Rader Is Ready for Baseball

Most of us who permanently itch for anything having to do with jocks know by now that the first thing you do when the Super Bowl is over is start talking baseball. Doug Rader, who lives in Florida’s southeast nook, not so very far from the site of Sunday’s 49er-Bengal game, is pretty much like anybody else. He always enjoys baseball, but particularly enjoys it the minute there’s no more football.

Rader was talking baseball Monday, talking about some of the new Angels who will come to camp in a couple of weeks, himself included, when the subject eventually turned to left-handed pitching. We got to wondering what the chances were of Bob McClure, the veteran left-hander, or Jim Abbott, the rookie one-hander, making the opening-day roster.

Abbott might not have the full use of his right hand, but, we agreed, he sure does have everything else it takes to be a big league pitcher, even though he is just now emerging from the University of Michigan and the Olympic Games. Abbott is a good pitcher and a great kid, and the Angels are even throwing a little coming-out party for him at their offices today, more or less to introduce him to American League society.

Rader, the new Angel manager, made this observation about him: “I think it would be a little unfair for anybody to think that Jim Abbott will make the club in spring training. Then again, I don’t think anybody in the entire Angel organization would be reluctant to say that they wouldn’t be surprised to see Jim Abbott pitching with the team before the year is out.”

As for the recently acquired McClure, who turns 36 in April, much will depend, Rader said, on whether the Angels can afford the luxury of carrying a lefty whose principal role might be to retire one left-handed batter, out of the bullpen, once every couple of days. McClure, Rader had to admit, seemed “more of a longshot” than others to make the staff.

So, we asked, what southpaw short relievers will the Angels have?

Well, Rader said, he was getting good reports on a kid fresh out of Class A ball who had looked good in winter ball, a kid with a handle right out of “Bull Durham,” name of Collin Charland.

Otherwise, the manager said, “Chuck Finley looks like about it right now.”

“Out of the bullpen?” we asked.

“Yeah,” Rader said.

“Chuck Finley?” we asked.

“Yeah,” Rader said.

We paused to think for a second, wondering if we had spent so much time following football that we had lost track of baseball entirely.

“Excuse a stupid question,” we asked, “but Finley’s a relief pitcher now?”

Now it was Rader’s turn to pause.

“Wait a second!” he said. “Holy cow, did I say Finley? I meant (Sherman) Corbett. Jeez, what am I thinking?”

Hey, Doug, don’t sweat it. These things happen. We screw up names all the time. Tom Landry has trouble pronouncing the names of his quarterbacks. Buddy Ryan calls players by their numbers. Casey Stengel called guys “Big Feller” if he couldn’t come up with the name.

Anyway, a few weeks from now, all the Angels will be right there in front of Rader, surnames stitched onto their shirts, and the boss will start attaching faces to the names. For example, he has never even had a chance yet to see Abbott pitch in person. On tape, yes, before last summer’s draft, but never up-close and personal.

“As a pitcher, from what I hear, he just gets better and better and better,” Rader said. “I have to admit that some other people I know saw him pitch this summer and didn’t like him quite as much. But I think they forget how many innings he worked in the past year or 2, how many commitments he had. Sounds to me like the kid’s survived it all in grand fashion.”

Rader hopes to say the same for himself. Back when he was managing the Texas Rangers, things, except for the weather, were not so hot. The Rangers didn’t win, and Rader rode them hard. The more they lost, the harder he rode.

“I’d sure like to believe that I’m a different man,” he said. “I’m not nearly the intense human being I was then. ‘Borderline self-destructive,’ is the way I’d put it.

“That’s how tight I was wound. I was so hypercritical with everybody around me. The thing was, I was pushing myself so hard, I started pushing everybody else just as hard, or even harder. It was a miserable experience for all concerned. I just got buried alive there. Thank goodness I’ve had a chance to stop and re-evaluate what I was doing. I don’t think I’ll put myself through that sort of thing twice.”

Adopting a laid-back attitude to survive in Southern California, then?

“No, I don’t think I could ever be what you’d call laid-back,” Rader said.

Well, at least the newly mellow manager can report to his first staff meetings in early February knowing that the Angels have filled some of their needs. They lost catcher Bob Boone, but brought in Lance Parrish and Bill Schroeder. They needed pitching, and picked up Bert Blyleven. They needed an outfielder, and up popped Claudell Washington. New general, new soldiers.

Nobody liked losing Boone, but Parrish is not exactly chopped liver. Angel pitchers and customers alike will miss Boone only if his successor doesn’t succeed.

“Baseball players are funny,” Rader said. “Their memories are about 10 seconds long. I know, because that’s about how long my memory used to be.”

Performance, injuries, lack of depth, all these things concern a manager--particularly a new manager, eager to prove himself. Doug Rader has his work cut out for him, if he is to turn the Angels into champions.

The man is candid, anyway. Knowing that he now has an outfield of Washington, Devon White and Chili Davis, we mentioned that these guys would have to show their manager in spring training that they deserved to start, that they couldn’t coast.

“To be perfectly honest with you, if they wanted to, they could,” Rader said. “The jobs are theirs. They could coast in spring training and the jobs would still be theirs, because of what they’ve done before. But it sure would be discouraging for them to not have a professional attitude about their work.”

A person has to take his work seriously. Doug Rader definitely is taking his new job seriously. It’s just that he hasn’t gotten to know everybody yet. He’s in training and it isn’t even spring.

“Hey, sorry about the Finley thing,” he said, just before hanging up the phone. “I must be losin’ it.”