Bill Russell, starting his second full season as the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, says he will not be as patient with slumping players this year and that he’ll be quicker going to the bullpen and using pinch hitters. Russell conceded he has a stronger bench, but that isn’t the reason he will use his reserves more often.
Russell said he had yet to meet Rupert Murdoch, the Dodgers’ new owner.
“It will be nice to meet him,” Russell said, “but he’s a busy man and I’ll be patient. Which reminds me it isn’t necessary for the owners to meet the troops. Their principal obligation is to meet the payroll.”
So far Russell hasn’t noticed any changes since Murdoch took command and predicted, “If there are any changes I’m sure they will be gradual.”
The Dodgers opened the season with four losses, but Russell insisted the specter of an opening 14-game losing streak, which killed the Cubs last year, never entered his mind.
“I didn’t want to think about that,” he said.
The Dodgers have recovered nicely and after Saturday’s loss to the Cubs are at .500 with an 8-8 record.
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Cubs manager Jim Riggleman acknowledged a four-man pitching rotation, mentioned here last week, sounds good but is unlikely to be put into practice.
“Two (starters) might be willing to do it, but all four would have to agree and I doubt that’s going to happen,” he said.
Riggleman recalled that when Ferguson Jenkins was the Cubs’ pitching coach, he often advocated a four-man rotation.
A knowledgeable baseball man, on the same topic, insisted all that would be necessary would be for the manager to order his starters to work on three days of rest. But that’s pie-in-the-sky stuff because most starters would refuse.
The simple truth is that the players, in the main, listen to their agents much more than their managers. The best supporting evidence for this opinion is that the hitters, believe it or not, forced the umpires to lower the strike zone.
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Doug Harvey, the veteran National League umpire now retired, acknowledged some years ago that many hitters told him and his fellow umps the pitch at the letters was too tough to hit. And so, contrary to the rules, the strike zone was changed. Today anything more than an inch above the waist is a ball.
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Dodgers coach Manny Mota holds the record for the most career pinch-hits with 150 in 505 at-bats, a .297 average. He says he took only one third strike as a pinch hitter, a remarkable achievement. And, as could be expected, Mota has a vivid recollection. It was a fastball on the outside corner. The pitcher was the late Bob Miller.
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There is much good reading on the bookshelves, including “Red, A Baseball Life,” Rob Raines’ biography of the Cardinals’ Red Schoendienst, who is in uniform for his 54th consecutive season as a player, manager or coach. There also is a reprint of Eliot Asinof’s 1955 “Man on Spikes,” which includes a rare and enlightening introduction by Marvin Miller, the former head of the players association. Also, the “All-Time Major League Handbook,” published by Stats Inc. and organized by Don Zminda. It weighs 8 pounds, so far as I know the heaviest encyclopedia ever.
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Although Yankee Stadium is crumbling, it’s no surprise that Wrigley Field is structurally sound. The late Philip K. Wrigley, the Cubs’ longtime caretaker, repeatedly used the club’s annual meager profits to keep up the ballpark, which was constructed in 1914.
What I especially remember is that every year when Wrigley announced that so many thousands of dollars was being spent on restoration, much of the press responded with ridicule and insisted the money would be better used on acquiring ballplayers. Obviously, Wrigley had his priorities right.