Some rivalry weekend ups and downs

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New York Mets

Jubilant Mets celebrate after Marcus Semien scored the winning run in the 10th on an unexpected Yankee infield collision in Citi Field Sunday.

Don’t look now, but the Mets and the Phillies didn’t exactly finish what was ballyhooed as Rivalry Weekend on the wrong side of the ledgers. We’re not quite ready to pronounce them fully resurrected, but we’re not exactly ready to write them off entirely either. Yet.

I’m not entirely sure who thinks the Braves and the Red Sox are rivals, unless someone with a perverse historical appreciation decided that the Braves having originated in Boston counts the Red Sox as their rival. The Giants and the Athletics, of course, had a regional rivalry upended by the shenanigans leading to the A’s ditching Oakland.

Well, Sacramento is only an hour and a half from San Fran, if you want to be technical. Otherwise . . .

Fancy Running Into You Here Dept.—You may or may not have noticed that the Mets have had some, shall we say, issues this season. We’ll be kind and not review them here. Not while we’re about to notice that, since they ended their notorious twelve-game losing streak, they’ve gone 13-10.

The way they got number thirteen was almost classic. The whom against whom they got it was even more classic, taking their second of three from the Yankees Sunday afternoon. Now, for the whackadoodle part: The Mets didn’t so much walk it off as the Yankees bumped it off for them.

Tyrone Taylor tied it for the Mets with a three-run bomb in the ninth to send the game to extras in the first place. With two on in the tenth, shining Mets rook Carson Benge bounced one up the middle in the tenth . . .

Who did Yankee left fielder Max Schuemann (at the infield’s back in a five-infielder defense) and shortstop Anthony Volpe think they were—the 1962 Mets? They bumped into each other behind the mound going for Benge’s bouncer, enabling Marcus Semien to shuffle home with the winning run.

Maybe that’s one reason why Yankee fans might see that their pets are 14-10 in their last 24 games and still wonder when the earth’s going to give way beneath their feet.

Philly Phlog Dept.—Do you know how the Phillies have done since Rob Thomson’s execution and Don Mattingly’s acceptance of the interim bridge? How does 14-4 strike you?

It probably strikes Phillies fans almost as joyously as the Phillies struck against the Pirates this weekend. They swept the Pirates in Pittsburgh, including mayhem from Bryce Harper, who followed up his jolting Saturday home run off the batter’s eye behind the PNC Park center field fence with another bomb into the bullpen Sunday.

Sunday’s game had more than Harper going for it, of course. Zach Wheeler pitched a gem for seven innings, striking eight out, walking one, and coming away with a 1.99 earned run average since he came off the injured list. And the Phillies slapped Paul Skenes a little silly on the afternoon and the Pirate pen a little silly, winning 6-0 to finish the sweep.

“I thought we just fought him. And that’s what you have to do against guys like him,” said Mattingly postgame about manhandling Skenes. “He’s going to get his outs; he’s going to make pitches. But you’ve got to keep fighting and just keep fouling off, trying to fight just to get something. And I thought we did that kind of up and down the order.”

Kind of. This keeps up and “interim” may not be part of Donnie Baseball’s job title very much longer.

On the other hand, both the Phillies and the Pirates finished Sunday at 24-23. The Pirates are 14-12 at home, 11-10 on the road; the Phillies are 12-11 on the road and dead even at 12 each at home. There’s still a long road to go, but neither team should feel too horrible right at this moment.

Oblique Strategies Dept.—The struggling, injury-battered Astros could use some after their franchise face, Jose Altuve, landed on the injured list with an oblique strain. The veteran second baseman was unable to run after grounding one to third base against the Rangers in the eighth Saturday, and the strain was the net result shown on an MRI.

The former ogres of the American League West look like a clinical waiting room now: fourteen on the IL entering Sunday, though Jake Meyers (CF), Jeremy Pena (SS), and Nate Pearson (RP) were expected to be re-activated come Monday, when the 19-29 Astros open a set with the Twins.

The good news: The Astros have a small drop of momentum to take into that set: they spent Rivalry Weekend taking two of three from the Rangers in Houston, the Rangers deciding Sunday that a sweep just wasn’t in their planning and bopping the Astros, 8-0.

Lucky Thirteen Dept.—By battering the Red Sox, 8-1, on Sunday, the Braves—currently the comfortable owners of the National League East’s lead—won their thirteenth series out of fifteen on the season thus far.

