Owner Liked, Fired Collins

Houston Astro owner Drayton McLane once hired and then fired Terry Collins, the Dodger farm director and a leading candidate to replace Jim Tracy as Dodger manager.

After three consecutive second-place finishes in the National League Central, from 1994 to ‘96, Collins was replaced by the milder Larry Dierker. Still, McLane recalled that Collins was “the best communicator I’ve ever seen,” and described him as consistently “upbeat and positive.”

However, McLane concluded, “I’m not sure managing is his best suit. ... He’s got that fiery emotion. Sometimes, that might get the best of him.”

Informed that Collins could be the Dodgers’ next manager, McLane said, “But that was his first opportunity at managing. I’ve had several people tell me that a manager is really not a good manager until he’s been fired twice. So, I told Terry after he was with the Angels, ‘Now you’re ready to be a manager.’ ”

Asked what Collins needed to fix about his style when he left the Astros, McLane said, “His aggressiveness with players. I think that was a great learning experience for him. You’ve got to be patient and learn your way through the process. He learned from us. And the Angels, he learned with them. He’s ready to go again. He’s matured.”

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As the airplane that carried the Astros to St. Louis and away from Brad Lidge’s ninth-inning slider approached its cruising altitude Tuesday morning, the pilot announced the usual in-flight banalities.

Then, he added, that if they looked out the left side of the plane, they might see Albert Pujols’ home run ball, still carrying from the night before.

And the Astros had a good laugh at that.

A few unnamed Astros actually had put the pilot up to it, after weighing whether Lidge had gotten through the mourning period.

“I mean, that’s kind of a delicate deal because you want to make sure that everybody knows it’s light-hearted,” Lance Berkman said. “All you can do is laugh about it at that point. I know Brad still hurts about that, and we all do, so you don’t want to inflame anything like that. But that just shows the kind of bounce-back attitude this team has. We’ll just joke around about it and hopefully get the job done here.”

They had to be sure Lidge knew they were laughing with him, not at him.

“There’s no sense in sitting around and crying about giving up the pitch,” Manager Phil Garner said. “The fact of the matter is he gave up a pretty monstrous home run. Best thing we can do is laugh about it, go on with it to the next day and have a little fun with it.”