A TOUGH TASK : Can a Determined Frank Robinson Turn Those Woeful Orioles Around?

His first game as manager of the Baltimore Orioles had ended almost three hours earlier, and from the door of Frank Robinson’s office, he can see some of the byproducts of a 6-1 defeat.

In an empty and quiet clubhouse, attendants are gathering piles of dirty uniforms that have been tossed into two grocery carts. A buffet table of salad and taco makings sits soggy and picked over, and down a short hallway, a teen-ager is busy wiping and polishing 24 pairs of cleats.

It’s a few minutes past 1 a.m., and Robinson is nearing the end of a day that appears to have drained him physically and emotionally. It’s not likely to get any easier for a while because the next day includes an early appearance on “Good Morning America” and a noon banquet downtown.

Still, he does not look tired because, at 52, Frank Robinson is aging in the stately, graceful way great athletes are supposed to age. The creases around his eyes are deeper and longer, the hair peppered with gray. But the forearms are still solid, and almost 12 years after his last game, he appears comfortable in a uniform and has the cocky look of a great player who knows he’s still great.

With only a bit of prompting, he begins to talk.

“It’s understandable how Cal Jr. and Billy (Ripken) feel,” he says. “I certainly know how Cal Sr. feels. When I got fired the first time, I was devastated. I wanted to go hide. I didn’t want to see anyone and whatever people said had no meaning at all. It’s a terrible feeling.

“I brought the boys in here to talk, not because they wanted to hear what I had to say. I’m sure most of it passed right through their ears because they’re both kind of numb. But I just wanted them to know that I hadn’t been sitting upstairs rooting against Cal. I didn’t come looking for this job. If it wasn’t going to be me, it was going to be someone else. It doesn’t mean anything to them today, but when things calm down, I think they’ll appreciate me taking the time.”

Robinson points toward a clubhouse that has just lost a popular manager.

“Certain players become close to a manager, and they enjoy playing for him,” he said. “He’s fired, and there’s a gap there. I know a lot of people out there are upset that Cal lost his job. He’s a good man, and it’s especially tough because of the kids. He never had anything other than a professional relationship with them. He was their manager--not their father. But today, they realize he’s their daddy, too, and it hurts doubly. They know how much he has sacrificed to get the chance to manage, and to be fired after one year and six games makes it tough.”

Robinson repeats again and again that he did not seek the job. He was happy with his new position in the front office, had felt comfortable wearing something other than baseball knits for the first time in 35 years. He knew replacing Ripken would be difficult.

Yet when Roland Hemond phoned with the offer, Robinson accepted almost before he heard the question. He had once said he’d never manage again without a two-year contract, but when the chance came, he jumped at it and appears clearly excited to again be in charge, even with the team’s struggling start.

“They asked me,” Robinson said. “It’s that simple. I have a high regard for Mr. (team owner Edward Bennett) Williams. I felt I owed this much to an organization that has really helped me along as a player, coach and executive. And I guess ego comes into it. No matter what has happened before, you feel you can do the job to get the team headed in the right direction.”

He apparently had been thinking, subconsciously, at least, about managing the Orioles for quite a while because once he got the job, he acted quickly.

Over the next three days, he began platooning and pinch-hitting for some of his millionaire stars, rearranged his lineup, got young outfielder Jim Traber back to the majors and began meeting with every player on the team.

The results weren’t apparent on the field because the Orioles continued to lose, but he left little doubt his Orioles would be different than Ripken’s Orioles.

“We may not be very good at fundamentals,” he said, “but we’ll be out working on them until we are.”

The people who know Frank Robinson have no doubt about that.

History will write that Frank Robinson became the Baltimore Orioles’ first black manager. But that will tell only about 1% of his story because of all the great players who’ve walked down the tunnel connecting their clubhouse and dugout, no one has had the impact of Frank Robinson.

Even today, Orioles historians have the date Dec. 9, 1965--the day pitcher Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun and Dick Simpson were traded to Cincinnati for Frank Robinson--circled on their calendars and in their minds.

The Orioles say it’s no coincidence Robinson’s arrival marked the beginning of their 18-year dynasty, a stretch in which they won six pennants, three world championships and 59% of their games. They say Robinson’s arrival made a group of very good players--Boog Powell, Dave McNally, Brooks Robinson, etc.--into a very great team.

His Baltimore career was only six seasons long, but as he said this week, “No one remembers that I spent 10 years in Cincinnati.” Instead, they remember that he averaged 30 homers and 91 RBIs a season and became the 10th player to win the triple crown and the first to win an MVP award in both leagues.

“He taught this franchise how to win, period,” said veteran announcer Chuck Thompson. “He came to a team that had some good players and leaders. Brooks was a leader in his own way. But Frank not only led vocally, he could do everything. He hit with power, he could bunt and he was a stickler for detail. If a player made a mistake, he might not hear from the manager, but he knew he’d hear from Frank.”

Robinson would tell players often and loudly, on the field, in the dugout and in the post-game kangaroo court sessions he began. The court sessions were unique, especially because no team has ever been able to make them work so effectively without hurting feelings.