Austin Riley and Mike Yastrzemski homered for the Braves while Grant Holmes pitched six scoreless. Riley’s three-run shot opened for the Braves in the first; Yastrzemski went solo in the fourth; and, the hot ‘Lanta Lads scored otherwise on a bases-loaded walk and run-scoring ground out in the second; an RBI single in the fifth; and, a sacrifice fly in the eighth.

The lone Red Sox score came by way of a Kevin Sogard RBI double in the ninth, the only blemish upon a Braves bullpen that kept the Red Sox in check otherwise for the final three innings. The Red Sox are now 19-27: 11-13 on the road; 8-14 at home.

Is it any wonder Red Sox Nation might be tempted to switch from warbling Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” to the Kinks’s “Where Have All the Good Times Gone”?

Ill Wind Dept.—Well, it was an ill wind for the Las Vegas Athletics of Sacramento via Oakland on Sunday. For the visiting Giants, the wind was more than welcome, when Harrison Bader hit one into the wind with the pillows full and, this time, the wind delivered it over the right field fence for the grand slam that slammed exclamation points upon the Giants’ eight-run eighth.

It was a grand way to climax a rally begun by Bader himself when he reached on a fielding error to open the inning. It was also Mother Nature repaying Bader for having stolen a grand slam from him the day before, blowing the ball back in when it looked to one and all as though headed behind the fence.

The hapless A’s let three fielding mishaps help define their Sunday doom, the final 10-1, Giants. The good news, sort of: the A’s still hold first in the AL West . . . with a 23-23 record. The Giants remain a National League West basket case at 20-27.

But on Sunday afternoon, what was blowing in the wind was the Giants playing more than a little bit over their own heads: They matched their most runs in a single game (10, on 17 April) and improved their season’s record in blowouts to 7-9. They also improved their road record to 10-15. The A’s fell to 5-6 in blowouts and 10-12 at home.

Bobby Cox, RIP: “Come on kid, u got this!”

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Bobby Cox

Bobby Cox, standing up for his player[s], should be remembered for more than his record for getting sent to the showers.

The only man you might have expected to get ejected from his own Hall of Fame induction has gone to the Elysian Fields at 84. Well, maybe Earl Weaver, but his 96 don’t cut the mustard in Bobby Cox’s 169 ho-heaves living room. Hopefully, Cox didn’t get himself ejected from there, if not at the Pearlies themselves. Kidding.

Cox’s passing yielded a flood of grief especially in the immediate wake of longtime former Braves owner Ted Turner’s passing just a couple of days earlier. “Haven’t posted on social in quite some time but can’t stay quiet in this time of loss,” began a tweet from Cox’s Hall of Fame third baseman Chipper Jones, whom he drafted as the Braves general manager before returning to the dugout.

I’m struggling to tell all what Bobby Cox meant to me and so many others in Braves Country. He was the leader of men and a second father to so many Atlanta Braves thru the yrs. I’m so sad today, but as I sit here watching my two youngest boys play in their championship games on the day he passed, I can’t help but shout the same things he did from the corner of the dugout. ‘Come on kid, u got this!’ We are gonna miss him so much, but his legacy is forever cemented with the success of this franchise for the last 35+ yrs. He started it as GM, continued as manager, and passing the torch to others, the Atlanta Braves will continue to be force that Bobby Cox always wanted us to be. We love you Skipper. You were our rock. I love you more than words can express. My boys won both of their games…..Bobby had a hand, I have no doubt!

Maybe the number one quality his former players wanted the world to remember was Cox the skipper having their backs. It was probably the likeliest reason why he got to set the record for a major league manager getting thrown out of a game. Cox above all figured it better to get himself sent to his room than the player who was still liable to land a game-winning hit or the pitcher liable to deliver the game-ending out.

“I generally don’t go onto the field that much,” he once said, “but 90 percent of the time it’s because my player is upset.”

And I’ve got to get in there right away and keep him in the game or at least stick up for him. My relationships with umpires, in my mind, is great. I like them, every single one of them. Being a major-league umpire is the single toughest job in sports. It’s hard. Those guys are good. But again, I have to stick up for my players.

