KEN THE HAWK HARRELSON : A Split Personality in the Front Office Could Do Wonders for Fortunes of the Chicago White Sox

When the owners of the Chicago White Sox hired a new executive vice president to run their baseball operations last October, they got a bargain: two executives for the price of one. They not only signed Ken Harrelson, they got his alter ego, the Hawk.

Hiring the Hawk got the White Sox immediate attention. Most baseball observers, in fact, were astonished that owners Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn would turn over their club to one of the team’s TV announcers, a man who had no managerial or administrative experience and who used to have a reputation as a playboy.

You might remember the Hawk better than Ken Harrelson. Ken Harrelson, to be honest, is a rather dull fellow. The Hawk is a free spirit, a charming fellow who wrote his autobiography when he was 27. In his heyday, he hired a valet to look after a flashy wardrobe that leaned heavily at one time toward Nehru jackets. He once modeled baseball uniforms.

Ever wonder how hitters got started using batting gloves? The Hawk, a golf nut, once used a golf glove in a baseball game, hit two home runs and the batting glove was invented.

The Hawk was such a popular player in Boston that his fans picketed Fenway Park in protest when the Red Sox traded him to Cleveland in 1969. Wendell, the valet, was so attached to his boss that he had a heart attack when he learned of the deal.

It wasn’t that the Hawk was such a great ballplayer, although he did hit 35 home runs and drive in 109 runs in 1968. The truth was, he hit almost as many home runs as he did singles. In 900 major league games, the Hawk batted only .234 but hit 131 home runs.

But the Red Sox fans loved the Hawk because he was fun to have around. He once rode A’s owner Charles Finley’s pet mule, Charlie O, around the Kansas City stadium bareback. Sometimes he seemed more interested in golf than baseball.

The Hawk, in fact, lost a bundle trying to make it as a professional golfer after quitting baseball in 1971. His golfing career lasted only 3 1/2 years and was, he said, “the toughest time I ever spent in my life.”

How bad was it?

“I have $220,000 in canceled checks to prove I couldn’t play golf,” he said. “I spent $270,000 and won $50,000.”

He failed four times in three years to qualify for the PGA tour. “This game makes baseball look like child’s play,” he said at the time. “In baseball they pay you to learn. In golf, you have to pay.”

Lacking experience and money as a golfer, the Hawk returned to baseball as a television broadcaster, first for Boston, then for the White Sox. He knew the game well and had the voice, a deep drawl, and the flare for broadcasting, which he did for 11 years.

So there he was at 44, getting rich and enjoying his life in the television booth, when the White Sox owners asked him to recommend some changes in how the team was run.

“I was asked to sit in on several bull sessions,” he said.

The upshot was, the former playboy recommended a major overhaul and got a new job.

How do you like it so far, he was asked the other day in a cluttered, air-conditioned office in a trailer at the White Sox quarters in Sarasota’s Payne Park.

“I haven’t seen any surprises,” he said. “It’s like anything else. If you get the right people around you, it’s going to work. You get the right people and let them do their job.”

The Hawk’s wardrobe is tame today compared to what it used to be. He generally wears cowboy hats, boots and tinted sunglasses, but on this warm, winter day the executive vice president wore a gray and red White Sox shirt, white slacks and white loafers. He wore no socks and there was no cowboy hat on his blond, tightly-curled hair.

“I’ve always been fashion conscious,” he said. “I spent a lot of money on clothes; I enjoy them. But as you get older your values change.”

Harrelson tries to give the impression he has nothing to do, but on this day he had risen at 6:30 and was at work by 7:30, dividing his time between Payne Park, where the White Sox were playing the Mets, and their training camp a mile or so away. And once he’s in motion, he’s difficult to find.

Still, Harrelson said: “I swear I don’t have anything to do. The biggest decision I have to make, really, is how blond to let my hair get. My biggest responsibility is talking to the press. Right now I just walk around and observe. (Manager) Tony (LaRussa) is working; the Hawk’s having fun. I always have fun in anything I do. I can’t think of anything in my life I haven’t had fun in--except golf.”

Harrelson may not, by his definition, be working today, but he made radical changes in White Sox personnel and philosophy almost immediately after being hired.

“Teaching is the most important thing in sports--or in society,” Harrelson said. Major league teams require major league instruction and, in his view, most clubs don’t have it. So he set out to get it for the White Sox.

He replaced most of the club’s minor league managers and coaches and some of the scouts, and hired such experienced hands as Alvin Dark, Jose Cardenal, Dick Allen, Rico Petrocelli, Tom Haller, Doug Rader and Herman Franks. His broadcasting partner, Don Drysdale, was signed as a pitching consultant.

One of the great weaknesses of baseball, in his view, is the lack of hitting instruction, so now the White Sox have two batting instructors. He’d like to have three.

“The mentality of power hitters and line-drive hitters is different, as is the mentality of starting and relief pitchers,” he said.

So he also hired a second pitching coach. Moe Drabowsky is the only coach in the major leagues hired to instruct relief pitchers exclusively.

What Harrelson has done is neither creative nor innovative, he said.

