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Monday, August 29, 2005
Hall of Famer, but never a figurehead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
One of these centuries, baseball historians will look deep into the shadows and shine light on the truth. There, a long ways behind Curt Flood and maybe the inventor of the seventh-inning stretch, they’ll discover Frank Robinson, the most unappreciated person ever associated with the game that he helped make famous.
Then again, such is the price you pay in this society when you have a tongue and a mind that scares people as much as your Louisville Slugger once did along the way to the Hall of Fame. Let’s just say that life in baseball has been like the following for Robinson, now the manager of a Washington Nationals team that has absolutely no business doing what it’s doing, and that is competing for a spot in the playoffs: Even when many in the game patted Robinson on his back, they often searched for a soft spot to stick in the knife and twist.
“I’ve heard through the grapevine that when I left the commissioner’s office [four years ago], there were certain people up there who were very happy that they got me out of there,” said Robinson, who turns 70 on Wednesday. His reference Monday in the visitors’ clubhouse at Turner Field was about his old disciplinarian’s job in the game as vice president of on-field operations. Among other things, he ignored the objection of his peers in the commissioner’s office by thumbing his nose at the mighty players’ association and increasing the fines for on-field brawls by 100 percent. Supposed to be a figurehead, he refused to play the part.
Anyway, baseball officials were not amused. After they purchased the floundering Montreal franchise, they looked around, patted Robinson on his back and asked him to manage the Expos who became the Nationals this season. Robinson chuckled, before he recalled the many lows that are mixed with the occasional highs these days, “Some people accuse them of setting me up with this job.”
If so, baseball placed Robinson in a position to win a third Manager of the Year award in his career with baseball’s latest Hitless Wonders. That is, if folks realize that the Nationals’ early surge toward the elite of the NL East was as much the product of Robinson’s old-school managing as it was wonderful pitching and a dose of luck. Then you have those other Robinson slights. For years, when the discussion involved the all-time great sluggers, you only heard of Hank, Babe and Willie. There were no thoughts of expanding that trio into a quartet, especially with Frank at fourth on the list.
You also have the movies, books and ceremonies associated with that other Robinson breaking the color barrier for players in the major leagues. Well, this Robinson did something nearly as significant � twice. He was the first black manager ever in the American League, and he holds the same distinction for the National League.
It’s just that, through it all, Robinson has refused to function as anybody other then Robinson. The same guy who battled opponents and teammates without compromising in pursuit of victory as a player is the same guy who spent this season as a manager accusing an opposing manager (the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Scioscia) on the field of cheating, ripping a Nationals pitcher (Tomo Ohka, now with the Milwaukee Brewers) on the mound for disrespecting the manager and saying a steroid abuser (Rafael Palmeiro) deserves to have all of his numbers yanked from the record books.
We need more Frank Robinsons, not fewer ones. You know, whether his slew of enemies like it or not. “There are just too many babies in this era of baseball, and that’s the real reason why a lot of people don’t like Frank,” said Nationals outfielder Jose Guillen. “When I got here, there was a lot of talk about how tough he is to get along with, but that’s because he’s so honest, which is a good thing. You know where you stand with him. I mean, you can count on one hand how many people have accomplished what he has, but you probably know more than I do why he isn’t getting the recognition.”
I do. I just told you.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
It’s now or never for Gailey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Things happen faster nowadays. No longer can a coach serve at the displeasure of his constituency for years on end. Either he wins people over by winning big or he accepts a hefty buyout and eases on down the road. Jim Donnan took Georgia to four consecutive Top 25 rankings but never won big enough to suit his fans, and Jim Donnan was gone after five years.
Chan Gailey is about to enter Year 4.
Chan Gailey hasn’t had a losing season at Georgia Tech but hasn’t had a breakout year, either. His teams have won when they probably shouldn’t have and lost when they absolutely shouldn’t have. He hasn’t endeared himself to Tech fans by force of personality. (Gailey works hard to hide any signs of having a personality.) He’s clearly not a bad coach, but he hasn’t yet stamped himself as a good one. And this is Year 4. If he doesn’t win big this fall, will there be a Year 6?
Tech people can be tough to please. Bill Curry was liked but not entirely respected, Bobby Ross respected but not always liked. The gruff but successful George O’Leary stands as the second-most beloved coach in Institute annals, behind only the sainted Bobby Dodd, and it fell to Gailey to succeed a man whose charm he couldn’t match. Perhaps to his credit, Gailey didn’t even try. Trouble is, alums don’t much like it when a coach —- especially a new coach —- comes across as aloof.
And so it was that by the end of his first season, the one that came unstuck with that 51-7 abomination in Athens and the subsequent Silicon Valley Classic loss to Fresno State, Gailey had become as unpopular as a first-year coach ever gets. Tech people hated what they were seeing on the field, and off the field they couldn’t really say they liked Gailey himself. And then, almost on cue, came the mass of flunkouts —- not Gailey’s fault, but they did happen on his watch —- and the decision to demote incumbent quarterback A.J. Suggs and ride with freshman Reggie Ball.
