John McNamara : Leader of the Band in Boston Remembers Anguish in Anaheim

It is 5 a.m. on the morning after the Boston Red Sox have clinched the American League East championship.

John McNamara, the manager, is alone in his suburban Natick house. He had driven his son, Mike, to the airport after the clubhouse celebration of the day before. A Marine Corps lieutenant, Mike McNamara was returning to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

They embraced, father and son, tears in their eyes, proud of each other.

McNamara’s wife, Ellen, an airline hostess, is out of town, working.

The alarm clock wakes McNamara, reminding him he is to be on “CBS Morning News” and reminding him why. He gets off the living room couch, walks across a dark and empty room and raises his right arm in an exultant pumping motion.

“Yes,” he says to no one and everyone. “We did it.”

The portrait of John Francis McNamara, former Sacramento seminary student, as quiet, low key and undemonstrative is basically accurate, but it misses the shades, the shadows, the Irish emotion and tenacity.

Ask McNamara what he brought to the Red Sox and he says nothing makes him more uncomfortable than to talk about himself.

Ask him again and there is a pause. Then he lists stability, consistency, patience, a refusal to panic and a commitment to pitching, along with the ability to handle pitching.

“I’ve also always been my own man,” McNamara says.

Indeed.

Replacing Sparky Anderson as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1979, McNamara guided the Reds to a National League West title that year and the best record in baseball in 1981 when they failed to reach the playoffs because they had not won either half of a season split by strike.

He was fired in July of 1982 but on his own terms, refusing to play lineups dictated by then General Manager Dick Wagner after Wagner had decimated the Big Red Machine. Wagner traded Ray Knight, McNamara’s clubhouse leader, to Houston for Cesar Cedeno and lost the entire outfield of Dave Collins, George Foster and Ken Griffey by trade or free agency.

There were similar responses during McNamara’s tenure as manager of the Angels in 1983 and ’84.

He submitted his resignation at the end of the 1983 season, for example, because of a feeling that the September rehiring of Gene Mauch as personnel director had spawned questions about the chain of command and his own authority.

A summit meeting with Mauch and then general manager Buzzie Bavasi satisfied McNamara’s doubts and he subsequently became what he now calls “good friends” with Mauch, who has since been an outspoken admirer of McNamara’s ability to handle pitching.

Then, at the end of the 1984 season, McNamara rejected an offer to return in favor of the open market.

He insists that he wasn’t assured of the Boston job at the time, though it’s suspected that close friend Haywood Sullivan, owner of the Red Sox, had earlier informed him that Ralph Houk was retiring and he could have the position if he wanted it.

McNamara has never been definitive about his reasons for leaving the Angels, but much of it seems obvious. He was again being his own man.

“If I’m not happy, I’m going to walk,” he said.

There was more to be unhappy about than a fifth-place finish in ’83 or a third-place finish in ’84.

McNamara received little help from a front office that failed to improve an inferior pitching staff or respond to Dick Schofield’s midseason injury in 1984. The Angels went more than a month with 24 players rather than 25.

The manager was publicly criticized at times by the front office, creating uncertainty in regard to his status. The World Series was just starting when the Angels finally made a 1985 offer.

The Red Sox, with their powerful potential and two-year offer, may have resembled heaven compared to another tenuous year with the hesitant Angels.

“It was very frustrating in 1984 that we couldn’t accomplish what we wanted to,” McNamara said the other day. “I decided that I didn’t want to be there because of what was going on. I’m not going to get into it more.”

Now, of course, McNamara confronts the Angels in the American League playoff.

Is there added incentive or motivation? Is there lingering animosity?

“Not at all,” McNamara said. “There have been too many changes (in the Angels). It’s not the same team. Many of the every day players are still there, but only Mike Witt and Doug Corbett are still there from the pitching staff I had.

“We’d have won in ’84 with the pitching staff they now have. Hell, I didn’t have a bullpen.”

No extra incentive? No added adrenalin? Rene Lachemann, McNamara’s third-base coach, smiled.

“I know how John felt when we beat the Angels during the regular season and I know how he felt when we lost,” Lachemann said. “I’m not saying it would be more meaningful for him (to win a playoff involving the Angels), but I do think it would make it more satisfying.”

John McNamara likes to say that he is 54 and still doing what he wanted to do when he was 6, that baseball has always been his only interest. The pride and sensitivity, the shades and shadows that make him more than his image, are seen only briefly.

In McNamara’s clubhouse office on the night after the clinching, a young writer asks him if he has been a better manager in this, his second season with the Red Sox, than he was in his first. One year dumb and one year smart is how McNamara seems to read it. He calls it a stupid question and says he would prefer that the writer leave. A second writer supports the first and is told that he can leave, too.

