-operation needed
Instead of apologizing for these knuckleheads, the people who run. and promote baseball – owners, GMs, player reps, network executives – should be dictating that the players co-operate with the media, as every bit a part of their job as throwing strikes or batting in runs.
Down through the years, no professional sport has thrived as much on publicity as baseball. In a game that is played every day for more than six months of the year, interest has been maintained largely through the inexhaustible flow of statistics, anecdotes, theories and pithy commentaries that the people in the game produce off the field. During the long, hot summer many people often get more enjoyment out of arguing about baseball, or di-cussing it or listening to it than they do watching it.
But if the players ultimately decide to ring an iron curtain down on the fascinating background of their game with such pompous proclamations as, "It only matters what we do between the white lines", then the lore that has rooted the game into the North American culture will dry up, and the game itself will begin to wither.
And ex-jocks like Joe Garagiola may be applying as color men for the Demolition Derby.
Baseball is too great a game to let a few pampered Stars and non-stars undermine it with their snobbery. What it needs is more George Bretts and Gary Carters, and fewer Steve Carltons and George Hendricks.
• • •
As every Montreal baseball fan knows, one of the Expos' shortcomings is in righthanded relief pitching. And because there aren't any promising candidates in their farm system, president-GM John McHale acknowledges that they'll probably have to go elsewhere to find one.
It is therefore discouraging to learn about one who got away: Glenn Dooner, a 6' 6", 23-year-old native of Montreal who was traded midway through this past season from the Expos' Double-A club in Memphis to the Minnesota Twins' team' in Orlando in the same league.
With Memphis, Dooner, a right-handed sidearmer with a sinking fastball, slider and changeup, pitched 30.1 innings in 14 games. He had one win, four losses and one save, and an earned-run-average of 3.29. He also spent three weeks on the inactive list.
But under manager Roy MacMillan in Orlando, he pitched 72 innings in 32 games, finishing every game he came into. He had six wins, three losses and 14 saves, with a 2.33 ERA. One way or the other, he was responsible for 18 of Orlando's last 36 wins.
Relative inactivity
With an over-all 15 saves and 2.73 ERA in a hitters' league, Dooner, a rookie, emerged as the second best reliever in the Southern League. That, despite his relative inactivity in the first half in the Expos' organization.
Now he is pitching for Cartegnena, Columbia, in the Winter league and next spring he will report to Toledo, the Twins' Triple-A club, where he is already on the roster.
• • •
Bumped into Gordie Judges, the great lineman of 13 seasons here, who had a couple of days off this week from his new employers, the Argonauts. Outfitted in double blue from head to foot, Gordie grinned wryly and said: "Gerry Dattilio sure made it (Saturday Afternoon Massacre) look good, eh? I wished he'd been starting when I was here."
Of the Argos, he had kind words but is baffled by the mystique of defeat that haunts them. "The talent is there, but they've been losing for so long it's become a complex with them. It's hard to explain. But on the Alouettes, we had that calm confidence you get from winning. After a while, you know you will win. That's the kind of attitude Toronto has to develop."
Half million pay tribute to Series champs
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Phillies' fans, operating on a few winks after Tuesday night's victory celebration, massed at JFK Stadium yesterday for the city's formal salute to its World Series' champions.
Baseball and hookey were the big games in town, as thousands of laughing kids staked out spots to t watch a parade which was watched ' by an estimated 500,000 people and another 85,000 greeted the champions inside John F. Kennedy Stadium, site of many Army-Navy games.
A high school band led the parade, which rivalled the celebration accorded Philadelphia Flyers in 1974 when they won the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup.
People lined the sidewalks four and five deep. In some areas, they pushed into the street, almost brushing the trucks as they passed. However, police quickly moved the people back.
It was a big day for pennant sellers and thousands of them waved under coolish, sunny skies. Homemade sips, praising the team and individual players, were everywhere.
And the players loved it.
Mike Schmidt, voted the most valuable player in the Series, said he never saw so many sincere people as he did in the parade.
"Take this championship and savor it, because you deserve it," he told the multitude at JFK stadium.
Schmidt was among the contingent of players and management riding on flatbed trucks. And while there were several cheers for the slugging third baseman, the most popular player was relief ace Tug McGraw, who came on to smother potential rallies, first in the National League playoffs and then the World Series.
It was McGraw who got the last out of the final game Tuesday night, striking out Kansas City's Willie Wilson with the bases loaded and the Phillies leading 4-1.
McGraw beamed and waved as he saw signs which read "McGraw for President," and "Tugadelphia."
The crowd cheered, but the constant refrain was, "We want Tug."
When McGraw was introduced, he received a 25-second standing ovation.
Ironically, the only negative note was interjected by Phillies' president Ruly Carpenter who often has complained of a negative media.
"There are a few people here who didn't think we could do it," said Carpenter. "But we're here."
Meanwhile in Kansas City, a ticker-tape welcome from an estimated 500,000 fans greeted the losing Royals who arrived on a late-morning flight.
The players, along with coaches and Royals officials, attended the rally after being driven through the city's downtown in an tumultuous scene.
The setting resembled a snowstorm as the motorcade passed between tall buildings on some downtown streets. Office workers, leaning from open windows, dropped showers of shredded paper on the players, who rode below in open cars.
Star third baseman George Brett rode in the parade on a horse decked out with a black and silver saddle. The loudest cheers came when Brett rode up in front of the stage at the rally at the Liberty Memorial. Brett, loose and joking with the crowd, offered to play a song in honor of the fans on a trombone borrowed from a member of a high school band.
"It may not sound good, but it's my version of, 'The Greatest Fans in the World,"' Brett said before blowing a few sour notes.
Fans at the rally and along the route held up dozens of signs for the players to read. One seemed to sum them all up: "Roses are red, Royals are blue, the Phillies won, but we love you."
