To Claire, It’s a New Challenge

In 1940, as the German armies overran France and command passed from one French general, Maurice Gamelin, to another, Maxime Weygand, Gen. Weygand flew over the deteriorating front and cabled back to his superiors: “They have handed me a disaster.”

Fred Claire could have been pardoned for feeling exactly the same way earlier this year when they handed him the reins of another army in defeat, the Dodgers, after the spectacular defrocking of the ex-head of command, Al Campanis.

Everywhere you looked, the Dodgers were in disarray. Like the French army, it wasn’t even a retreat, it was a rout. The starting pitching was terrible, the relief pitching nonexistent. Third basemen were playing first, outfielders were playing third, the lineup consisted almost wholly of utility players, Triple-A players or guys who long since should have gone home to sell real estate or insurance.

The surprising thing to a lot of people was that vice president Claire accepted this battlefield commission instead of saying: “Not me, you don’t! I didn’t make this mess. Give it to somebody who did!”

But, like the Good Soldier Schweik, Fred followed orders. He took over this army without banners, this sinking ship, these forces that no longer believed in themselves.

It was widely believed that Claire’s appointment would just be a kind of caretaker role, a stewardship during which he would answer the phones and keep the desk neat till the Dodgers could come up with the real, permanent replacement for Campanis, probably the field manager, Tom Lasorda.

Why wouldn’t Claire just want to go on promoting Cap Night, Fan Appreciation Day, and go on being an executive vice president and Rotarian and not have to worry about roster changes or what to do with Ed Amelung or who to put on first base or where to get a center fielder?

After all, Fred had never played the game. He had been a sportswriter, for crying out loud. His specialty was marketing and promotion. Those canny old David Harums around the league would eat him alive, trade him out of what few remaining ballplayers he did have for has-beens or never-would-bes.

The league expected Claire’s administration to be one of “don’t make waves and thus don’t make mistakes.” They thought he would just try to keep the ship afloat till management could hire a real general manager, one wise in the ways and chicanery of baseball’s front offices.

To the complete surprise of everyone, Claire began making noises like a guy who intends to attack. He didn’t feel as if they had handed him a disaster, they had given him an opportunity. He rolled up his sleeves and went to work.

He picked up a lot of baseball’s discards in his early moves, but when he sucked it up and unloaded veteran pitcher Jerry Reuss, then boldly traded off the last vestige of a bullpen for a player languishing in the Baltimore Orioles’ minor league system, baseball knew that Fred Claire didn’t see himself as anybody’s stopgap.

“He wants the job!” gasped a baseball man in St. Louis when news of some of the maneuvering of the new kid on the block reached baseball’s grapevine.

Trading Tom Niedenfuer for John Shelby does not rank with Babe Ruth going from Boston to New York, but it was a chancy maneuver. Niedenfuer for one or two pitches was still an effective, if not devastating, reliever. Shelby, when he was in the big leagues, was Fred Lynn’s caddy with the Orioles.

But he has hit 13 home runs and driven in 36 runs for the Dodgers, and has shored up a position that has been an open wound for a long time.

There is no question Claire has the ear of the boss. Claire has always had the complete trust and backing of owner Peter O’Malley. “They think so alike you think that one of them is a recording,” one member of the Dodger family jokes.

The question is not why O’Malley wants Claire in that job, it’s why Claire wants Claire in that job. His background is in promotion and marketing. He joined the club as a publicity man 18 years ago. Presumably, baseball’s front offices are filled with gnarled old characters who have been evaluating ballplayers since World War I and will be able to outwit a young man in a button-down collar without taking their feet off the desk.

Why does a guy leave the comfort of a secure, lifetime job to go out where the ammunition is live and the opposition marksmen?

There is the additional hazard that he is stepping into the line of accession long planned for his field manager. Lasorda is a highly marketable baseball commodity the Dodgers can ill afford to detach. Why not continue to fill seats with Helmet Nights instead of with the more difficult process of fielding a winning team?

“I see it as a challenge,” Fred Claire says. “I have been in this organization 18 years and around baseball for 30. I don’t think you can be around that long without learning something about how to run this game.

“I am not an interim anything. I want this job and I feel I can handle it and I want to and feel I can put the Dodgers back up there where we feel they can and will and should be. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t take it.”

At stake are 3 million annual admissions and an L.A. tradition. Fred Claire does not feel, as did General Weygand, that he has been handed a disaster. He feels the way a younger colonel on the French staff felt that year, that he hadn’t been handed a disaster but a cause. A Col. DeGaulle.