Cox also had the knack of spotting when a player of obvious talent was mispositioned and doing something about it. “What can I say? He saved my career,” said one such player, 1980s Braves center fielder Dale Murphy, the brightest star on moribund teams following their brief rise in the early 1980s. “Hung in there with me during my early days and made the decision to move me to the outfield. Changed my career/life forever.”

Brought up a catcher, Murphy wasn’t even the second coming of Choo Choo Coleman, never mind Yogi Berra. Cox spotted Murphy’s throwing problems from behind the plate and converted him in time to an outfielder. Murphy might have become a Hall of Famer had it not been for a round of injuries ensuring his decline phase would be more like an eighty-story drop.

Cox’s first term managing the Braves ended in his firing after the 1982 season. After a spell managing the Blue Jays, he returned to the Braves in the front office first. As general manager, he began bringing in pieces that would help found a National League dynasty—trading for Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, drafting Jones and Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine, and providing himself a foundation of solid defense, solid pitching, and solid, smart hitting when he returned to the Braves dugout.

He liked things kept businesslike but not without humour, even if the outside world didn’t always see the lighter side of his Braves as they began and continued their dominance of the National League in the 1990s. Described often enough as gentle but firm, Cox seemed a combination of father figure and older, experienced friend without letting anyone forget whom the boss was.

Need pitching reinforcement? Cox helped prod his front office successor John Schuerholz to dip into the free agency pool and sign Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, whom the Cubs had left to feel less than appreciated despite the team-first ethic that held hands with the brainy talent. Jokers in the Braves deck? Cox prodded for and got their dismissals. Hit the road, Neon Deion Sanders and John (Off His) Rocker.

“What made him a great manager,” said Glavine once upon a time, “was that he was so good at handling his players.”

He was so good at getting the best and most out of his guys. He treated everybody with the utmost respect and made everybody understand that whether you were a superstar or the 25th man coming out of spring training, you were going to be an important piece of the puzzle. He made guys not only understand that but believe it.

 

“Every day,” said Marquis Grissom, a Braves outfielder from 1995-96, “he would ask me, ‘How you doing? How’s your family doing?’ (He was) able to push all of us in the right direction and get the best out of all of us, and I think that says the world about Bobby Cox—and if you can’t play for him, you can’t play for nobody.”

Cox managed to win one World Series among the five pennants among that closet full of division championships. Opposing managers like Bruce Bochy weren’t the only ones who wondered how much deeper Cox teams would have gone in the postseason if they’d had better relief pitching. Yet the best they got—Smoltz, already one of the greatest Braves starting pitchers—recovering from Tommy John surgery and sending himself to the bullpen a couple of seasons—still wasn’t quite enough.

The skipper knew only too well that you could be the 1927 Yankees and still get taken down by a slightly better team. When the Braves lost his final postseason on the bridge (2010) thanks largely to defensive miscues and Chipper Jones’s absence (season-ending August knee surgery), Cox still wouldn’t blame his players. He credited Bochy’s Giants for their superior play.

“RIP my second father,” tweeted Cox’s longtime center field mainstay, Hall of Famer Andruw Jones, who turned into the single most run-preventive center fielder ever under Cox’s leadership. Jones was hardly the only player who did better under Cox’s guidance than anyone else’s.

Cox earned four Baseball Writers Association Manager of the Year awards, tying him with fellow Hall of Fame skipper Tony La Russa. Those two plus Buck Showalter are the only skippers to win the prize in three different decades, while Cox stands alone as an eight-time Sporting News Manager of the Year winner. He also got to stand for induction into the Hall of Fame with two of his pitching mainstays, Maddux and Glavine.

His retirement included working as a Braves advisor until the 2019 stroke a day after he went to the Braves’s regular-season home opener. He rehabbed from it and regained enough to be able to enjoy a little travel with his wife and more time with his children and grandchildren, but he now confined his Braves activities to watching and rooting from a safe home distance.

That included watching the Braves win their next World Series, beating the Astros in 2021.

“A small part of Bobby Cox changes you as a baseball player,” said Smoltz of the man who was first spotted as managerial material when knee injuries killed his potential as a young Yankee third baseman in the mid-1960s. “Twenty years with the man changes your life.”

It’s not unreasonable to suggest, then, that eternity in the Elysian Fields (we imagine the Lord urging him in: “Come on, kid, you got this!”) will change a few of its citizens, either.

As the Red Sox turn: The Saturday massacre . . .

