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Friday, March 28, 2008
Cox deserves farewell tour, but doesn’t want one
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There will be no rocking chair tour. Rocking chair tours lead to ceremonies. Ceremonies need honorees. Honorees require attention. Attention is so not Bobby Cox. It’s like his own personal attention deficit disorder.
But take a good look Sunday night. The Braves play the first of 162, and it’s likely to be the final opener and the final 162 that we’ll see Bobby Cox in a uniform. It will be at least six months before he says much on the matter. He made that mistake one day last spring and, well, attention had him cornered.
“This year and next year and that’s it,” Cox had said.
Some now believe he was only hinting at the possibility of maybe someday thinking that the end might not be far away. (Feel free to add a few more qualifiers.)
“I’d like to start doing the things I need to do instead of the things I want to do — like manage,” he continued.
We have learned in sports that there’s an open-door nature to retirement announcements. But those were strong words from a man not known for off-the-cuff remarks, particularly about himself. They are words he will never repeat because he came to understand the firestorm they caused in the organization last time. But they were words he meant.
Just a hunch: Get the chair ready.
Take a good look Sunday night. The Braves play their first of 162 under Cox, and we’re never going to see another one like him.
Rare is the athlete so dedicated to his sport that when he hurts his right arm, he goes outside and tries to learn how to throw left-handed. Rare is the manager who knows the game so well that he can take off the uniform, put on a suit, step into the front office, turn a farm system right side up and help build one of the strongest organizations sports has ever seen. Rare is when that same man can take off the suit, put back on the uniform, go back down to the dugout and win more games than anybody else during his tenure.
Cox has been all of those things.
Now he is telling all, “I’m leaving everything open.” Responses have been programmed. It’s an achievement merely when you can get him to bite on a hypothetical.
Question: Hypothetically, if this was your final season, you don’t seem like the type who would want a retirement tour.
Answer: “No, I don’t want that. And that’s part of it. If I do [retire], it’ll just be over.”
There will be enough to keep him busy. He’ll turn 67 in May (the Mets are in town). How busy does a 67-year-old need to be? He has a wife, three daughters, grandkids, a farm. He wants to travel. What must it be like on the road without the airport-hotel-stadium triangle?
The Dodgers signed him in 1959 and baseball has been his life ever since. He showed up at Dodgertown in Vero Beach and was overwhelmed by the number of players. “They didn’t have a draft in those days — they just found you and signed you,” he said. “There must have been 700 players there. We had three Triple-A teams with the Dodgers, two Double-As, four Cs, four Ds, a couple of Bs. I didn’t know anybody.”
Cox’s signing bonus was $40,000. At the time, he was driving a 1949 Ford he had bought in high school for $75. He thought about his newfound wealth.
“I wanted to buy a Corvette,” he said. “But I thought I shouldn’t.”
So he kept the Ford two more years.
Then he bought another used car.
Players hear these stories all the time. It’s one reason they struggle so much with thoughts of his retirement. When asked about playing for Cox, Chipper Jones said, “You don’t really have to see him. But you know how you feel when your dad’s watching you, peeking out the window to see what you’re doing in the front yard? That’s the way Bobby is. He doesn’t have to be overly verbal or hands on. You know who’s in charge.”
And then: “I think I’m going to have to negotiate a deal with him that he can’t retire until I retire.”
Jones doesn’t believe this is Cox’s last season, for the same reason many can’t believe it: He can’t imagine him doing anything else.
“They’ll have to cut his uniform off when they put him in the coffin,” Jones said. “Bobby’s happiest when he’s at the ballpark — sitting in the dugout with his spikes on, in full uniform and with a stogie at noon time for a 7 o’clock game. He’s just taking in the sights and sounds and smells of a big-league ballpark. It’s been in his blood. You can’t take that out of somebody.”
Baseball will always be in Bobby Cox. But before long, Bobby Cox is going to be in a rocking chair, farewell tour or not.
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