Frey Going Home to Baltimore

For the first time in more than 35 years, Jim Frey will be heading home in the middle of a baseball season.

But Frey, fired as manager of the Chicago Cubs, doesn’t intend to jump at the first job that comes his way.

“I’ve been in this game 37 years,” Frey said in a story published in The Cincinnati Enquirer. “Either you get a decent job or you go home and start looking to do something else.”

Frey said he is not immediately interested in taking a job as a major league coach or a minor league manager.

Frey was dismissed in 1981 from another managerial job with Kansas City, but that occurred in late August. He said the Cubs’ firing marks the earliest occasion on which a professional season has ended for him.

“I don’t quite know what I’m going to do with myself,” he said. “Now I’m just going back to my home in Baltimore.”

Fired with Frey at Chicago was Don Zimmer, Frey’s close friend. The two have known each other since their high school days in Cincinnati in the late 1940s.

The firing came as a surprise to Frey. “I didn’t think the timing was right,” he said. “I just didn’t expect it at the time.”

The Cubs had a 23-33 record when Frey was fired. The team was 16 1/2 games behind the National League East leader, the New York Mets.

“Early in the year--I’m talking the first couple of weeks--we just didn’t hit,” Frey said. “Some of the guys we were counting on to produce runs just weren’t getting the job done. Then our pitching went sour and we had the highest ERA in the National League.”

Particularly frustrating was the 3-7 road trip the team endured just before Frey was fired.

“On our last home stand, I thought we played well,” Frey said. “Then we went on the road and didn’t play well. We lost three games where we had the lead late in the game.”