Boros Finally Has a Job Where He Seems to Fit In : After His Odyssey in Oakland, New Padre Manager Finds Himself Among Friends

It’s sweet here in the manager’s suite. There are two television sets and a kitchen and a balcony and some paintings and, just in case it gets cold here in the desert, there’s a fireplace.

Steve Boros moved in Saturday. Before, he’d been in a regular room with two beds and a sink and no fireplace. It was rough, but now he’s moving up in the world. Now, he’s the Padre manager.

He is eternally grateful for the second chance. He had managed once before, in Oakland for the A’s, but he rarely caught any Z’s then. The A’s management had fired his predecessor, Billy Martin, who had been an embarrassment to the front office because, as the story goes, he always had the front stool at the local bar. But the A’s then wanted Boros to do some of the things Billy did, which obviously made Boros lose sleep.

They wanted him to challenge umpires like Billy did, and they wanted him to jump on players like Billy did.

That isn’t Steve Boros.

It’s against his principles.

When Boros was inevitably fired in May of 1984, he became a regular at the local library, where he began writing a novel about baseball. And in the back of his mind was managing, but it was way back there.

The Padres eventually called in 1985 to hire him as a minor league instructor, and, at the time, managing was still way back there because Dick Williams had just managed the Padres to a pennant. Boros had no premonitions about promotions. But a year and a half later, he’s back in that manager’s suite.

And what’s really sweet about it is that he can do it without sacrificing his principles, which, to him, rank up there with food and sleep and oxygen.

In Oakland, the players had had nothing against Billy Martin, who used to cuss and spit and kick as they thought a manager should. But this Steve Boros guy? Man, what a wimp. Umpires were his friends? Players were treated as adults? What would Billy say?

Rickey Henderson, Billy’s favorite, became Boros’ big baby. Henderson wouldn’t show up on time and simply rebelled. To this day, Henderson, now with the Yankees, refuses comment on Boros.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and this might sound a little far-fetched,” Boros said Saturday, “but people who abuse children were invariably abused as children themselves. They get used to it, and it’s the only way they know. Well, I’m not saying that Billy Martin abused Rickey, but I’m thinking that Rickey, as a young player, grew up and matured under Billy and was used to that kind of conduct.

“And my conduct was so completely foreign to what he (Henderson) had been used to, he just couldn’t understand it. I think he was expected to be chewed out and yelled at and screamed at. . . . And when I came along, he just couldn’t believe how I was coming on. He must have thought I came from Mars.”

The A’s weren’t ready for a nice guy.

“Maybe my approach wasn’t suited for the Oakland A’s,” Boros said. “Because of what the players were used to (with Martin).”

Ah, but the Padres are ready for a nice guy. This is an entirely opposite situation for Boros, because the Padres hated their previous manager, Williams. It was the ultimate cold war. Williams would stare at them, and they’d stare back.

But now everything’s cool at the hotel pool in Yuma. On Saturday, when Boros was moving in, exactly 12 Padre players were sunbathing alongside Padre coaches. Last season, with Williams as manager, they mostly stayed inside.

Who needed all the tension?

“You know,” Boros said, “I have this tremendous sense now that what I’m saying and how I’m saying it is really appreciated and understood by the players on the San Diego Padres. Perhaps I was managing the wrong club before. Perhaps my particular style isn’t too easy, but it just wasn’t a style that fit the players in Oakland at that time.

“The more I’m with this (San Diego) club, the more I’m beginning to think that how I conduct myself and the way I act fits nicely here with the players.”

With the Padres, Steve Boros is allowed to be Steve Boros.

Oh, he gets mad.

When he managed in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1971, he was thrown out of a game. Actually, it’s the last time he’s ever been thrown out, but it’s a memorable story.

An umpire there (Boros wouldn’t say his name) had been incompetent all season, said Boros, and it was only a matter of time before they’d have a rhubarb. One night, on a ball-strike call, it happened.

Boros ran out and soon was ejected. He went into the clubhouse to get a two-by-four sign that said “Umpires,” and then ran out to put it up on the scoreboard.

So the score read:

WATERLOO 2 . . . UMPIRES 9.

He then walked toward this particular umpire and tipped his hat.

The ump asked the players to take the sign down, but they wouldn’t. He asked the batboy, but he wouldn’t. He asked the scoreboard operator, who happened to be 13, and the kid, who’d been ordered by Boros not to touch the sign, ran away in fear.

The sign stayed.

Boros’ wife, Sharla, is proud of that incident to this day.

“See, his nice guy image is over-emphasized,” she said. “I’m tired of reading he’s too nice. I’m sick of it in print. I wish they could use another adjective.”

OK, Steve Boros is not too nice; he’s too principled.

It stems mainly from his father, also named Steve Boros, a Hungarian immigrant who came to America by himself in 1926. He only had a sixth-grade education because that’s all his family could afford. Going to junior high in Hungary took serious bucks back then.

He came to Ohio first, and worked seven days a week, 11 hours a day in a cement factory. He quit and moved to Flint, Mich., where he worked in various other factories until he finally opened his own grocery store in 1946.

He was a butcher. The family lived upstairs, above the store.