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Not even revenge for a 10-3 blowout loss in Baltimore Friday night could spare Alex Cora. Not even his mixed-up, muddled-up, twisted Red Sox frying the Orioles alive on Saturday with innings of three, one, and three runs before a ninth inning that could have had them hauled before the Hague could do it.

Cora was taken to the guillotine after that 17-1 Saturday afternoon massacre. So were his five coaches. Before you shake your heads pondering why you should take pity upon six men executed for the Red Sox’s 10-17 start (they beat the Orioles with far fewer human rights violations Sunday, 5-3, for win number 11), you might want to ponder how this mess got built in the first place.

It wasn’t by Cora. It sure wasn’t by Jason Varitek, franchise icon as a catcher when the Red Sox broke the (actual or alleged) Curse in 2004 and followed up anchoring another World Series winner three years later, now “reassigned” from game planning coordinator to another, as-yet-identified role in the organisation.

It sure as hell wasn’t put together by now-beheaded hitting coach Peter Fatse, third base coach Kyle Hudson, bench coach Ramón Vásquez, Fatse’s assistant Dillon Lawson, or major league hitting strategy coach Joe Cronin.

This one’s on chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, who once wrestled his way through a twelve-season career as a middling relief pitcher of occasional flashes and flights. And very few people watching the Red Sox closely think otherwise, no matter how the massacre resonates as par for the baseball course when a team thought to be a division or league power isn’t exactly behaving that way on the field.

Maybe nobody put it with quite the nail-driving force of Athletic writer Steve Buckley. “For anyone choosing to cite this as just the latest example of a dead-ass ballclub whose manager is unable to inspire his players to keep performing at a high level regardless of the circumstances, you have just cause to do so,” he began Sunday.

Or you can look at the misshapen roster and the lack of clubhouse leadership and ask who put this mess together.

That would be Craig Breslow, who, believe it or not, once lived in big-league clubhouses. Lots of them. He soldiered on, year after year, with organization after organization. He was released five times. In 2018, at age 37, he pitched at three levels of the Toronto Blue Jays’ farm system as part of one last effort to get back to the big leagues.

How strange that a guy who’s been in so many clubhouses doesn’t seem to know how they work. How strange that a guy who has been on so many rosters hasn’t figured out how to build one.

Alex Cora

Alex Cora signing a baseball in the clubhouse. His execution papers were signed Saturday despite the Red Sox nuking the Orioles that day, proving who gets to take the fall for a hot mess starting 10-17.

Remember Alex Bregman? Brought aboard to play third base last year while easing incumbent Rafael Devers into designated hitting and first base. Except that Devers wouldn’t buy in, before he would, before he wouldn’t (easy to get the sequence confused, no?), before he was shipped to the Giants in a “trade” that made the word a euphemism for the Red Sox ridding themselves of the $250+ million left on Devers’s deal.

Fighting injuries, Bregman still endeared himself to the Red Sox clubhouse with leadership and agreeability in hand with accountability. Then he hit free agency. Then Breslow convinced one and all upstairs that, no, of course not, the Cubs weren’t really being serious about offering Bregman a big chunk of the vault, a no-trade clause, and the Van Allen Belt. (That last is a joke, son.)

Except the Cubs were deadly serious. And, oh, by the way: while the Red Sox sputtered, spun, and plunged into the morass that culminated in the Friday night flogging they suffered, the Cubs won ten straight and eleven of thirteen to claim second place in the National League Central.

“I mean obviously, it’s kind of up in the air what the true direction of the franchise is,” said Trevor Story, Red Sox shortstop. “Some of the best coaches in the world didn’t get a fair shot.” The dear boy. Somebody forgot to brief him about Red Sox life under John Henry’s hammer. As another Athletic writer, Ken Rosenthal, wants to remind us, these Red Sox “could win the World Series—unlikely as that might be with the roster Breslow constructed as chief baseball officer—and it would only spare him for so long.”

Ask Dave Dombrowski. Ask Ben Cherington. Ask Theo Epstein, who once escaped the Henry regime in a gorilla suit, only to return, win a second Series and then bolt for the Chicago Cubs. Oh, to hear the honest thoughts of Epstein, back with the Fenway Sports Group as a part-owner and senior adviser, on the latest installment of As The Red Sox Turn.

