Painting the Corners Again

by Weintraub, Bob;

  Years later, if you were fortunate enough to own a Jimmy Diamond baseball card, of which only eight, over thirteen years, were issued by Topps Bubblegum, you could read the following:

  James Matthew Diamond, Jr., born September 6, 1964; Height 5’11’’ Weight 180; Bats Right, Throws Right; Philadelphia Phillies, 1985-1998; Career Stats: Games, 2012; Hits 2483; Runs 1489; Doubles 611; Triples 117; Homers 240; RBI 1005; Avg .322; Most Hits Season (NL), 1988-89, 1992-93; Most Doubles Season (NL), 1987-90, 1993; Gold Glove, 1987-92.

  And if you were able to follow his life during Diamond’s baseball career, you would know that for months after Heather left him, he tried to locate and contact her, but was unsuccessful. He was told by her parents in Texas that she had not been in touch with them, and they were not even aware, they said, that she walked out on him.

  Through it all, Diamond’s play remained at a high level. Whenever anyone asked about Heather, he said she had returned to Florida to finish her nursing studies. It startled him that a week after he was called up to the big leagues that September, he received a note from Heather, written on her own stationery, and postmarked from the Empire State Building in New York. She congratulated him on having his dream come true, let him know she was fine and said the baby was due in about four months. She didn’t say whether she was expecting a girl or a boy. Diamond figured that someone in the Phillies minor-league family was in touch with Heather—probably a player’s wife or girlfriend with whom she remained friendly—and he understood that there was no reason to believe she was living in New York. She may have simply been visiting there, he realized, or given the letter to a friend to mail from the City.

  Shortly after spring training got under way in February of the next year, a front desk clerk at the Florida hotel where the team was staying gave Diamond an envelope that was unstamped and had no return address. In it was a note from Heather, again letting him know she was well and enclosing a picture of a baby boy. “He looks a lot like you, Jimmy,” she wrote, but did not reveal the baby’s name.

  Diamond asked the clerk to tell him who left the envelope. The clerk said it must have been given to someone on the evening shift and that he found it in the player’s mailbox that morning. Diamond’s attempt to get more information from any of the staff that reported for duty at 8:00 p.m. was unsuccessful and met only with frustration.

  A registered letter from a law firm in Las Vegas arrived in June. It contained divorce papers and instructions on how Diamond should fill them out. The letter pointed out that Heather was not seeking either alimony or child support. Also enclosed in a separate sealed envelope was a note from Heather in which she said that a divorce was the best thing for both of them, and told him that she was dating “a good man” who wanted to marry her and adopt the baby.

  “I’ll always love you, Jimmy,” she wrote, “and I promise you again that I’ll let you know what your son chooses to do when he grows up.”

  A year later Diamond met Katherine Price, a physical therapist who worked in the office of the team doctor, and they were married a week before Christmas. Katherine had also been through a divorce and brought with her a two-year-old son, Kyle. The marriage was a good one, and Diamond felt totally fulfilled. He was buoyed by the fact that Kyle, showing marvelous athletic ability from the age of four, learned to love baseball and became an outstanding shortstop. In his last year of high school, Kyle batted .477 and led his team into the final game for the State championship. Diamond recognized his stepson’s potential and discussed with him the choice between going on to college or playing professional baseball. When Kyle opted for the latter, Diamond, who was then in his fourth year of coaching and managing in the Phillies minor league system, prevailed upon the Club to draft him and assign him to their Single-A team in Bradenton.

  Five years later, in September of Diamond’s fourth year as the Phillies manager, he and Gary Sherman, the general manager, agreed that Kyle was ready to play major league baseball. He was called up to Philadelphia where he served as a utility infielder for the last few weeks of that season and for the season that followed. It was common knowledge that he was being groomed to take over the shortstop position if Buddy Walters opted for free agency at the end of the year and was signed by another team. The Phillies were picked to finish first in their Division that year by four of the six local writers who followed the team and by several of the more popular national baseball magazines. Instead, due mainly to injuries to the pitching staff, the team finished a distant third and essentially bowed out of the race in mid-September. There was no baseball played in Philadelphia in October, and the media needed someone to blame.

