by Felipe Alou
“We’re releasing two of your coaches,” he said, meaning they were firing two of my guys.
I tried to keep my composure. “Who are the two coaches?” I asked.
“Bobby Cuellar and Luis Pujols.”
It hit me immediately. Loria was firing my only two Latino coaches—Cuellar of Mexican descent and Pujols, a Dominican. Now I was angry, which is what Loria wanted. He wanted me to be so angry I would quit. But I wouldn’t give in to his scheme.
“I understand what you’re doing,” I said. “If you believe I’m going to quit because you’re firing my two Latino coaches, you’re wrong. I am going to stay, and you are going to have to pay me the last cent of my salary. When you’re done paying me my last cent, I’m going to get another job.”
I stormed out and found Cuellar, who was my pitching coach, and Pujols, who was my bench coach and like a son to me. It was tough to tell Bobby and Luis what Loria had done. Both their families were there. I saw their wives crying, just devastated, their children, too. In front of everybody workers had to pull their luggage off the truck that was to take all our equipment and luggage to the airport after the game. It was humiliating. Just awful.
The following season, in 2001, I was dogged with rumors of my impending dismissal. It got so bad that Loria came into the clubhouse before a game in Montreal and called a team meeting. Putting his right hand on my shoulder, he said, “Guys, there is no way I’m ever going to fire Felipe Alou. Felipe is an icon.”
The players believed him. But the coaches didn’t. And neither did I.
Barely more than a week later we were flying home from Atlanta on May 30 when pitcher Javier Vázquez came to where I was sitting. Vázquez, who had been my starting pitcher in a 4–3 victory against the Braves earlier that day, had been surfing the Internet. “Felipe, do you know you’ve been fired?” he asked.
I didn’t say much. When we landed I went to my in-laws’ house and went to sleep. At 7 a.m. Lucie’s mother knocked on our door. “Felipe, it’s all over TV that you’ve been fired,” she said.
I still hadn’t heard a word from the Expos. I went back to sleep.
At 9 a.m. there was a commotion outside. TV trucks were parked in front of my in-laws’ house, and people were gathering in the street to protest my dismissal.
Finally, a phone call came from Jim Beattie, who was assigned to do Loria’s dirty work. I felt sorry for him. Beattie was a good guy who wound up quitting at the end of that season. He used to tell me I was the only one who could handle Loria.
“We want you to come into the office,” he said.
“I already know what you’re going to do,” I said. “What’s the point of me coming in? I’m not the manager of the Montreal Expos anymore.”
I didn’t go in.
Instead, I went home to South Florida and went fishing. After more than a quarter of a century with the organization, my execution was that swift.
As for the Expos their agonizing demise lasted three more years, which is such a shame considering the rich history of baseball in Montreal. Save for a few years during World War I, Montreal fielded a professional baseball team from 1897 to 1960, when the city’s distance from Los Angeles became too great to be the Dodgers’ Class Triple-A affiliate. By the end of the decade, though, Major League Baseball expanded, and in 1969 the Expos came into existence. They lasted only thirty-seven years, about the age when a good veteran ballplayer retires. After the 2005 season MLB uprooted the Expos from Montreal and relocated them to Washington DC, where they became the Nationals.
Baseball was done with Montreal.
Felipe Alou, though, wasn’t done with baseball.
27
It Ain’t Over till You’re Done
I was sixty-six years old when the calendar flipped the page to 2002—an age when most people retire and men like me rarely get an opportunity to manage in the big leagues. I didn’t believe I was done. I believed I had something to offer to a team and an organization. But the rumors were that I had no interest in managing again. I don’t know how rumors like that start, but they were out there.
When spring training arrived and I wasn’t in a Major League camp, it felt strange. A few days turned into a few weeks, and the thought occurred to me that maybe I was done.
One night, sitting in my South Florida home, the phone rang. I looked at the clock. It was 10 p.m. When you have ten kids and an elderly mother, phone calls that late at night send your mind racing in all the wrong directions.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Felipe?”