It’s an endless game of survivor at Fenway Park, only no one ever survives. Not top executives. Not superstars like Mookie Betts, Rafael Devers and Alex Bregman. Not managers like Terry Francona, John Farrell and now Alex Cora . . .

Was Cora perfect? (Pause to stop laughing.) Remember, he had to take time off (ho ho ho) over his role in the Astros’s illegal, off-field-based, electronic sign-stealing operation of 2017-18 that was exposed over a year after he led his Red Sox to a World Series ring in his first year on the bridge. He also couldn’t sell Devers on the DH/1B transition the Giants proved to have little trouble selling, after all.

He wasn’t perfect. But neither were he or his staff going to get too much out of this assemblage, no matter how they looked on Saturday. “At the end of the day, when we take the field, it’s on us,” said outfielder Roman Anthony, currently struggling with back trouble. “It’s not AC’s job to go out there and do the things that we’re expecting to do as players. So, I mean, it’s nobody’s fault but ours.”

Eyes will be upon interim manager Chad Tracy as he tries to find the right pieces from among those bequeathed him. The pieces were random and testy enough that Cora found himself having to play mad scientist searching for the best formulae.

Forget whether Albert Einstein could square this roster’s mass into energy instead of this mess. Meaning Breslow himself could be the next execution. As the Red Sox Turn . . .

Garret Anderson, RIP: The quiet, infectious Angel

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Garret Anderson

All business in the batter’s box or left field, Garret Anderson was liable to break into an infectious smile and good baseball and life talk with teammates otherwise.

“Maintaining an even strain” was a way of life for legendary military test pilots and often a way of anguish for their wives. It’s also a way of life for enough baseball players, and often a source of anguish for enough of their fans. Show me the player who maintains an even strain, and I’ll show you the fans who mistake it for indifference.

Garret Anderson, whose death of a heart attack at 53 Thursday shocked his sport, was such a player. At least, until his Angels shocked his and their sport and won the 2002 World Series in seven rather thrilling games.

“I used to be called lazy,” he told one reporter, after his three-run double in the fifth inning of Game Seven put the Angels ahead to stay. “Now that we win a World Series, I’m called graceful.”

Anderson at the plate was a sight more likely to inspire engineers than artists. He didn’t look at pitchers as though he wanted to carve his initials into their foreheads. He didn’t look or act like an ogre measuring up his next meal or a junkyard dog finding intruders under every wreck. He swung methodically but attentively, line drives a specialty, even if he did win the 2003 Home Run Derby.

“So stoic was Anderson in the box,” wrote Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci in tribute, “that he came to the plate 9,177 times and saw 30,503 pitches and was hit by only eight of those pitches, the fewest ever by anyone who came to the plate 9,000 times. There was no filigree to Anderson. No self-promotion. Nothing extraneous. How he played happened to be exactly how he lived his life.”

“That swing that I was using tonight is not a swing that I try to use during the season,” he said after he won that Derby. “It was just strictly for trying to hit balls over the fence. During the season, mentally and physically, I don’t do that. I look for mistakes and try to hit them hard.”

Pitchers, other opponents, and even teammates understimated or dismissed Anderson at their own peril. In a seventeen-year career, all but two seasons of which were with the Angels, Anderson was as reliable as the day or night was long. He led the American League back-to-back in doubles; he averaged 21 home runs per 162 games; he didn’t walk much but only ever struck out 100 times once; he finished with his play in left field worth 95 total zone runs above his league average, fourth on the all-time list.

Still, there were those who assumed Anderson too benign to make the Big Plays. They assumed incorrectly.  “He doesn’t dive for balls because he gets there quicker than most guys,” said Darin Erstad, Anderson’s longtime Angels outfield partner, and a classic junkyard dog type of player. If that type holds Anderson in high esteem, best listen.

Not that Anderson was allergic to diving or lunging. He simply thought it meant he’d been caught unawares for a very rare moment. “I never should have had to dive for that ball,” Anderson once said after making a diving catch against the Twins. “I got a bad jump. I study hitters. I have an idea of where the ball is going. I don’t dive because I don’t have to.”

Somewhere in the Elysian Fields, Joe DiMaggio must be grinning, if not ready to mix Anderson a tall, cold one.

So the 2003 All-Star Game MVP didn’t resemble the offspring of a secret in vitro union between Rickey Henderson and Robin Williams. The laugh tillers still need the straight men.

