earned him his first ticket back to the bigs the following year, as a third base coach for the San Diego Padres in 1969, at which point thirty-five-year-old Sparky Anderson had begun to be talked about by baseball executives as major-league managerial timber, and sooner rather than later.
An opportunity to run Gene Autry’s California Angels club appeared to be in the offing, when the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager Bob Howsam, a fan from Anderson’s winning year for them at Asheville, made a preemptive strike and offered him the Reds managerial job for the upcoming 1970 season. Sparky had seen how good the Reds looked up close during his season with the Padres and leapt at the chance, but his selection came as a shock; few people outside of baseball, and almost nobody in the Midwest, even knew who he was. And when the team introduced him that winter, Anderson rocked the conservative Cincinnati press by guaranteeing they’d reach the World Series that fall—and damn if he didn’t then go on to deliver. He’d learned to temper his public enthusiasms, and regretted that early prediction as boasting or blabbing— I talk too much when I’m nervous, and I’m almost always nervous —ever since.
The 1970 Cincinnati Reds were a veteran squad, packed with a host of gifted players who had never quite gelled as a team, and having watched managers come and go over the years, they greeted this peppery little bush leaguer with open skepticism. After they stopped asking “Sparky who?” they called him “the minor-league motherfucker.” Sparky saw it, heard it, sensed it—he could always read people—and told them straight off: You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to respect me. I’m here to earn your respect. He started by taking the time to get to know them and their families, comprehending who each of these men was inside and what they needed not just as players but as people. From day one of spring training in 1970, Sparky installed the same rigorous, regimented training program that had been a crucial component of the Dodgers’ system in whichhe’d grown up. The Reds’ veterans grumbled—catcher Johnny Bench called their camp that year “Stalag 17”—but the team emerged from Florida in tremendous physical shape. Anderson also recognized the corresponding values of imposing strict discipline while maintaining each man’s self-respect, and had an unerring instinct for keeping that equation in balance. Managers in baseball then still held absolute authority; Sparky wielded his without lording it over you, although God help you if you pushed him too far. Whenever the Reds needed a shakeup, he’d call a team meeting, then single out and rip one of his superstars, who were tough enough to take it, and smart enough to realize that he was sending a message to the rest of the squad. By the end of their first season together Sparky had brought each of his men face-to-face with the mirror, and from then on they gave him everything they had. Anderson knew that he’d inherited a unique core of talent, and he was always first to acknowledge the part that luck had played in landing where he had when he had, but it took skill, toughness, psychology, street smarts, attention to detail, and bone-grinding hard work to keep adding the right pieces and then forge all that talent into a team. Sparky’s philosophy as a manager of a team this deep and strong was simple: If the clubhouse was under control, the field would take care of itself, and the Reds’ record since he’d taken over offered irrefutable evidence. The Big Red Machine had won more games during the 1970s than any other team in baseball.
Anderson would have been perfectly happy remaining their anonymous commander in the dugout, but during the Reds’ ascent a fascinating transformation occurred in their manager as well: The modest, down-to-earth, formerly camera-shy George Anderson developed what amounted to a public alter ego, and this chatty,
An opportunity to run Gene Autry’s California Angels club appeared to be in the offing, when the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager Bob Howsam, a fan from Anderson’s winning year for them at Asheville, made a preemptive strike and offered him the Reds managerial job for the upcoming 1970 season. Sparky had seen how good the Reds looked up close during his season with the Padres and leapt at the chance, but his selection came as a shock; few people outside of baseball, and almost nobody in the Midwest, even knew who he was. And when the team introduced him that winter, Anderson rocked the conservative Cincinnati press by guaranteeing they’d reach the World Series that fall—and damn if he didn’t then go on to deliver. He’d learned to temper his public enthusiasms, and regretted that early prediction as boasting or blabbing— I talk too much when I’m nervous, and I’m almost always nervous —ever since.
The 1970 Cincinnati Reds were a veteran squad, packed with a host of gifted players who had never quite gelled as a team, and having watched managers come and go over the years, they greeted this peppery little bush leaguer with open skepticism. After they stopped asking “Sparky who?” they called him “the minor-league motherfucker.” Sparky saw it, heard it, sensed it—he could always read people—and told them straight off: You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to respect me. I’m here to earn your respect. He started by taking the time to get to know them and their families, comprehending who each of these men was inside and what they needed not just as players but as people. From day one of spring training in 1970, Sparky installed the same rigorous, regimented training program that had been a crucial component of the Dodgers’ system in whichhe’d grown up. The Reds’ veterans grumbled—catcher Johnny Bench called their camp that year “Stalag 17”—but the team emerged from Florida in tremendous physical shape. Anderson also recognized the corresponding values of imposing strict discipline while maintaining each man’s self-respect, and had an unerring instinct for keeping that equation in balance. Managers in baseball then still held absolute authority; Sparky wielded his without lording it over you, although God help you if you pushed him too far. Whenever the Reds needed a shakeup, he’d call a team meeting, then single out and rip one of his superstars, who were tough enough to take it, and smart enough to realize that he was sending a message to the rest of the squad. By the end of their first season together Sparky had brought each of his men face-to-face with the mirror, and from then on they gave him everything they had. Anderson knew that he’d inherited a unique core of talent, and he was always first to acknowledge the part that luck had played in landing where he had when he had, but it took skill, toughness, psychology, street smarts, attention to detail, and bone-grinding hard work to keep adding the right pieces and then forge all that talent into a team. Sparky’s philosophy as a manager of a team this deep and strong was simple: If the clubhouse was under control, the field would take care of itself, and the Reds’ record since he’d taken over offered irrefutable evidence. The Big Red Machine had won more games during the 1970s than any other team in baseball.
Anderson would have been perfectly happy remaining their anonymous commander in the dugout, but during the Reds’ ascent a fascinating transformation occurred in their manager as well: The modest, down-to-earth, formerly camera-shy George Anderson developed what amounted to a public alter ego, and this chatty,
Similar Books