“Yes.”
“Felipe, this is Mike Port . . .”
And so began a conversation with the new general manager of the Boston Red Sox.
In a convoluted, backdoor way that still smells of suspicion, Jeffrey Loria somehow parlayed owning the Montreal Expos into ownership of the Florida Marlins. John Henry, now the former Marlins owner, took over ownership of the Red Sox. And MLB assumed ownership of the Expos, which they tried to dissolve but instead moved the franchise to Washington DC.
In the first few months after purchasing the Red Sox, Henry and his ownership group fired two former Expos—Dan Duquette, the general manager who hired me and was their GM, and Joe Kerrigan, my old pitching coach who was their manager. But now, oddly, Henry and the Red Sox were interested in another ex-Expo—me.
“We’d like to interview you for our managerial job,” Port said. “Would you be interested?
Of course I was.
“Could you be here at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning?”
Wow, I thought. They’re moving quick.
The following morning I rose before the sun, tanked up my gas-guzzling Toyota Sequoia, and drove the lonely back roads across the state from my home in South Florida to the Red Sox spring training facility in Fort Myers. When I pulled into the parking lot at City of Palms Park at 8 a.m., nobody was there. I got out, looked around . . . nothing. Doors were locked, and the facility was empty except for workers tending the grounds.
Eventually, a van pulled into the parking lot, and out stepped my brother Jesús and a gaggle of Latino players. Jesús was John Henry’s director of the Dominican operations when Henry owned the Marlins, and he brought Jesús to the Red Sox in the same capacity.
My brother was surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’m here to interview for the manager’s job.”
We chatted for a few minutes before Jesús had to start working with the Latino players.
“I hope you get the job,” he said.
I hoped so, too.
But nobody showed up. The clock went from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m., and the office doors opened. I went inside and asked the receptionist for Mike Port.
“And who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Felipe Alou.”
“Does he know why you’re here?”
“He should,” I said. “I’m here for an interview.”
But Port wasn’t there yet.
I went into the stands and sat there, watching the players work out. Sometime around 10 a.m. Port found me.
“Hey, Felipe, sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “The interview has been pushed back to noon. Is that okay?”
What was I going to do but wait?
At noon Port showed up again. “It’s been pushed back again to 3 p.m.,” he said.
At 3 p.m. Port got me and said we were going to drive to a local marina where we would board Henry’s yacht, have dinner, and then conduct the interview.
The yacht was spectacular, with workers scurrying around taking care of things. I met John Henry, and we engaged in some small talk. I found him to be a very polite person. He told me how he liked my brother Jesús so much that he brought Jesús with him from the Marlins to run the Red Sox’s Dominican operations. We were waiting for team president Larry Lucchino, and eventually he arrived and we sat down to a great dinner of salmon, soup, and salad. Finally, after dinner, we started the interview. By now it was da
rk.
I knew the Red Sox organization well enough that I could answer questions with specifics instead of generalities. We talked and talked and talked . . . for at least three hours, well into the night. When we were done there was no feedback, just a perfunctory, “Okay, we’ll let you know.” There was also no offer to reimburse me for my travel costs, much less an offer to put me up for the night. Not that a couple of tanks of gas or a hotel night was a big deal, but the whole thing seemed rushed and ill-planned, as if they couldn’t wait to get me in and out.
I got to my Toyota Sequoia and in the middle of the night drove across Florida’s back roads again, getting home at about 2 a.m. Lucie was awake, waiting for me. “How did it go?” she asked.
“I did what they wanted me to do,” I told her. “I got there at 8 in the morning, and the interview did not start until dark. I answered all their questions. There were times I could tell they were surprised at how well I knew their organization. It seemed like it went well.”
Later that day Mike Port called. “We’re going to hire Grady Little,” he said, thanking me for my time.