“His passion to play this game was very real, and although maybe it didn’t manifest itself the way it did with some other players, Garret played hard, he wanted to win,” said his longtime Angels manager Mike Scioscia, when Anderson was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame. “He’s got that internal competitive nature that every great player has to have, and he was really the foundation of our championship run back in 2002 and for many other years. He just was a terrific talent and a terrific person.”

Teammates were also among the first to get tastes of Anderson’s dry, disarming wit. Midwest-born former first baseman Scott Spiezio learned the hard way when his fashion sense, or lack thereoff, came into Anderson’s sights. “I’d get on the [team] plane, he’d be like, ‘Spiez, you got on a horse blanket? You’re giving me allergies’,” Spiezio said. “Before you know it, I’m buying Canali, Hugo Boss and Armani.”

Like George Harrison’s reputation as the “Quiet Beatle,” Anderson’s reputation as the Quiet Angel was often deceptive. And, like Harrison, in a good way.

Win or lose, by blowout or by single run, Anderson prided himself and his best teammates on consistency, whether fellow stoics or class clowns alike. “You can’t get wrapped up in one game,” he said in April 2002, after the Angels blew Cleveland out 21-2 one fine day.

Guys’ personalities on this team are the same day-to-day. Guys are walking around the clubhouse the same way they were last week when we were getting our butts kicked. That’s good to see. We have a lot of games to play.

“Yes, he was quiet, but let me tell you that if you entered his inner circle, he was deeply, deeply engaging, even loquacious,” said Joe Maddon, eventually a World Series-winning manager himself but then the Angels’s bench coach. “I so enjoyed our conversations. He was just a sweetheart of a guy. All of us who knew him are just broken up about [his death]. We all loved him. This is really, really hard.”

Maybe the hardest hit might have been Tim Salmon, drafted by the Angels a year before Anderson. A pair of southern California guys, one from Los Angeles (Anderson) and one from Long Beach (Salmon), who forged a deep brotherhood out of opposites, but also out of a few common threads (each married their high school sweethearts, for one), Anderson’s even strain somehow finding its neatest complement in the far more outgoing Kingfish.

“I mean, it’s devastating. As devastating as anything can be in your life,” Salmon began when reached by a reporter.

We’ve pretty much been in this game together at the same time the whole time. I just remember seeing this kid driving this really nice Mustang [in their instructional league days]. He must’ve spent his entire signing bonus on it. Here comes this tall, lanky kid. I was like, ‘Oh, what kind of attitude we’re gonna have here?’ And it was the complete opposite. He was just so mild-mannered and quiet, and you had to draw it out. But he was infectious. He became a favorite of his teammates from the beginning.

“When I first got drafted,” said Angels outfielder/DH Mike Trout, long enough The Man in Anaheim before the injury bug rudely interrupted him, and the only Angel to score more runs lifetime than Anderson, “[Anderson] was the guy. He meant a lot to this organization . . . I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything bad said about him. It’s just a tough, tough loss.”

Anderson’s impact wasn’t just on his own team. He made a big impression on another southern California kid who grew up making Anderson—who was also respected for signing autographs for kids for long periods daily while he played—his baseball hero.

“You always hear, ‘Don’t meet your heroes’,” said Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers’s Hall of Fame-bound first baseman. “But then I got to meet him, and I was like, ‘I’m glad I did.’ Because he was a beautiful man. And I wish he was still here. He meant a lot to so many people … I’m at a loss for words really.”

The only people to whom he could mean more were his wife, Teresa; their daughters, Brianne and Bailey; and, their son, Garret (Trey) Anderson III. As great as baseball’s grief is, theirs is greater. Lord watch over them as You welcomed him home, a little bit early, but no less safe and sound.

Phil Garner, RIP: Two sides of scrap iron

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Phil Garner

Phil Garner debates with umpire Larry Young in 2006. He didn’t always act like his Scrap Iron nickname.

Phil Garner was nicknamed Scrap Iron for his feisty side but had a side gentle enough that he once promised his wife to hit a grand slam for her when she missed the first one he hit as a major leaguer. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Unless you can. And he did.

Garner was a rough-and-ready second baseman whose fortés did not include power hitting. (He averaged nine homers a year lifetime.) So, after Mrs. Garner missed him taking Cardinals pitcher Bob Forsch in the bottom of the sixth on 14 September 1978, the loving husband promised her another salami slice ASAP.

