Finally, It Has Turned Him Inside Out

Maybe we should have suspected something was the matter with Gene Mauch a couple of weeks ago, after John Candelaria, the Angel expatriate, figuratively threw down his baseball glove as a gauntlet, challenging Mauch’s competency as a manager. Mauch, much to our surprise, elected not to pick up this mitt and smack Candelaria across the face with it.

Another time, another place, and the Little General almost certainly would have fired off a few potshots in Candelaria’s direction, or at least recommended that he stick to pitching. Mauch even could have suggested, with considerable justification, that Candelaria had enough personal problems of his own to iron out, without carrying on about other people’s supposed weaknesses.

Instead, Mauch chose not to comment on Candelaria’s comments, saying, “If I did, I wouldn’t feel very good about myself later.”

He held it in.

He held it in, the same way he has held back a lot of other things he obviously has been feeling. When the Angel manager unexpectedly took leave of his ballclub Friday with spring training in progress, some of his business associates and closest friends were clearly caught off guard. Gene Mauch sick? They had no idea.

At the Angel camp in Arizona, pinch-manager Cookie Rojas said: “I just hope it’s a bad cold, or a virus . . . or maybe cactus fever.”

Mauch’s physical discomfort took everybody by surprise, but the fact that the 62-year-old manager kept it to himself did not. There are many things in life that Mauch does not conceal, including his opinions on the game of baseball and those who play it. The more personal stuff, however, Mauch tends to internalize. Or, as Rojas put it: “You know Gene--he swallows everything.”

The Angel manager rarely wears his emotions on his sleeve, as we recall from a few years ago, when he walked away from his life’s work for good, only to later reconsider, and as we recall from the classic fall of 1986, when the rug of his first World Series was yanked out from under Mauch and the Angels by some unsentimental men in red stockings representing Boston, name of Baylor and Henderson.

Mauch’s insides must have been hurting him then, too.

This most recent distress, however, the sort that he has been feeling most of this past winter, has been of a more physical nature, more of body than of soul. On Friday, when it finally became so painful that he felt he could no longer function full-time as the Angels’ manager, at least for the time being, Mauch agreed to check into a clinic for tests, which he will do today, near his home in Rancho Mirage. Anybody who knows Gene Mauch at all knows that if this man is willing to see a doctor, he must really be feeling poorly.

It is no major secret that Mauch is not the type who goes running for the nearest physician’s office every time he feels a cold coming on. The Angel general generally resists medical help, just as he resists the surgeon general’s advice to take those cigarettes that he chain-smokes by the thousands and chuck them into the trash. Mauch even avoids the standard physical examinations of training camp, whenever and however he can. It simply is not his scene.

The club’s general manager, Mike Port, had no idea what was ailing the manager, but he did think Mauch looked a little tired, maybe even a little anemic. He is hoping that all Mauch needs to recharge his battery are a few vitamin supplements and a short rest. Port does know, though, that for Gene Mauch to go so far as to leave the team, something inside him must really have been giving him grief.

Any speculation as to how soon Mauch will return--or if he will return at all--is terribly presumptuous and premature. Rojas simply considers himself a temp, and expects Mauch back directly.

Any speculation as to whether the Angels are better off with or without Gene Mauch is strictly for another day. He is their manager. The job is his. It’s there, waiting for him. The only important thing now is for Mauch to get back in the pink, so that he can get back in the dugout. We’ll worry later about how the Angels will make out, or who will make out their lineup.

You know Gene, though. Just like a manager who calls the shots from the tunnel after being ejected by an umpire, he is still keeping an eye on things from afar, staying in touch with Rojas and Port by telephone since returning to California. By the time the Angels get to Palm Springs next week for the final stages of training camp, Mauch probably will not be too far behind the scenes.

“See you all in Palm Springs,” he said Friday, before leaving Arizona.

To which Port responded later: “I hope it’s in a uniform.”

We hope so, too. And, in the meantime, in between time, we hope that John Candelaria is terribly pleased with himself for having got all that other stuff off his chest. We hope that Candelaria gets everything he deserves this season, including all the luck in the world, because Billy Martin is managing him now, and there is certainly a chance he will need it.