When I hung up the phone it hit me. A last-minute phone call at 10 p.m. A hastily and poorly arranged interview. A quick decision less than twenty-four hours later. Had I just been used? Was I called in to check off a box so they could say they interviewed a minority candidate?
My phone rang. It was a sportswriter from the Boston Globe. He knew I had interviewed with the Red Sox, and he told me the word from Larry Lucchino was that I didn’t show enough interest.
“You have to be kidding me,” I exclaimed.
I went into detail how everything went down—about the phone call, driving across the state the following morning before the sun rose, spending all day and night in Fort Myers, answering all their questions, and then driving home in the middle of the night.
“I wish somebody would explain to me how that is not showing enough interest,” I said.
Years later, in the summer of 2015, the Red Sox held a ceremony for Pedro Martínez to retire his number 45 jersey. Pedro asked me to be at the ceremony. At one point on the field at Fenway Park, I saw John Henry and shook his hand. He held my hand for a second or two longer than a normal handshake, what I would describe as an honest man’s handshake. I learned that same day that Henry had wanted to hire me to manage the team, but because the Red Sox operate as a democracy he was outvoted.
It was good for me to hear that. Even if I was brought in only to satisfy a requirement to interview a minority, at least I impressed the owner enough to have elevated myself to a legitimate candidate.
But in the spring of 2002, not getting the Red Sox managerial job wasn’t my most pressing concern. Rather, it was simply having a job. Any job.
For a few days that spring I thought I might even be headed back to Montreal. Omar Minaya, a Dominican whom the now MLB-owned Expos appointed as the new vice president and general manager, called to tell me he wanted me as his assistant. Since I was leaving for the Dominican Republic and wouldn’t be back for several days, we decided to talk when I returned. A few days after I was back in the United States, Minaya called and told me he couldn’t get the position he wanted for me approved. All he could offer me was a job as a scout. I told him thanks, but no thanks.
Weeks passed and the phone didn’t ring. The regular season started, and for the first time since 1975, I wasn’t a part of it.
But that changed quickly. Only six games into the season, the 0-6 Detroit Tigers fired their manager, Phil Garner, and their general manager, Randy Smith. It was a bold move by the franchise’s new president, who happened to be an old friend—Dave Dombrowski. After firing Garner and Smith, Dombrowski assumed the GM role and named the team’s bench coach the interim manager, who also happened to be another friend—Luis Pujols.
Almost immediately after those events transpired, my phone rang. It was Dombrowski. He and Pujols both wanted me to be their bench coach. I needed a few days to think about it. A reporter called, and I told him this: “It’s fifty-fifty. Luis is my friend, almost like a son. And I’ve known the GM since we rode buses together in the Minor Leagues. I just don’t know what I want to do, and I don’t know when I will decide what I’m going to do.”
When I saw Pujols lose his first couple of games, I knew I needed to help him. I called Dombrowski and accepted the job. By the time I joined the team in Minneapolis and got settled in, the Tigers were 0-8, en route to an 0-11 start. It was a tough situation to walk into, but I was happy to be there, and they were happy to have me.
“I’m thrilled that he accepted,” Dombrowski told the media. “It’s tremendous for the organization to have somebody with Felipe’s knowledge, background, and experience. I don’t think you could describe a better fit right now.”
Pujols, who was smiling from ear to ear when I took the job, chimed in with these words: “It would take a book to describe everything I’ve learned from Felipe.”
As for me, when I walked into the visitors’ clubhouse at the Metrodome and realized I was back in the game of baseball, I told the media, “It’s nice to be home. Once I got to the ballpark, I realized this is home for me.”
It was not a very good Tigers team, though. There were too many bloated salaries that didn’t translate to talent on the field. After that 0-11 start, the team went 55-95 the rest of the way.
There was, however, one bright spot to the season. The Tigers and Royals made history on June 25, 2002, when they faced each other at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium. With Luis Pujols managing the Tigers and Tony Peña managing the Royals, it was the first time two Dominican-born managers opposed each other in a Major League game. It was a proud moment for me and my country.