Naturally, it came the next day, against the Montreal Expos. And neither Garner had to wait beyond the bottom of the first, when hubby squared off against Woodie Fryman with the pads padded and hit one over the left field fence. It was the first time a National League player sliced salami in back-to-back games in 77 years.

That was the guy who’d grow up to manage the Astros to their first pennant in 2005, when they were still a National League club. The bad news was the Astros grappling their way to it through the Cardinals only to get swept by the White Sox.

And, the who’d go from there to the Athletics’ front office as an advisor, to the team who once traded him after the guy they traded to manage the Pirates, Chuck Tanner, told his new team to trade for the second base slasher. In that advisory role, Garner proved invaluable to an old teammate named Bob Melvin, when both were Giants and Garner was near the end of the line.

Maybe that was also because, when managing the Brewers and the Tigers once upon a time, Garner made Melvin his bench coach at both stops, and Melvin appreciated Garner talking to him in terms of actualities and not what-ifs.

“When he would talk to me,” said Melvin to The Athletic‘s Tyler Kepner about Garner, who died of pancreatic cancer Saturday night, “he would always say, ‘When you manage …’ Not one time did he ever say, ‘If you manage …’ And it just resonated with me that he had that much confidence in me. Obviously, I did end up managing, and a lot of my philosophies and a lot of my values in baseball come from him. There’s no more impactful guy in my career than Phil Garner.”

Garner did that in a lot of places. When he became a Pirate, he engaged in some good-natured jousting with Hall of Famer Dave Parker, who’d first been astonished that his team sent six players to Oakland in the swap that made Garner a Pirate in the first place.

Parker zinged him, Garner zinged back, and the new guy’s “initiation was complete,” as Parker remembered in his memoir, Cobra, “and I had a new sparring partner.” He also had an almost immediate appreciation for Garner one spring training afternoon after Garner’s arrival.

“In the twilight,” the Cobra wrote, “ol’ Scrap Iron was still out there, hours later, taking extra fielding practice at third base. As pissed as I was about the trade, I knew it was the smart move and we got ourselves a winning player.” A guy to win a World Series with, as they did with the Fam-I-Lee Pirates of 1979.

And, a guy who knew how to help bring a roster together, as the team’s relief ace Kent Tekulve told Kepner. “Our team was known to be, oh, a little rowdy, a little cocky, and nobody was safe in the clubhouse,” Tekluve began.

It didn’t matter where you stood in the pecking order, everybody was fair game, and a lot of that was Gar. It was hilarious every day when we’d come in. Whichever one got there first—Parker or Gar—you were waiting for the second one, because it was going to start. You’ve got this 6-foot, 5-inch, huge Black guy and this 5-foot, 9-inch little redneck, and they’d just start in on each other, and that spread. Everybody’s involved now.

And he knew what was going on. I mean, Phil was a smart guy. He knew if he got on Parker, then everybody else would get on him, too. And Parker liked that, because that gave him a reason to prove you wrong.

That’s the man whom Tigers pitcher C.J. Nitkowski once ripped publicly after “a frustrating game,” as Kepner phrased it. Garner bawled him out for it in a clubhouse meeting the next day . . . but accepted the pitcher’s apology privately. Garner even tried to acquire Nitkowski when managing the Astros later on.

“It really spoke to me and made me reflect on how I want to handle myself,” said Nitkowski, who went from the mound to the broadcast booth in due course. “He showed what professionalism looks like, and what forgiveness looks like.”

Another of his pitchers, Steve Sparks, remembered a tough loss that stirred Garner to “shredding us in the locker room” and turning the postgame food spread into a miniature landfill. If Garner couldn’t cool himself off, his lady could—and did.

“At the end of [the tirade],” Sparks remembered, “his wife Carol has a Harley-Davidson wheeled into the clubhouse for his birthday—and right away he turns into Jerry Seinfeld in the ‘schmoopie’ episode, from one character to another in the blink of an eye. He was so relatable. He knew how to laugh at himself.”

Hopefully some of that laughter will come through the tears when they lay the body to rest and wish the man a safe journey home to the Lord. Where Dave Parker’s just liable to be waiting for him with a cold beer in hand and a mouthful of wisecracks with which to serve it.

First published by Sports-Central.