In the same office the next night, McNamara is asked about his friendship with Sullivan. They were roommates as minor league players with the A’s and later managed in that system. McNamara senses a hidden meaning. He says he wasn’t hired because he was a friend of the owner and isn’t being retained out of friendship. He says he is no buffoon.

“Every club I’ve managed has been in the race with the exception of those three years with San Diego when it was still basically an expansion team and my last year in Cincinnati when everyone had been traded away,” McNamara said. “I’m blowing my own horn, but look at the record. I know I can lead, the players here know I can lead. If no one else does, it doesn’t matter because I know what’s been done here and it’s a satisfying feeling.”

He gained perspective last year when the Red Sox were 81-81 and would have been better if a rookie pitcher named Roger Clemens had not gone down with a shoulder injury in midseason. There was some weeding to be done, McNamara decided. The departure of Bob Ojeda and Mark Clear, sources say, cleared out the negative influence as well as bringing a relief pitcher, Calvin Schiraldi, in a trade for Ojeda, who played a pivotal role down the stretch.

For many years the Boston baseball club had also been known as a country club. Individualism reigned. Twenty-five cabs for 25 players. Lunches catered in during spring training. Petty jealousy in the clubhouse. Now it has changed. McNamara demanded it and worked through others. He named the respected Jim Rice captain. He lobbied for the acquisition of Tom Seaver and Don Baylor, confident of what they would contribute on and off the field. The resulting chemistry and work ethic of the 1986 team, McNamara believes, will serve as an example for the organization in the future.

The Red Sox took the division lead May 15 and never trailed again. Starting pitchers Bruce Hurst and Al Nipper were lost for more than a month in midseason with injuries. Oil Can Boyd, who now calls McNamara a surrogate father because of his persistent support and occasional scoldings, missed almost a month because of his suspension. Seaver came from Chicago and others from the minors. The manager refused to panic. The gap was plugged. Pitching was now the cornerstone of an organization that had always thought it had to pound the Fenway wall.

A writer in Sacramento, McNamara’s hometown, had predicted in the spring that he would be the first manager fired in 1986. In midseason, his patient leadership was rewarded with a two-year contract extension. Baltimore made an August run and fell back. Toronto won nine straight late that month only to have Boston respond with 11 in a row, wrapping up the division title amid continuous reminders of leads blown by other Red Sox teams in other years.

McNamara closed the door of his office to visit with two writers who had once covered the Angels. The shades and shadows emerged again.

“The word ‘choke’ makes me want to puke because I wasn’t around then and there aren’t any ghosts here now,” he said. “The word ‘choke’ means you can’t do the job when it’s on the line and I think I can.

“Of course, it doesn’t matter what I think. It comes down to the guys out there (pointing toward the clubhouse). But every time someone made a run, they turned it back.

“I’ll go to my grave carrying disappointment over what happened in ’81 (when the strike deprived the Reds of a playoff berth), but this has been my most gratifying and satisfying season because we were picked fifth or sixth by most people and maligned coast to coast by media, fans, managers and front office people.

“I could take some shots now but it wouldn’t be me and what would I get out of it? It’s not the attitude I want to bring to the park. This is a time to be happy, thankful.”

It is time now to withdraw the shades and shadows, to become the stereotype John McNamara. Reserved, low key, not the time to show panic with the playoffs beginning and the frightening episode involving Clemens still fresh on his mind. Time to remember lessons learned from watching and talking to Danny Murtaugh and Walter Alston, the quintessential quiet man. Alston was managing the Dodgers, McNamara the Padres.

“Maybe he felt sorry for me, but he really helped me out,” McNamara said. “He told me that you’re only as good as your players and that you can’t make yourself sick over things you can’t control. It was great advice, though I haven’t always heeded it.”

It is when he doesn’t heed it that those shades and shadows tend to appear, fleshing out the portrait.

McNAMARA’S MANAGERIAL RECORD

Year Club League Pos. W L 1969 Oakland* American 2 8 5 1970 Oakland American 2 89 73 1974 San Diego National 6 60 102 1975 San Diego National 4 71 91 1976 San Diego National 5 73 89 1977 San Diego** National 5 20 28 1979 Cincinnati National 1 90 71 1980 Cincinnati National 3 89 73 1981 Cincinnati-x National 66 42 1982 Cincinnati-y National 6 34 58 1983 California American 5 70 92 1984 California American 2 81 81 1985 Boston American 5 81 81 1986 Boston American 1 95 66

*--Replaced Hank Bauer on Sept. 19, 1969. **--Replaced by Alvin Dark on May 30, 1977. x--First half of strike season, second (35-21); second half, second (31-21). y--Replaced by Russ Nixon on July 21, 1982.