  Meanwhile, over the years, Heather periodically wrote to Diamond about their son, never revealing his name, each letter usually arriving from a different part of the country. She informed him that he was pitching in Little League, and later, for his middle school team. Diamond was happy to learn that in high school the coach converted him to shortstop and that he was elected team captain in his senior year.

  “He’s a strong, handsome boy, Jimmy,” she told him in a note written on light pink stationery that had her initials “HN” at the top in a flowery pattern, “and he’ll be going on to college next year. I’m not sure what he’ll want to major in, but I do know he wants to keep playing baseball.” And, when four more years had passed, Heather notified him that their son had signed a contract to play with a minor league team, but she didn’t say which one.

  Tommy Hanover, owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, waited until the day before Thanksgiving before announcing his manager for the next baseball season. The beat writers for the city’s two major newspapers and all the sports talk show hosts had been on his case from mid-September, even before the team was mathematically eliminated from making the playoffs, to let the fans know whether Jimmy Diamond would be brought back to manage the team for another year. Everyone who still bought a ticket to the ballpark or who cursed himself for having laid down top dollar earlier for tickets to games that had no meaning or excitement any more, could see that the players had thrown in the towel and were just waiting for the season to end.

  Hanover witnessed the same scene, but he’d been in baseball long enough to know that the team’s performance couldn’t always be laid at the feet of the manager, whether it failed to live up to expectations or overachieved out of the blue. The Philadelphia media upped the pressure on him during the World Series, mostly asserting that the delay in announcing a new deal for Diamond meant that he was certain to be fired. It was considered almost a sure thing that he would not be wearing a Phillies uniform when spring training rolled around. Names of potential new managers were offered the fans for their consideration and consumption almost every day. Many a sports writer ventured to predict that the delay was a sure sign one or both of the managers whose teams were then fighting for the title of baseball world champion would be interviewed for the job as soon as the Series concluded.

  Diamond arrived at the team’s stadium on a cold Tuesday morning, two days before Thanksgiving, having flown in from his home in Minneapolis the night before. The phone call summoning him to Philadelphia came from Gary Sherman just several hours before Diamond drove to the airport and hurried onto a flight ready to depart. When he got off the elevator on the floor housing the team’s general offices, he was surprised to find all of the desks in the open area deserted, and only Sherman at work in his office.

  The GM greeted him without leaving his chair. “Hey there, Jimmy, good to see you. Get here this morning?”

  “No, I didn’t want to take a chance with U.S. Air. They do better at night than during the day. I got a room at the Holiday Inn when we landed, had seven hours shuteye, and feel great. Where is everybody?”

  “The boss told them all to take today and tomorrow off, stay home, and cook. He did the same thing last year, so now it’s a tradition. He’s waiting for you in his office, but tell me first what you think of Jason Mason.”

  “I think he must lo
ve his parents very much since he kept the name they gave him. He could have changed it legally and stopped people from laughing at him when they heard it. If it was me, I might have beaten up my old man as soon as I was sure I could.”

  “Never mind that, what do you think of him as a ballplayer?”

  The question from Sherman wasn’t unusual. Whenever the GM’s constant search for players pointed to someone whom he felt might be a good fit for the Phillies on the basis of offensive or defensive statistics, raw talent or leadership qualities, he found his way to the manager’s office hours before game time and asked for an opinion. Diamond usually had one to give.

  “I’ll tell you what, Gary. If you’re still here when I come out and I’ve got a smile on my face, I’ll talk to you about Mason. But if the corners of my mouth are pointing at the floor, what I think of Mason will be my secret. So if my opinion is important to you, wish me luck.”

