Mauch Will Not Be Back to Manage Angels : A Tough Way to Make a Living, but Losing Was Toughest of All

When Mike Port, another of those modern gentlemen who has acquired the habit of referring to himself in the third person, returned a long-distance phone call Saturday, he sounded tired enough for two people.

“In summary, from Mike Port’s standpoint,” the Angel general manager said, assessing current events, “it ain’t been easy.”

He mentioned some of the things that, in recent times, had not been easy. The phasing out of Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson and Don Sutton. The Wally Joyner contract combat. The Gene Mauch sick leave.

Then came Friday’s pow-wow and Saturday morning’s startling announcement, that Mauch would not be returning as Angel manager, after all.

“This thing with Gene has been the toughest . . . task, I guess, of all,” Port said from Palm Springs. “I think back to when Gene Mauch was willing to come back the first time (he retired as manager after the 1982 season), and how he was willing to help a neophyte, as it were, general manager with what he had to do, and the thought of him leaving now makes me very sad.

“I don’t think that where Gene and I are concerned, this has been a manager working for a general manager,” Port said. “It’s been more of a partnership. And it has been a strong friendship, also. Mike Port probably appreciates a real baseball person as well as anyone, and Gene Mauch, in my book, has been two things--a real baseball man and a real man.”

Meanwhile, they say Gene Mauch looked absolutely great Saturday. Chipper. Suntanned. Refreshed. Relieved. As if he didn’t have a worry in the world, much less the World Series. As if he just figured out that the hardest decision he would make all week was whether to climb out of his hammock and spill some charcoal into the grill, or lie there sipping his iced tea.

Well, if you have to pick a place to announce your retirement, Palm Springs is the place.

There will be no gold watch, just as there will be no World Series championship gold ring. But, there will be rest and relaxation, and maybe even peace of mind, for a man who once again realized how tired he was of the grind.

Cookie Rojas is the new, official, no-strings-attached manager of the Angels--someone who works so close to Disneyland probably should have a cute name such as Cookie or Cubby or Mickey--and Mauch, for the second time, has called it quits, intending to live the good life on those desert golf courses and put aside forever those little annoyances such as whether Johnny Ray can handle left field, or whether Donnie Moore can nail down that last out, or whether Urbano Lugo is ever going to stop reading the Juan Berenguer Diet Book.

Mauch took a furlough a couple of weeks ago, to find out why he was feeling so lousy. A doctor diagnosed bronchitis, so Mauch, understandably relieved, started lighting up fewer of those coffin nails he smokes.

During his days away from the dugout, though, Mauch evidently decided that what was giving him heartburn and heartache was not so much bronchitis as it was the strain of the game itself--the losing, the traveling, the arguments, the losing, the decision-making, and mostly, the losing.

“As I survey the broad expanse of baseball, show me somebody who’s a good loser, and I’ll show you somebody who has never moved out of sixth or seventh place,” Port said.

“Gene has probably told me every year, over the past four years, the same thing. He’d say, ‘You know, even if you go out and win 100 games . . .’ And then, he’d lower his voice very deeply, very ominously, and say, “ . . . you still lose, 62 times.”

The general manager watched the manager second-guessing himself, replaying games in his head, wondering what he should have done differently, shouldering blame for players instead of pointing fingers at guilty parties, deciding fates of dependable veterans such as Carew when impatient rookies such as Joyner are eager to take over.

He watched the way Mauch molded certain players’ careers, saying: “There are players who are immensely indebted to Gene Mauch, and they don’t even know it.”

He watched how Mauch manipulated and maneuvered certain teams, saying: “On a 10 scale, if he had a 3 club, Gene Mauch was going to make it a 7. He might not win the championship, but he’s going to make that team a devil of a lot better than it might have been.”

And, like everybody else, Port heard the knock against Mauch, the fact that he never did turn a team into a 10.

“The standard indictment, after all these years of managing, is that he never won a pennant. Well, if someone wanted to make a study of this contrarily, I’m sure I could find you some managers who made it to the World Series once or twice, whose baseball sense of skill has long since concluded. The exposure to Gene Mauch’s managing has helped too many players to judge his career solely on his not having won a World Series.”

Mauch is a baseball man, through and through, to the point that he flat-out fibbed Friday, when asked if was coming back.

“Yes,” he said.

“In uniform?”

“Yes,” he said.

Saturday morning, after announcing he was quitting, Mauch located the guy to whom he had lied.

“I wasn’t trying to lie,” he said. “I said I’d be in uniform.”

He had worn civilian clothes to the announcement. To Gene Mauch, a man who has spent most of his adult life in flannel or double-knit knickers, that was a uniform.

He is out of baseball now--into uniform. But, there is a lot to console him.

Sixty-two fewer losses a year.