“I figured if I ever got married, all my children would go to universities so they wouldn’t have to work in factories,” said the elder Boros, 77, still speaking with a slight Hungarian accent. “I loved school, and I was smart. But I didn’t have a chance to go. So I had to make myself in the shop, in the grocery store.”

Steve Boros, the oldest son, went to the University of Michigan, but was drafted by the Detroit Tigers after his junior season. In those days, though, your parents had to sign your contract, too. And his father wouldn’t sign unless his son promised to go back and graduate once he made the major leagues. Originally, the elder Steve Boros wanted his son to be a doctor, not a batter.

An English major, Boros did go back to school. But baseball season overlapped with the school semesters, which meant he had to take his books on the road and copy weeks and weeks of lecture notes once he returned. He had to mail in his term papers.

“That’s the closest I’ll ever come to living the life of a monk in a monastery,” he said.

“I graduated, but I didn’t go to the commencement because I was so worn out. But I graduated. What a sense of accomplishment. I figured when I did that, I could do anything. And it made me feel so good to keep my promise to my parents.”

Principles.

Getting that degree changed him. Before, he actually used to think of ways to hate pitchers. He said it would make him play better when he hated the pitcher. But after graduation, he realized how false that hatred was.

Much like the false hatred toward umpires.

So, he rarely argues with them.

” . . . I think a lot of people really don’t like themselves and do things that violate their principles,” Boros said. “They know they’re being a phony, and they don’t really believe what they’re saying. A salesman doesn’t believe in what he’s selling, but he may sell the car or that house, and that takes precedence. That’s why young people drink or take drugs, because it’s tough to live with themselves.

“Well, if I’m going out and arguing with an umpire, the emotion has to be real. I won’t manufacture it to get the next call. I mean, the umpire may have made the right call, but people say I should go out and raise hell because I want the next one. So you’re supposed to do anything to win. Well, that’s not right. Not for me it isn’t.

“The people in Oakland wanted me to. And I can be stubborn and hard-headed, especially where my principles are concerned. The more they pushed me to do that, the more I wouldn’t. Now, I know there’s emotion and anger in me, waiting to be expressed in the right situation against an umpire who doesn’t hustle or who isn’t professional or who jumps on a player unjustly. It’s there, and it’s gonna come out, because I can feel it. I can feel it in my stomach like a hot coal.”

Oh, but he won’t get mad very often.

“I’ve never seen him mad,” his father said. “No, I’ve never seen him. All these years, he and I never had an argument.”

And Boros’ 10-year-old son, also named Steve, said: “No, he doesn’t get tough. If we’re doing something wrong, he’ll tell us to stop. He doesn’t scream and yell. He’s not that kind. And I appreciate it.”

He will not be asked to change.

These are his friends here. He has worked previously with Galen Cisco, his new pitching coach, and with Harry Dunlop, his new bench coach.

Jack McKeon, his general manager, is the man most responsible for Boros’ managerial career.

They met in Omaha, Neb., just after McKeon had been named Kansas City’s triple-A manager there. They sent him this veteran infielder named Boros, and McKeon wanted the old-timer to know he wouldn’t get any playing time, and that if he didn’t like it to get back in his taxi cab.

Boros told him: “Skip, I’ll do anything you want.”

Boros eventually followed McKeon from job to job. Cisco and Dunlop did, too. They ran together, laughed together. One time, they were shopping at a department store when McKeon told the store detective that Boros was shoplifting. Boros was stopped and frisked.

“Oh, that was funny,” McKeon said.

So, Boros is among friends.

He can be his own man. It is his show. He will give first base coach Sandy Alomar a stopwatch to time Padre runners from home to first and from first to second. Boros used to do that when he coached for Whitey Herzog in Kansas City. One day, Herzog thought leadoff man Willie Wilson wasn’t hustling and had Boros get the stopwatch out.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Herzog told Wilson.

Boros eventually became a stopwatch freak, even clocking the hang time on long fly balls.

Already, his methods are working with Padre players. They can talk to him freely. Steve Garvey went to him the other day and asked if the Padres would hit and run very often.

“Because me and Tony Gwynn work together well,” Garvey told him. “I guarantee we’ll have the best hit-and-run percentage in baseball.”

Boros said: “Great, Steve.”

The memories of Oakland aren’t so great. Remember little Rickey?

Boros said: “If I sit down and talk to a player privately and tell him how he’s hurting the club, himself, and maybe his family, and that approach doesn’t work, then who’s at fault? In other words, do you change managers or do you change players?”

The A’s changed managers.

Boros said: “If you pick up any book on management, I defy you to find one that says jump up and down, rant and rave, curse, and fine your employee, and then your productivity will increase greatly. I dare you.”

Now, Steve Boros can be Steve Boros.

“Yeah,” Boros said, “but there’s a different me because of what I learned from my first job. Fortunately, I’m getting another chance. That first time was an experience. I know I’ll demonstrate to the players I can be tough if need be.”

And while he was enjoying his new manager’s suite on Saturday, he received a phone call from an old friend, who congratulated him, yet also reminded him of a saying Boros developed after the Oakland odyssey.

“Remember,” the friend said, “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

Boros said, laughing: “I know . . . I know.”

But down by the pool, Padre catcher Terry Kennedy was saying: “What’s wrong with nice? He’s nice and he has baseball knowledge. Sounds like a winning combination to me.”