“It’s common sense. You run a major league organization with major league people. What I’ve done is give our minor league kids major league instruction. What a lot of major league organizations have done, because of budget reasons, is to pay a guy $16,000 or $17,000 a year to manage and instruct young kids how to win. They can’t do it because they can’t win themselves. If they could they wouldn’t be there; they’d be making a hell of a lot more money someplace else.”

Experienced coaches are expensive, though, drawing from $10,000 to $15,000 more than the going rate for minor league coaches.

“Damn right, I’ve had budget problems,” Harrelson said. “If you’re going to do what we’re trying to do it’s bound to be expensive. But Jerry (Reinsdorf) knew this coming in and agreed to it. So did the board of directors. I told them everything and they agreed to it wholeheartedly.”

Harrelson did not come up with all of his fresh ideas overnight. He had been thinking about them long before he got this job.

He also has one he hasn’t tried yet: He would like to reduce his roster from 25 to 23 players. “You’d have a better brand of ball,” he said. “The other two would be better off getting experience in the minors.”

Teams don’t win today with good players because there aren’t enough of them, Harrelson said. “You win with in-between players. There are more of them because you have too many clubs (26).”

Harrelson doesn’t believe players should get long-term contracts and said nobody on his team would ever get one for more than three years as long as he was boss. He will not give anyone a no-trade clause, either, he said.

“I believe in one-year contracts, but unfortunately you can’t do it with players today because the system has gone too far,” he said. “We’re not going to be revolutionary and change the sport. We’re just going to take care of our club.”

More gospel according to Harrelson:

A batting average is the most meaningless statistic in the game. “Don’t tell me what a guy hits; tell me when he hits.”

A team must fit a manager to the players. “A good manager for Team A may not be a good manager for Team B. You can’t structure a team to a manager, no matter how good he is. That’s the least publicized story in baseball.”

Why leave a glamorous, well-paying job ($250,000 a year) for the headaches of an executive position that pays about $100,000 less, Harrelson was asked.

“Not to be profound or heavy, I took it because it was there,” he replied. “It was a challenge. When I was a player, I always thought I wanted to do one of three things: Own a club, run a club or manage a club. If I had been successful at golf I would own one today.”

What he likes best about the job is the class of the organization. “We have good people,” he said. “I’m not worried about this club. I wouldn’t have taken the job to rebuild a second-division club. Let someone else do that.”

At one time, he said, he wanted to be a manager, but when he had several offers to become one, he turned them down.

“The most important thing in my life is my family. When I got those offers, I had been married 12 years, and Aristea did not understand at the time what it would be like being married to a man who would be criticized and ripped by the media and fans.”

He refused some offers because they were from bad organizations, he said. Some others did not offer him enough money.

The press reaction in Chicago to Harrelson’s appointment has been mostly favorable. He thinks it has been fantastic, in fact.

Jeff Nordlund of the Chicago Daily Herald said: “The Hawk has been a breath of fresh air. Generally, the reaction has been favorable. People like his flamboyance.”

Said Jerry Holtzman of the Chicago Tribune, who has reported on the Cubs and White Sox for more than 30 years: “I think he will be outstanding in the job. I think it was a very good move. The trend has been to move former players into the general manager’s job. They have been the most successful ones in the last 15 years. They know how to balance a team.”

Hiring extra coaches also was a good idea in Holtzman’s view. “He’s doing some old friends a favor, bringing them back to the game, but at the same time, it’s a pretty good move. He’s no dope. He is a shrewd guy.”

There has been some negative reaction, too, in out-of-town papers, Harrelson said, but now his wife and two children understand it. “I take the stories home and let Aristea read them so she will know everything is not peaches and cream.”

It isn’t, he has found. What he likes least about his job is the administrative side. It has changed his life. He has played only 18 holes of golf in the month he has been in Florida and he has turned down 80 or 90 invitations to play, he said.

Other chores are just plain hard. “I learned a long time ago that it’s easier to hire somebody than to fire them,” he said. “I made a lot of changes when I came in because I had to.”

Ken Harrelson, not the Hawk, does the firing. “Ken Harrelson is the disciplinarian,” he said.

Does Ken Harrelson really have a dual personality?

“I think every person has more than one side. We have a serious, or emotional, or free-spirit side. Sometimes we suppress them. I’ve realized for a long time there was a Ken Harrelson and there was a Hawk.”

While playing for the Red Sox he would often kneel in the on-deck circle and say, “ ‘OK, Ken, get out of the way of the Hawk and let him go.’ I knew the Hawk was a better hitter than Ken Harrelson.

“I also know the Hawk has more fun than Ken Harrelson. My kids love Ken Harrelson, but they really enjoy the Hawk, too. He’s fun. I wish I could get the Hawk to come out more often around my kids.”

Unfortunately, Ken Harrelson is the one who says, “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” The Hawk is the kind of a guy who would say, ‘Forget it, kid. Let’s go ice skating.’ ”

When he has to solve a business problem today, the executive vice president, baseball operations, of the White Sox faces a dilemma: He asks, “Who can best solve it, Kenny or the Hawk?”

Forget it, Kenny, go play golf.