  Sherman got up and offered his hand to Diamond. “I do wish you luck, Jimmy. The boss hasn’t asked me for any input about keeping you to run the team, which in my position doesn’t make me feel too good, but I’m sure it’s because he knows how much I think of you. He’s made up his mind himself on this one.”

  “Thanks, Gary, I appreciate it. I know that when the manager gets canned, plenty of times the guy who hired him gets pushed out the door too. What the Club has done the last two seasons wouldn’t get you voted GM of the year, though I never had any real disagreement with the twenty-five players you put on the field for me. You did the best you could when some of the ones we counted on at the beginning got hurt or didn’t produce for one reason or another. So if Tommy lets me go, I hope you stay. Anyway, I’d better get in there and see what he has to say.”

  Hanover greeted him in a loud, friendly voice. “Come in, Jimmy, sit down. Take the chair on the right side of the desk and I’ll hear you better.” He waited for Diamond to take a seat before continuing. “Sorry about dragging you here just before the holiday but I wanted to have a talk with you and move on.”

  “It’s okay, Tommy. I’ve got a flight back at one o’clock. Ellen’s got everything under control at home.”

  “Good. Jimmy, this was my twenty-fourth year as owner of the Phillies, and you know how many times we’ve been in the World Series?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Twice. Twice is all. And do you know how many we won? Of course you do. None, an easy number to remember. So what are we going to do about that?”

  Diamond didn’t say anything. He knew Hanover well enough to realize more was coming, that he wasn’t asking for an answer.

  “I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want to use this offseason to put together the best team we can. I’m ready to trade anyone we’ve got if it will help us win. And I’m willing to go to the vault and pay for a free agent or two if that’s what we need. This is my silver anniversary coming up, and the only way I can celebrate is by our getting into the World Series and winning it.” Hanover paused several seconds while looking straight at Diamond. “That’s what I want from my manager next year, a championship team. Can you give me that, Jimmy?”

  “I can bust my ass trying, Tommy, that’s all I can say.” But then Diamond realized that Hanover was still conducting a one-way conversation.

  “You were a great ballplayer for this club, for thirteen years, and I never saw the day you didn’t give it all you had. You played hurt when you could’ve been sitting it out, you taught the young players to respect the game, and you led by example. I never saw the time you didn’t hustle down to first on any ball you hit. I always felt you’d be taking over our team some day. But the best we’ve done in your five years as manager is second place two years ago. We both know everyone expected us to finish on top this year, but you can’t lose two of your starting pitchers to elbow trouble and keep winning games, can you Jimmy.” He stated it as a fact, not a question. “No way,” he continued, “especially when they break down just after the trading deadline. There was no way we could replace them.”

  Hanover got up from behind his desk, stepped over to his office window and looked out at the empty ballpark. “I know you’re a good manager, Jimmy. You won a lot of games for us in the minors and the title with Mobile in the Southern League. We groomed you for this job and I wanted you to stay with the organization as long as you were in baseball if you could handle it.”

  Diamond was sure he knew what was coming. He was getting the big buildup before the axe came down. Tommy couldn’t look him in the eye when he fired him.

  “There are a bunch of writers out there who figure they’re smarter than me,” Hanover continued, turning back toward Diamond. “They’re ready to dump you if they could, and they’re betting that’s what I’ll do. But that’s not how I feel about it, and since I’m the guy who pays the bills I’m just going to have to disappoint the whole lot of ’em. I’m extending your contract for two years, with fifteen percent more each year. Are you okay with that?”

  Diamond gave his employer a big smile. “That’s fine, Tommy, as long as I can keep the same coaches, and like I said before, I’ll bust my ass to get us a winner.”

  “I know you will. But Gary and I have been talking about letting Cavalho manage in Single-A. It’s about time he got that experience.”

  “You’re right, but let him stay with me one more year. He’s a good bench coach and I want him around when we win that championship.”

