verdugo288

Here we were right at about the mid-way point of our second season.  We were 8-4 and rolling along pretty well.  I didn’t know why it happened, but the same thing happened with the ’90 Team.  It was right around this time of the year in ’90 that we started having trouble getting players to show up at games.  Of course, it didn’t help that Chandler and Chili had been pulled from the Roster in ’90….but it was starting to emerge again here in ’91.  I asked myself “How could I start the season with 17 or 18 guys on a Roster and barely be able to field a Team?”  I didn’t have any answers, but I sure spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about it. 

We had done a great job up to this point of the season.  We were in position to make a serious playoff run.  I’ve said this before in an earlier Post that “I’m Old School”…in other words…hand me a schedule at the beginning of each season and I’ll be there.  I don’t care what day, what time, what city…I’ll be there.  Hell, I even managed a game the day I got married!  Maybe that’s why I ended up as a coach (and…getting divorced).  Growing up…all I thought about was the next game.

Maybe things were different for me when I was a kid.   But it’s true….it’s ALL I thought about.  The NEXT game.  I was talking to Hank yesterday and he told me that his mother used to get mad at him when it was a rainy day and he’d beg her to take him to the park.  “They might be there playing” he told her.  I know that feeling, too.  Geez, we had a group of kids I grew up with where RAIN had only one meaning….tackle football!!!  That’s right!!!!

There were about 10 of us.  And the heavier the downpour….the better!  Do you know how cool it is to dive for a pass on a muddy field and slide like 10 yards and THEN catch it!!  I would come home from those games drenched in mud.  My mother wanted to kill me!!  Even if it was sandlot football, with no refs there, to us…it was the frickin’ SUPER BOWL. 

I have a very old and dear friend of mine who I am still in contact with.  He was one of the “Rain-Football” diehards!!  At least once every year my old friend and I relive the opening play of one of those Rain-Football games with our “play-by-play” voices.  “First and ten…..and they’re gonna hand off to Gee up the middle and Gee is STUFFED for an eight yard loss!”  I’ll never forget the way that guy just flat-out picked me up and PLANTED me!   We didn’t try to run the ball the rest of the game!!  What a game!!  Every Rain-Football game was a shootout.  The final score was always something like 113-110.  Whoever had the ball last would always win!!!

So I never learned to understand how our players wanted to do anything other than play a game!  But in time, I learned to adjust to it.  I will go into this in greater detail when I write a Post coming up soon that I have already Titled “He’s a check.”

The reality of the matter was this….we needed stronger commitments from the players and I needed to start communicating better.  By the time ’92 came around I think I finally figured it out.  I knew there wasn’t much I would be able to do to change the players….but if there was something I could do…..in terms of tweeking the schedule or communicating better….anything….I was game for it!  I didn’t want to get into this deal where I was blaming the players and questioning their intestinal fortitude.  The coach should  be more into it than the players.  If anything was going to change….it had to be ME….and I was okay with that.

You see, there was always a game going on in the life of Gee.  And if it was raining so hard when I was a kid that there was thunder and lightning…no problem.  Me and my buddies would bust out a cult Board Game invented in the early seventies called “Strat-O-Matic” Baseball.  What a game!  Three dice.  One white die and two red dice.  The game was based on statistical probabilities.  You would buy the game and get (then) all 24 major league teams!  Each player had a card.  Using a mainframe computer back in the seventies, this company had figured out how to transfer the statistical values of a given player onto a game card based on dice rolls. 

And they had it down!  We replayed an ENTIRE SEASON.  You know how many games that is?  And the final statistics of each player were almost exact to what they had done the previous season.  But what was so great about “Strat” (as we used to call it) was that YOU were the manager.  You pulled the strings.  I was twelve years old and got to make out the lineup card for the ’71 Pirates!  Stargell, Clemente, Sanguillen…all of my heroes.  My buddies and I learned baseball strategy from that board game. Lefty versus righty….when to make late inning changes defensively…two for ones….everything!  They even warned you on a players pitching card when  that pitcher would start to “tire.”  And you’d pay the price if you left him in too long!

Sometimes you play a situation “by the book”…sometimes you go with a “gut feeling”….I learned from “Strat” how exhilarating it can be to be “at the helm” and coaching a Team to victory. 

Yes-sir-ree, there was always a game going on in the life of Gee.  And even at 12, I always dreamed of managing a ballclub.  It seemed like it was kind of my calling.  I knew what to do in the games, how to pull the strings.  The problem was this….in “Strat-O-Matic”, the cards are always at every game.  In real life….people have other things going on.  And I had to figure that side of it out.  I do regret that it took almost two seasons for me to “get it”…..

At least I was open-minded enough to entertain the possibility that the problem was with ME.  But looking back on ’90 and ’91….if I knew then what I knew at the end of our last season in ’93 we would have probably made the playoffs every damn season.  It’s hard for me to say this, but it’s true.

And while the bulk of the neccessary changes to be made were executed by yours truly….I think the players could sense that I was making the effort, and it ultimately strengthened their commitment(s).  I will never forget what Josh Canale said to me in the middle of the ’92 season when we were tearing it up and it was pretty obvious we were going to clinch a playoff spot.  He said “You know what the difference is this year?” 

“What” I asked him.

“The difference is YOU.”

It was true.  I had backed off of the players.  I had made some BIG changes between the ’91 and ’92 season.  I started to believe in them FULLY…and I just let ’em play.  It was an interesting dynamic with me and Verdugo…..the only way it was going to work was this:  less was more.  The less I got involved, the better the Team performed. 

My job was simple the last two seasons.  Get everybody there, play the percentages, believe in ’em, have fun, and let ’em play. 

But none of this happened until ‘Ol Bull and I had a little conversation about how “He’s a check.”  We did have to have a little “come-to-Jesus” meeting.  I had to make some promises to Bull, and Bull had to make some promises to me.  The amazing thing was…we believed each other!   But once we were done with that…Verdugo Hills started to evolve into the  “Strat-O-Matic” kind of Team I had dreamed of one day managing.