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Monday, June 19, 2006
Chuck Tanner sees his hand in Braves success
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Chuck Tanner? Among the key architects behind the Braves’ run of goodness through last season? To hear him tell it, the celebrated duo of John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox should be at least a trio. I mean, are pigs flying backward with tomahawks across their chests?
Could be. Given all of the plausible things that Tanner said with his legendary zeal over the telephone from his home in New Castle, Pa., maybe the world really is flat.
This is the same Tanner who managed Braves teams that were more brutal than the current one. They finished last during his first year in 1986, next-to-last the following season and then last after he was fired in May of 1988. Even so, there was that moment during the early 1990s after Tanner finished huffing and puffing with others in an old-timer’s game at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Tanner and his former teammates were discussing everything from their Braves of Milwaukee to the ones of the moment when somebody told Tanner that he was wanted by Ted Turner and Jane Fonda.
The way Tanner remembered it, sounding 77 years young, “Ted said, ‘I want a picture with the three of us,’ and then he turned to Jane and said, ‘This is the man right here who put this thing together, because he’s the one who talked about that we need pitching, pitching, pitching.’ Ted said, ‘I want a picture, because I want to keep this,’ and I never felt better.”
That’s opposed to how awful Tanner felt after he was kicked out of the job of his dreams by the guy that he helped become general manager.
Some guy named Bobby Cox.
Here’s the sequence: In October 1985, Turner paid huge bucks to hire the veteran Tanner to run the Braves after a 96-loss season. Two weeks later, Tanner got a call from Turner. “He said, ‘Hey, Chuck. If Bobby Cox wants to come home, would you mind?” said Tanner, referring to how Cox left to manage the Toronto Blue Jays to prominence after he was fired by Turner four years earlier. “If I would have said no, they wouldn’t have brought [Cox] back to Atlanta, but I said, ‘Nah. That’s fine. Heck, he’s a good guy.’”
Turner had another question for Tanner, something that hasn’t been mentioned publicly before. “Ted said to me, ‘So what do you want to be - the GM or the field manager?’” Tanner recalled. “I said, ‘To start with, I should be on the field. We’re going to have a tough time until we get this thing straightened out,’ and here’s what Ted told me: ‘If you ever want to change, you go ahead and change. You be the GM and let him go down to manage.’”
Cox eventually did “go down” to manage the Braves again, but that was in June of 1990, and he hasn’t left. In contrast, Tanner never managed again after nearly two decades that included a world championship with Pittsburgh’s “We are family” bunch and stints with the Chicago White Sox and Oakland Athletics.
Managing the Braves to glory was Tanner’s obsession, though, especially since he enjoyed his Atlanta years with the Crackers in the early 1950s. He also joined the Milwaukee Braves as a player with Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews. Then came Tanner’s chance with a franchise that he mentioned from the start was “absolutely loaded with talent,” courtesy of former Braves scouting director Paul Snyder. Tanner helped it become even more promising by supporting the 1987 trade that sent Doyle Alexander to the Detroit Tigers for John Smoltz.
Thus Tanner’s seemingly outrageous prediction upon his arrival to town that there would be a parade down Peachtree for the Braves, sooner than later.
“Oh, we would have done it. There’s no question, because I saw everything that would happen,” said Tanner, who works on special projects for the Cleveland Indians that involve little travel from Pittsburgh, where he takes care of his ailing wife. “I don’t know if we would have won 14 divisions, but I’m positive we would have won, because I had my ideas.”
Then Tanner sighed, adding, “Yeah, my heart was hurt when I was fired, because I knew. Just like I know that, even though [the Braves] are having it rough now, they still have a good base of talent to be contenders for many years.”
Well, he was right before.
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