“We did it only after a win because people tend to be more open to that type of thing in those situations,” Robinson said. “We’d come in, get a sandwich and a drink and relax a little bit. And we’d bring up whatever mistakes were made. If a guy hadn’t hit a cutoff man the night before he’d hear about it. If he hadn’t taken an extra base, he’d hear about it. People sometimes got the purpose confused. It wasn’t to bully people. It was to get them to thinking about the game.”

Did it help?

“Put it this way,” said coach Elrod Hendricks. “If you made a mistake, you didn’t want to have to come in the clubhouse and hear about it. So, yes, it made you concentrate.”

Robinson was proud and arrogant, and he gave in to no one. At bat, he all but stood on home plate, his way of telling a pitcher: “This belongs to me.” The pitchers’ way of disagreeing was hitting him with 198 pitches and knocking him down a few hundred other times.

“Don Drysdale would knock him down and Robinson would get back up and hit it out of the park,” California Manager Cookie Rojas remembered. “He’d knock him down the next time, and Robinson would double off the wall. He’d knock him down again, and Robinson would hit it out again. It was a thing of beauty.”

The Orioles, in a contract dispute, traded Robinson to the Dodgers in 1972, and by the time he retired, his ticket to Cooperstown was punched. He ranks among baseball’s greatest players in almost every statistical category. He’s fourth on the home run list (586), behind only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, and is close to the top in games, at-bats, runs, hits, doubles, RBIs, total bases, walks and hit by pitches.

He finished his career with the Cleveland Indians, who made him the game’s first black manager on Oct. 4, 1974. As a manager in two bad organizations (Cleveland, 1975-77, and San Francisco, 1981-84), Robinson has had some of his most frustrating times.

Also, for a black man getting an up-close look at baseball management for the first time, some of his most educating times.

He remembers scouting reports coming into the Indians that listed such things as height, weight and race.

“I told ‘em I didn’t care if a guy was green,” he said. “I just wanted to know if he could play. I guess race mattered to them. When I got mad about it, they had the race part taken off the reports that came to my office, but I later found out the scout was told to keep sending them in the same way.”

He had problems in the clubhouse, too. Several veteran players, including Rico Carty, made second-guessing the rookie manager a nightly game. Robinson asked that Carty be traded, and when Indians President Phil Seghi refused, Robinson knew he was in a losing situation.

Reliever Jim Kern remembered the night he was getting hit so hard that Robinson came to the mound and said he was bringing in a new pitcher “because our infielders have wives and children.”

Once, a Giants reliever left the mound before Robinson got there, so Robinson grabbed the guy and pulled him back to the mound. In many less obvious ways, he had small confrontations and large meetings with dozens of others.

Robinson’s experiences with the Giants weren’t so much a case of racial as baseball education. The Giants were not spending money for draft picks, they were not spending money for scouts and the team on the field reflected the problems off it.

Still, Robinson almost made it work. The Giants had gone 75-86 the year before he arrived, 56-55 the year after in a strike-shortened season. In his third year, 1982, he almost pushed them over the top, going 87-75 and keeping them in the race until the last week. They fell to 79-83 in ‘83, and he was fired 106 games into the 1984 season.

He’s remembered for many things in San Francisco and Cleveland, many of them having to do with his hair-trigger temper. There’s still a tape of a couple of his obscene and descriptive post-game tirades going around, and he apparently has had players who literally feared him.

Yet a question a lot of people wonder is this: What kind of manager will Frank Robinson be if he ever has a decent team to put on the field?

His contributions to the game have been so vast, his intellect so high, it’s hard to imagine him failing. Don Baylor and Reggie Jackson played for Robinson one winter (1970) in Puerto Rico, and both say Robinson taught them how to win.

Ken Singleton, the former Oriole outfielder, says Robinson was the best he’s ever seen at working with outfielders. Al Bumbry said a tip from Robinson helped make him one of the Orioles’ best hitters of all time. Gary Roenicke said Robinson helped him recover from a 1979 beaning.

“He got me back on the field so fast that fear never had time to set in,” Roenicke.

The game has been good to Frank Robinson. He and Barbara, his wife of 26 years, own a home in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles. Robinson has Lakers season tickets and the family usually spends Christmas on Maui.

Barbara is a successful Los Angeles realtor and Robinson could certainly make a comfortable living off his various incomes, including that from a controversial new book, “Extra Innings,” due out this month.

But able to be almost anywhere in the world, he has chosen to attempt to turn around another awful team. He is taking the chance he’ll be able to will the Orioles out of last place or that he will get more out of his players than anyone thinks possible. He apparently felt comfortable in the uniform in 1953 when he accepted a $3,000 bonus and reported to Ogden, Utah, a frail and shy kid with a quick bat. Thirty-five years later, the uniform still feels good.

“I never wanted to get back and show people I could manage,” he said. “I know what I’m capable of doing. But it’s not something I’m going to go halfway in. I’ll give it all I’ve got and hope it’s good enough.”