Jeff Torborg proved Leo Durocher wrong Tuesday. Nice guys don`t always finish last.
The White Sox skipper finished first in American League Manager of the Year voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
”It is rewarding personally, and I`m very pleased, without a doubt,”
Torborg said from his home in New Jersey. ”Anybody wants to be recognized for personal achievement, but I like to look at it as an organizational victory.”
Torborg and his wife, Suzie, were driving home from the Sox`s organization meetings in Sarasota, Fla., when he heard on New York`s WFAN-AM that he had won the award. Fittingly, the proud Jersey native heard the news as he crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge into the southern part of his home state.
”I just looked at her and said, `How about that?` ” Torborg said.
The news hardly came as a surprise, unlike the performance of this year`s White Sox.
The writers honored the 48-year-old Torborg for leading the surprising South Siders to 94 victories a year after they suffered 92 losses. Their 94-68 record was a 25-game improvement over 1989`s last-place finish, and it represented the third-best record in baseball.
It was Torborg`s first winning team in five years as a big-league manager.
”I don`t like to use the word `overachieve,` because I don`t think they overachieved,” said Torborg, whose lifetime record is 320-361, a .470 winning percentage. ”I think they played closer to their potential than any team I`ve ever been associated with.”
He received 23 first-place votes out of 28 and scored 128 points in the voting. Oakland`s Tony LaRussa, who won the award in 1983 after leading the Sox to a division crown, received four first-place votes and 72 points;
Boston`s Joe Morgan finished third with one first-place vote and 28 points.
The writers will name the National League Manager of the Year on Wednesday. Cub manager Don Zimmer won a year ago.
Torborg, a big-league catcher for 10 years, earned praise this year for his handling of the major leagues` youngest team. His approach was to keep the players` attention with daily team meetings, a departure from typical baseball practice.
”It was kind of a standing joke in our clubhouse,” he said. ”We lead the nation-the universe, really-in meetings. But we used those as platforms for telling our guys not to worry about the distractions that can arise over a long season.”
One of those distractions, in Torborg`s view, was a press corps that had picked the Sox to dwell in the cellar. Beginning in spring training, Torborg used clippings to fire up his team.
The method might not have worked with a veteran group, but at times it seemed to help draw a young team together. ”We had a bunch of guys who hadn`t even played in September, let alone played in a pennant race,” Torborg said. He also received credit for the revitalization of the Sox bullpen, which might have been the single most important change from the previous year. He often employed as many as six relievers in a game, and his tactics made it possible for Bobby Thigpen to earn 57 saves, smashing the major-league record by 11, and for setup man Barry Jones to equal his career victory total, 11, in one season.
Torborg said he managed much differently than he did a year ago, when the Sox were a slow, defensively weak club.
”I tried to go with the soundest defensive team that we could, and we wanted to have the best pitching we could,” said Torborg, who learned baseball in the pitching- and defense-dominated Los Angeles Dodgers system.
The award is the first major honor for Torborg, who has managed five years in the big leagues, the last two with the Sox. Unlike many of his colleagues, he never managed or coached in the minor leagues.
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His first managerial job came with Cleveland, from June 1, 1977 to July 23, 1979. Leading one of the decade`s most miserable teams, Torborg compiled a 157-201 record (.439).
Within two weeks of his firing, he became a coach with the New York Yankees, a position he held until the Sox hired him nine years later.
The 1990 White Sox weren`t supposed to be much better than any of the other teams Torborg had managed, but from the beginning of the season the club seemed destined for better things. The Sox fell far short in their pursuit of the AL West title, but they reached every other goal, and then some.
”Who else could be called a team more than we were?” Torborg said. ”To me, an award like this symbolizes that we all battled together, all year long.”