Syd Thrift, George Steinbrenner Are An Odd Couple

The soft southern drawl oozes from Syd Thrift, like maple syrup out of a bottle, and he weaves a story that takes a turn here, twists there and eventually reaches its destination, although not without a brief stop or two along the way. See, Thrift is a baseball man from the hills of Virginia, easy and unhurried. A necktie knotted to his throat looks out of place, as Syd might say, like earrings on a hog.

In a rumpled shirt and slacks, arching his bushy black eyebrows, Thrift looks more like a character out of “Mayberry, R.F.D.” than the senior vice president charged with building the Yankees into a pennant winner. George Steinbrenner and Syd Thrift together is sort of like Redford marrying Roseanne.

This is vintage Syd: “My wife is home with a bad back. I don’t know whether to put her on the 15-day or 21-day disabled list.”

Yet, there is more to Thrift than just the chapters of boyhood stories minding the family’s general store or the comic appearance of just having stepped in from a hurricane, his hair mussed, the clothes wrinkled. He is 60, learned how to run a club from Rex Bowen, the Branch Rickey disciple, and even worked for cantankerous Charlie Finley in Oakland. He is stubborn, confident and sharp.

Given the reins to the franchise, Thrift acquired Jesse Barfield for Al Leiter. When the club needed a quick fix of power with Dave Winfield out, he quickly grabbed Steve Balboni. In three months he’s made a blockbuster trade, overhauled the middle of the lineup and tinkered with the pitching staff, all in a snap.

But Thrift says, “Was nothin’ snap about it.”

When he came aboard at the start of the season, in fact, Thrift was just another voice in the crowd, one more of the owner’s “baseball people” trying to elbow his way to the front. But with Steinbrenner stepping out of the spotlight, he quietly has emerged to grab control of the franchise without drums rolling and cymbals crashing, a fly on the wall of the clubhouse.

Tough? Thrift never lurks within sight of the players, but all the time he gives the impression of being around, spying, looking over their shoulders. See, his whole career Thrift has been talking about the need to be patient, but this isn’t like working in Kansas City or Pittsburgh.

“It’s a team, but it’s not just another team,” he said. “It’s the New York Yankees.”

Even Thrift, who can ramble on about hunting ducks, knows about the pressure of winning. After quickly chucking a failing minor-league pitching career for scouting jobs, he learned to survive cranky owners and outlast the traditionalists who laughed at his new-fangled ideas on hypnosis and physics and theories of light.

Why, after he started with the Yankees March 21 and was given the ultimatum to start winning--”marching orders,” Steinbrenner called them--Thrift went right out and made his first trade for third baseman Tom Brookens two days later. Beneath the rural slang and homespun humor, Thrift is decisive, blunt and opinionated. He went to college.

“Scoutin’s like bird-huntin’,” Thrift once said. “Some guys see the birds, maybe, couple a hundred feet away. Some guys don’t see ‘em till they’re right on top of ‘em. Some don’t see ‘em till they’re flyin’ away.”

Thrift first spotted slugger Bobby Bonilla on a U.S. all-star team traveling in Scandanavia and recommended him to the Pirates, way back in 1981. That was five years before the Pirates, dead and buried, lured Thrift back to Pittsburgh as general manager. The club finished 57-104 in 1985, the worst record in the majors, and attendance had plunged to 736,000. Quickly, Thrift hired rookie manager Jim Leyland, a stick of dynamite to ignite the team’s confidence, while clearing the clubhouse of unhappy and overpaid veterans.

In their place came Andy Van Slyke, Mike Lavalliere and Mike Dunne in a trade with St. Louis, Doug Drabek and Brian Fisher from the Yankees and Jim Gott on waivers from San Francisco. In two years, Thrift engineered 17 deals, mostly for young, unproven talent, more birds in the crosshairs of his sight.

By 1987 the Pirates were only two games under .500 and attendance had nearly doubled, but Thrift already was beginning to rub some people the wrong way. Like, he held the hammer during contract negotiations at the end of the season, and used it. He’d turned around the team and was about to be named the Dapper Dan Man of the Year, an important civic award in Pittsburgh. He was hot.