  “Alright, Luis stays. So get out of here and go on back to Minneapolis, but call me on Monday. That’s when we start building a team.”

  As soon as Diamond shut the door behind him, Sherman came out of his office and saw the smile on the manager’s face. He reached for Diamond’s hand. “Congratulations. I’m glad the boss made the right decision.”

  “Thanks, Gary, I’m happy as a pig in slop. He gave me another two years. And yeah, I think Jason Mason is ready to bust out and show what he can do. He’s someone you and me and Tommy should be talking about next week. Right now, though, I’ve got a plane to catch.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Jimmy.”

  “You too, Gary. Have a good one.”

  During the winter months of the “hot stove league,” the Phillies were one of the more active teams. Sherman and Diamond had a number of long telephone conversations about the players to let go, others to pick up in trades, if possible, and about the free agents offering their services to the highest bidder. Whenever they agreed on a move they hoped to make, Sherman took their plan to Tommy Hancock for his approval to be certain the owner understood the financial consequences of the deals they had in mind. Hancock proved his willingness to spend money, allowing Sherman to beef up the bullpen with two proven relievers and to sign Jason Mason to a three-year contract as the club’s right fielder.

  Management felt good about the team it brought to spring training, and the exhibition games in March resulted in even greater confidence going forward as the two starting pitchers, whose elbow troubles the year before had derailed the team, showed they were ready to resume their regular turns on the mound. The Phillies roared through the first half of the season, and by the middle of July they had an eight-game lead over both the Mets and the Braves. They were on a pace to win over a hundred games, a feat they hadn’t accomplished in all of Hancock’s twenty-four years of ownership. In the clubhouse, some players were already speculating about which team in the National League would be the wild card entry and their first opponent in the playoffs.

  As the July 31 trading deadline approached, Diamond, Sherman and Hancock conferred several times about whether they should be considering any other moves that might further strengthen the team. Some minor trades were discussed with other clubs, but management didn’t consider it a loss when none of them reached fruition. Then, four days before the deadline, Buddy Walters, the team’s All-Star shortstop who turned down more money from Kansas City to stay with Philadelphia on a new one-year contract, cried out in pain after swinging awkwardly at a pitch that fooled him completely. He wa
s attended to by the trainer and Diamond, and was removed from the game, replaced by Kyle. X-rays taken immediately showed he had seriously strained an oblique muscle in his abdomen. The team’s experience with this type of injury in the past left no doubt that Walters would be unable to return to the lineup for at least two months. If the Phillies were going to maintain their lead, win the Division, and play their way into the World Series, they would have to do it with a different shortstop.

  On the day Kyle took over for Walters, he had a .221 batting average. He had appeared in thirty-six of the team’s 101 games as the sole infield utility player, and was having a disappointing season. Sherman and Diamond were concerned not only with his low average but also with his lack of power, evidenced by just two home runs and fifteen runs batted in. Kyle had also made seven errors in the field, just three shy of those charged against Walters in ninety-three games. It was difficult to envision him taking over at shortstop on an every day basis if Walters jumped to another club the next year. In any event, another shortstop, to play regularly or take on the utility role behind Kyle, was needed right away.

  Diamond was always aware, after receiving Heather’s last letter, that their son had signed with some team to play professional baseball. But there was no way he could follow his progress without knowing his name or the club he was on. Now he realized that circumstances had given him at least a chance to find out where his son was playing and whether he was ready to move up to the big leagues.

  “Here’s what to do, Gary,” he told the GM after the team lost its second consecutive game to the last place Pirates. “Contact every team in both leagues and see who can offer us a shortstop from either their major league roster or their Triple-A farm team. Let that college girl you hired into the marketing and PR department work with you. What’s her name?”

  “Debbie Newton.”

  “Okay, if anyone from Triple-A is available, tell Debbie to find out what she can about whoever it is. I mean where he comes from, his birthday, his parents’ names if they have it.”