HE SAYS HE’LL MANAGE : Unemployed Tanner Thought He ‘Was Following the Program’ With the Braves

Bitter? Chuck Tanner says no, that his strongest emotion regarding his firing as Atlanta Braves manager is compassion for owner Ted Turner.

“He’s the only guy I feel sorry for,” Tanner said by phone from his home in New Castle, Pa.

“I went down there to do a job for him, but he’s going on a sleigh ride in summer and there’s no snow down there.”

Meaning?

“The only thing I mean is that I thought there was a commitment to a long-term rebuilding program and that I was part of it,” Tanner said. “Why disrupt it?

“It cost them a lot of money--and that’s just wasted.”

Tanner signed a five-year contract before the 1986 season. He is guaranteed $400,000 a year through 1990 and a $500,000 bonus when the contract expires.

His firing was announced May 22, after several days of meetings held by Turner, who has generally divorced himself from the Braves’ daily operations, club President Stan Kasten and General Manager Bobby Cox.

Neither Cox nor Kasten has said anything more than that they believed a change was necessary. Turner’s secretary said he was too busy to be interviewed or to return phone calls.

“If they want to get rid of someone, they can make any excuse they want,” Tanner said. “I think they had this planned since spring training. They wanted their own people. I wasn’t one of their group. They never even sent me the reports on how the minor league players were doing. I guess I could see this coming.”

Tanner and Cox, former manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, were hired at virtually the same time. Tanner said that Turner told him they could switch jobs if they ever desired.

“When Ted told me that he thought he could also hire Bobby, I thought it was great,” Tanner said. “I thought we could work together. We had different opinions on some things, but I don’t remember any real arguments or negative discussions. I thought I was following the program. I thought I did a good job.

“People have criticized the way I handled pitching there, but I’ll always believe that my forte is handling young pitchers. I sent 10 to 12 to the majors when I was managing Hawaii for the Angels, and I don’t think anyone can criticize the way I helped develop Goose Gossage and Terry Forster when we were with the Chicago White Sox.”

The Braves were 153-208 under Tanner, including a 12-27 record this year, when they started 0-10. He said that the ’88 schedule was a detriment in that the Braves spent much of April playing the Dodgers, Houston Astros and New York Mets, facing many of the National League’s premier pitchers.

“We were going to get better as the season went on,” Tanner said, always the optimist. “I felt that once we got through that (early) period we would play .500. We went to Atlanta knowing what the project would be and felt we helped improve a lot of young players, no matter what anyone says.”

There is no love lost between Tanner and successor Russ Nixon, who was appointed by Cox to Tanner’s coaching staff in 1986, survived Tanner’s reported attempt to have him fired after that season and was then moved to a managing position with the organization’s farm club in Greenville, S.C., earlier this year.

Nixon said he felt like an outsider on Tanner’s staff, that he wasn’t included in discussions and eventually stopped offering opinions.

Tanner, according to sources, has told members of the organization that Nixon knifed him, though Tanner refused to say as much on the record.

He implied that Nixon was there to represent Cox and himself.

“If Russ felt like an outsider, it was because he made himself one,” Tanner said. “We had meetings and he didn’t even show up. He had one purpose in mind as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t want to get into it.”

Tanner, 58, is spending his first summer at home since he became a professional player in 1946. His contract guarantees easily cover his greens fees, but his hope is to manage again. The 379 losses of his last four-plus seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Braves have not dimmed his enthusiasm. He would even take on another rebuilding project, he said. San Diego is a rumored possibility.

Tanner, who won the 1979 World Series with the Pirates, said: “I know how to rebuild and I know what to do when I have the players. I knew Atlanta would be my toughest project of all, but I’m not bitter in any way.

“I’m disappointed that we couldn’t finish the job and disappointed in that I always thought I’d be the only manager in history never to be fired. Now I rank up there with managers like Casey Stengel, Gene Mauch, Dick Williams and Sparky Anderson.”

Nice company, but Tanner would have preferred avoiding it.