If Georgia governor Nathan Deal or Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed should ever again require safe harbor from the angry, icebound masses, they always can swing by the Braves manager’s office.
Those walls are double-insulated against the mews of the critics. Within, the second guess is as unwelcome as a Bryce Harper bobblehead.
It took Fredi Gonzalez 13 hours to get to his Marietta home from a team function at the onset of Snow Jam I. On his 50th birthday, no less. Was he mad? Did he vow revenge at the ballot box or in the AJC letters-to-the-editor page?
No, he empathized. “Those poor guys back home,” Gonzalez said the other day from the early-morning sun-flooded dugout of the team’s spring training site. “The mayor and the governor got hammered the first snowstorm — you should have done this and this and this. And I’m sitting there thinking I’ve been there — not in that grand a scheme — but I’ve been there.
“It’s so easy (to Monday-morning manage). If they would have made the decisions like they did (for the second ice event) and nothing would have happened, it would have been: Why are you wasting all the taxpayers’ money?”
On Wednesday the Braves have their first official full-squad spring workout. For a fourth time, Gonzalez will address the troops before they venture outside. Much of the speech is sure to deal with building off the positives of 2013 — the 96 wins, the division title. The negatives — another playoff defeat, the hollow bats of Dan Uggla and B.J. Upton — likely will go unspoken.
In his office, Gonzalez displays the words of former President Teddy Roosevelt, no fan of the quibbler. It is a famously wordy statement that begins: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. …”
Which is a long way of saying: Yeah, I still wouldn’t bring in Kimbrel in the eighth.
Last season ended in Los Angeles, with David Carpenter giving up the playoff series-deciding home run to Juan Uribe in the eighth inning while star closer Craig Kimbrel paced in the bullpen like a caged tiger. The man in the arena has not let the howls over that decision ring in his ears.
A reprieve from the governor might be in order considering the support Gonzalez has shown Deal.
Unneeded, the Braves manager said. “I’ve never second-guessed myself on that decision,” he declared. The six-out save had not been a part of the Kimbrel profile, and his manager was not about to redraw it at that late notice.
Just as he never second-guessed his decision to put aside his dream of playing professional baseball at the age of 24 and go off to coach it as a grad assistant at Tennessee. Two years later Gonzalez was in the major league coaching pipeline, and he never looked back.
The one-time 16th-round pick of the Yankees could have hung around longer because he was a catcher, and there’s a persistent need for someone willing to do that dirty chore.
But, he said, “I always loved coaching, always loved teaching. I always managed the game even in (Single-A) ball sitting in the bullpen when I wasn’t playing — which was a lot.”
A man who can judge his own abilities so honestly — “a good catch-and-throw guy, bat was a little weak” — should be able to evaluate others with a skilled, impartial eye. A rather helpful trait for a manager.
Just as a man who has come to nearly 30 years’ worth of spring trainings knows that every first full workout is the time to whistle a happy tune. And as the manager, he is the one responsible for nurturing all hopeful messages.
So, while he expressed in the offseason a need for the Braves to acquire another front-line starter, he is not going to moan about wishes gone unfulfilled.
In fact, he said: “I really like our pitching staff as a whole. We may not have two No. 1’s on our staff, but one through 12 we’re pretty darn solid.
“You may have people saying, ‘You don’t have a solid No. 1.’ But we don’t know that yet. We have solid guys in the rotation who can do a good job. I thought our pitching staff in the playoffs did a nice job. The only exception was Julio (Teheran’s) game (six runs in 2 2/3 innings), and I think that was a young pitcher all of a sudden realizing he was pitching in Dodger Stadium in a playoff game.”
Last year Gonzalez made the Braves’ two highest-paid players postseason non-entities — turning B.J. Upton into a shadow, leaving Uggla off the roster.
What’s he to do other than to wipe clean the whiteboard now that they both are still on the payroll? “I’m taking it that ’13 is over with, here’s 2014. It’s a new slate. And we’ll go from there,” he said.
Behind the plate, the Braves have traded the proven presence of Brian McCann for the mercurial gifts of Evan Gattis. Will a feel-good story hold up over the long, heartless trial of a second season?
The manager — one who saw his own story behind the plate sputter and die — will say, of course, it can. Gattis caught 39 games last season, nine fewer than those he started in left field. In that small sample, Gonzalez said he saw enough to convince him of Gattis’ ability to take over behind the plate.
The storylines are plentiful, the questions abundant as the window on another Braves season opens. More weighty decisions await. The manager is prepared to make them without public poll or referendum.