Two summers later, not much has changed. Tech fans still don’t know what to make of Ball, or of Gailey. The two have engineered spectacular victories —- over Auburn in 2003, over Clemson last year —- but have lost some of the worst-looking games ever played. And you wouldn’t have thought a close loss to Georgia could sting more than that embarrassment of 2002, but somehow it happened. With a chance to beat the Bulldogs last November, Ball and his coaches infamously lost track of downs. When your entire school is founded on the concept of precision, sloppiness is the sin of all sins.
So now it’s Year 4 for Gailey and Year 3 for Ball, and Tech fans are in the peculiar position of feeling optimistic about their team’s assembled talent but not nearly so good about their team’s chances. What exactly has this regime done to make anyone believe that it can succeed at a higher level? Where on this schedule do you find the seven wins athletics director Dave Braine seemed to set as a baseline last fall? Yes, it’s likely Tech will upset somebody on the road, but isn’t it just as likely the Jackets will then lose to somebody they shouldn’t?
This is Chan’s chance, maybe his last real chance, to turn the doubters into something approaching believers. If Tech finishes 6-5 or worse, its coach will be seen as having left his AD’s target unmet and will surely be viewed as a lame duck headed into 2006. But if the Jackets could get to 7-4 or even 8-3, the perception will be of a program that has fought its way up from mediocrity and is capable of accomplishing even more.
One way or another, this season figures to tell the tale of Chan Gailey at Georgia Tech. If he wins big, he might still be able to win over a critical audience. But if he doesn’t now, he never will.
Permalink | Comments (33) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Barks not annoying Richt ears
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Here’s another reason why Mark Richt is the definitive football coach for the University of Georgia: Either he doesn’t get it when it comes to the types of barking around the Bulldog Nation (ignorance definitely is bliss in this case), or he is wonderfully tone deaf.
I mean, there is barking, and then there is barking. The difference? Well, according to the post-Herschel standards of those around Bulldog Nation, it depends on whether Georgia is functioning as the fairy tale that it was during Richt’s previous four years in Athens along the way to the national elite, or whether the Bulldogs are evolving into a horror story by operating less than great during a given season.
Take this season, for instance. Those around Bulldog Nation see outrageously grand things for Richt’s fifth Georgia team, despite the graduation of the winningest Division I-A quarterback in history, despite a program rocked during the offseason by a slew of player defections and arrests, despite a conference that isn’t exactly built for the squeamish.
“I think everybody has high hopes every year, and everybody wants us, of course, to win the East [division of the SEC], the conference and the national championship when the season begins,” said Richt, telling only the truth about the growing fanaticism among Georgia fans. “That’s an exciting thing, but I don’t think many SEC fans in general expect their team to win the league every year, you know? I think they understand what we’re facing. Although those are the things that we are shooting for every year, I just don’t think the Georgia fans sit here and say, ‘You know what? We need to win the SEC every year.’ “
Hmmmm. With apologies to Richt, I hear that barking getting louder. As for the kind of barking, we’ll see.
On the one hand, this is a Georgia team that has more than a few running backs who can sprint from here to the pros. It also is a Georgia team with the foundation for a stellar defense despite losing its top player at lineman (David Pollack), linebacker (Odell Thurman) and defensive back (Thomas Davis) to the NFL within the first two rounds of the draft. On the other hand, this is a Georgia team that still has its traditional land mines on its schedule at Tennessee, along the banks of the St. Johns River and maybe around the Flats at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
Not only that, with David Greene working for the Seattle Seahawks these days, Georgia’s quarterback is D.J. Shockley, the gifted backup turned gifted starter. All Shockley must do to keep the ugly barking away is convert his potential into reality in a hurry. Well, that and help the Bulldogs add to a program that has averaged 10 victories each season during the Richt era.
Sounds like enough pressure to send the roof of Uga VI’s doghouse flying toward Jupiter. Even so, Richt isn’t fazed by it all. He hasn’t needed to be. If you combine his eternally mellow personality with his relative youth as a head coach at 45 and his penchant for winning as soon as he left Florida State for Georgia as an assistant coach, you have the closest thing to a rock star in Bulldog Nation.
“I get treated extremely well,” Richt said, with a soft chuckle. “People are very kind, and they’ll have their opinions on what we need to do, but they’re always very respectful in how they ask their questions about the program. I’ve never really had any negative experiences face to face.”
Even so, Richt knows the shadows hold all sorts of evils for a team of high expectations that ends a season with low results. “In the very beginning when I got here, I think it was cautiously optimistic [from the fans’ standpoint], I guess, and then I think after the 2002 year [13-1 and SEC champions], they began to believe that we can win it during any given year,” said Richt, whose predecessor, Jim Donnan, wasn’t bad, but wasn’t great enough to keep the barking (the bad kind) away. “I think it is a realistic goal that maybe we can win, whereas in some other years, they [the fans] may not have believed it.”
They believe, all right. Georgia fans definitely believe. Just listen to the woof, woof, woofs. Hopefully, for Richt’s sake this season, those woofs will remain soothing to his ears. That is, if he actually hears them.
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Terence Moore, UGA / SEC