But because of all the losing and the fact that Tigers owner Mike Ilitch wanted to bring in favorite son and former franchise shortstop Alan Trammell to manage the team, Pujols was let go after the season. Dombrowski wanted me to move into a front-office role. As I considered doing that, I also knew I wasn’t ready to take off my uniform.
In early November 2002 Dombrowski called to tell me there was an organization interested in my managing their team.
Maybe I wasn’t done after all.
28
Managing Philosophy
If you asked me who I am, you might get a different answer depending on the day. One some days I might tell you I am a baseball man. But on another day I might tell you I am a fisherman. Both are my passions. I also find both somewhat similar. Managing is like fishing in that whether you catch a fish is ultimately up to the fish. You prepare and make the effort. But after all the preparations and effort, you still might find yourself holding an empty hook.
So how do I prepare? Where do I begin?
I have so many thoughts. I often tell people I’ve been in baseball for 120 seasons—60 in America and 60 in Latin America. I’ve managed or played in tens of thousands of baseball games. So, yes, where do I begin?
My belief is you begin with the players. You must have the players. The difference between a good manager and a bad manager is this: a good manager wins with a good team, and a bad manager loses with a good team. Either way, you must have a good team. It’s that simple. A good manager is not going to win with a bad team, much less a bad manager with a bad team. In Montreal I won with good Expos teams and lost with bad Expos teams. And it always seemed as though I had one or the other—never in between.
When I joined the Milwaukee Braves in 1964, our captain was third baseman Eddie Mathews. Before we broke camp on the last day of spring training, Mathews called a team meeting. “Guys,” he said, “the manager has done his job, the coaches have done their job, the trainers have done their job—all to get us ready to start the season. Now it is up to us to perform.” I had never experienced anything like that, and Eddie did that every spring. His message stuck with me. It always comes down to players performing.
I’m often asked who the best performers were, the best I saw with my own eyes. I’ve seen a lot
of baseball, witnessed a lot of incredible talent. It’s not easy to whittle down to the one best at each position, which leaves you open to second-guessing. But being a former manager, I’m used to being second-guessed. So here goes:
CATCHER: Johnny Bench. Outstanding receiver who could handle a pitching staff with intelligence and authority. Great leader. Unlike many catchers, Bench wasn’t afraid to block the plate. Durable. Cannon arm. As a hitter he always seemed to come through in the clutch.
FIRST BASE: Albert Pujols. Power. Strength. Clutch. Ability to take a team on his back and carry it for a season. Underestimated as a first baseman. In his prime Pujols could pick it. The kind of player who gives your team a presence, who brings fear to the opposition.
SECOND BASE: Joe Morgan. Leadership. Intelligence. Great defender. Power for a second baseman. Speed and smart on the base paths. Although he played twenty-two years, until he was forty-one, Morgan averaged forty-two stolen bases a season.
THIRD BASE: Adrián Beltré. Defensively, Brooks Robinson was the best I ever saw. But for an all-around third baseman it has to be Beltré, who I used to hold in my arms when he was a baby in the Dominican Republic. Great defense. Strong arm. Range. Clutch hitter with power. Team leader. Should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
SHORTSTOP: Derek Jeter. Leadership. Clutch. A winner. High baseball IQ. Not a power hitter, but he had a knack of getting you that home run when you needed it. He always seemed to do something, with some aspect of his game, to get his team a win.
LEFT FIELD: Barry Bonds. Another guy I held when he was a baby. Bonds had all the tools. Eight Gold Gloves. Not the strongest arm, but accurate with a quick release and always to the right base. One of the best base runners I ever saw. Extremely intelligent hitter. Great instincts. Probably the best eyes at the plate I ever witnessed. Few people refused to hit bad pitches as well as he did. Bonds had the mind-set that he needed only one swing to get it done. And when he got his pitch, he wasn’t going to miss it.