So Thrift demanded the right to approve all hirings, firings and trades. And then this happened: Club President Mac Prine refused, the contract talks stalled, the board of directors nervously sided with Thrift, Prine resigned.

With that, the Pirates truly became Thrift’s team and the public-private coalition of 13 investors that had rescued the franchise from near bankruptcy anxiously looked to him. Two days later, Thrift agreed to a two-year contract worth $400,000, winning the power he’d sought at Prine’s expense and turning the two of them into bitter enemies, as Syd might say, like a rabbit and a rifle.

Even now, Prine says: “There is just no possibility of me talking to you about him.”

Last season, the team finished 85-75 and in second place, but Thrift seemed to be everywhere, doing everything. He liked to go on about the rookies he’d discovered and he was slow to deny rumors of other job offers. More and more, he buttonholed players to give them advice.

Plus, he began to enjoy the celebrity status he’d attained. At one point, a rumor that the San Diego Padres were interested in hiring Thrift surfaced on the gossip pages and it is widely taken for granted in Pittsburgh that the source of the story was a publicity agent who has worked for Thrift. He was starting to write a book, too.

“With Syd,” Van Slyke said, “you have to give him a circumference to stay within.”

His relationship with Leyland appeared to sour, as well. Thrift was hanging around the manager’s office more often, eavesdropping on Leyland’s postgame interviews and calling frequent meetings with the coaching staff. The joke around the clubhouse was, you could always tell when Syd was around because Leyland wasn’t.

But Leyland couldn’t avoid Thrift all the time. Pitcher Jeff Robinson even accused Thrift of phoning Leyland in the dugout to second-guess strategy, and although Leyland hotly disputed the story the Pirates had enough reason to believe the relationship between the general manager and the field manager was badly strained.

Said one Pirate: “You didn’t need a Fax machine to figure that out.”

Yet, even at his worst, Thrift could grow on people. He hosted a popular radio show. He was in demand as an after-dinner speaker. He’d go to high schools and have them in stitches with his tales of his college days at tiny Randolph-Macon or his family gathering around a radio to listen to Washington Senators’ games or huntin’ quail.

A graduation? Syd can make it. Help with the curve-ball? Syd will be right over.

He always was around, looking in keyholes for players. When the Pirates needed more pitching, Thrift scoured the waiver list and took a chance on Gott, who was washed up as a starter. The Pirates sent him to the bullpen, gently guided his recovery from shoulder surgery and watched Gott blossom into a closer. Last year, he had a club-record 34 saves.

“Syd resurrected my career,” Gott said. “I’d been a mediocre pitcher. I had to do something. Syd gave me that opportunity. I enjoyed his character, his nature. He’d always have a suggestion for you, but if you didn’t like what he was saying, well, he could tick you off. See, Syd could act very much the stage father. Some people saw something negative in it, like he was trying to crowd the spotlight. I thought he was great.”

But Syd is like meringue--you like it or you don’t. He’s since complained that last year in Pittsburgh he had to deal with 13 owners, but the fact is Thrift had to report only to new club president Carl Barger. And when stories began floating around that he was going to resign, Thrift said this:

“You know, if I ever leave Pittsburgh or get fired, it would be bigger than Gretzky leaving Canada.”

When Thrift eventually was canned in October, the Pirates came off looking like Black Bart, but the breakup had been coming for a long time. Syd being Syd, there wasn’t enough room for anybody else in the front office or on the field or in the clubhouse.

“Never in my life had I met someone I couldn’t get along with,” Barger said. “And then I met Syd. He did a number of remarkable things here, but one has to be a part of the organization. He can’t be the organization. We didn’t want to fire him, and we wrestled with the decision for a long time. But in the end we had no choice. Syd has an unbelievable ego.”

Of course, Thrift landed on his feet. Steinbrenner called and Thrift was there in a New York minute and so far the egos haven’t clashed, no explosion has rocked the Bronx. Dallas Green is managing the Yankees, Thrift is running them, maybe even starting to turn the corner with them.

See, he knows baseball like chickens know eggs, as Syd might say.