Leyva Gets Chance to Lead Phillies in ‘90s

Nick Leyva is still listed as the youngest manager in the National League, even though the last-place Philadelphia Phillies have aged him considerably this season.

The 35-year-old rookie manager will be able to afford some Grecian Formula for his gray hairs after his contract was extended for another year by General Manager Lee Thomas this week.

‘I’ve known all along in my mind that Nick Leyva would be back,” Thomas said. ‘I’ve been very pleased with the job he’s done. It was just a matter of finding the right time to announce it. We thought about doing it while we were in our 11-game losing streak, but there seemed to be so many other announcements then. This is as good a time as any to announce it.”

The occasion was a Veterans Stadium press conference to meet and greet the latest arrivals, a result of two trades made Sunday, through the revolving door to the Philadelphia clubhouse. Only the fry guys at Burger King and McDonald’s are fired and hired more often than Phillie pitchers and infielders.

In separate deals, the Phillies acquired three players from the San Francisco Giants -- pitchers Terry Mulholland and Dennis Cook and a minor league infielder -- and outfielder Lenny Dykstra and pitcher Roger McDowell from the Mets.

‘I’m excited about it,” Leyva said. ‘The organization is stepping in the right direction. Everybody here realizes our main goal is to try to win as many games as we possibly can.

‘We’ve made some major moves. We’ve changed the nucleus of our ballclub. We’ve gotten more quantity. We needed a change. It’s tough when you have to move some of your good players to make up for what some of the lesser players have done, but that’s the way baseball is. I’m really looking forward to turning this around.”

Leyva wants the role of miracle worker. He wants to be known as ‘St. Nick.” He wants to stick around because he says, ‘the best is yet come.”

So far, it’s been one heartburn after another.

During the 11-game losing streak, Leyva was asked if he kicked his dog when he went home at night.

‘I don’t have a dog,” he said. ‘But if I did, he’d be dead by now.”

Despite the injuries that decimated his pitching staff, despite the disruption of the Mike Schmidt retirement, Leyva kept his patience, sanity and sense of humor.

‘I try to be optimistic. When you come into my office I try to stay upbeat at all times even though I do have a few things burning inside. Once in a great while I do let them out. Those things will happen, but I try to stay positive and show my players that I’m positive, then they become positive,” Leyva said.

‘You have to give Nick credit for that,” Philadelphia outfielder Von Hayes said. ‘He’s been behind us all the way. We appreciate that.”

The timing of the announcement of his contract extension had Leyva pumped.

‘I feel excited. When you are a first-year manager on a one-year contract you have to feel excited about it. We are making the right moves to try and better our organization. I feel we really have and I’m glad I’ll be a part of it when we eventually do turn it around to where we want to be and get these players to where they ought to be playing.

‘I’ve made a few mistakes. That comes with the first year on the job,” Leyva said. ‘Overall, I feel I’ve done a pretty good job. We’ve gotten as much out of some players as we possibly could. We’ve had a lot of injuries. We had Mike Schmidt not playing to his potential and then eventually retiring. We’ve had a tough year. I’m glad we’ve lived through it and now that we are starting to get healthy again we can turn things around and make it respectable.

‘The new guys are all bona fide major league players. And guys like that seem to come together faster than maybe if you brought in some young rookies. They’ll take care of each other, believe me.

‘My biggest goal is to get us back to respectability. We’ve gotten a little beyond that. It seemed like we weren’t able to compete against certain clubs. Now I feel with the new arms that we have and the new people in the lineup we are a competitive ballclub.”

The question and answer session with the new arrivals was the kind of feeling out process you see on ‘The Dating Game.”

Mulholland, one of three Giants acquired Sunday for relief pitcher Steve Bedrosian, said, ‘It’s real good to be here. Growing up (in Uniontown, Pa.) I always followed the Pirates because of geographics. Philadelphia was my second favorite team and my idol, more or less, was Steve Carlton. So, being here is a really good thing.”

Center fielder Dykstra, traded from the Mets to the Phillies on Sunday along with reliever McDowell for center fielder Juan Samuel, had this to say:

‘I was expecting it. I’ve been expecting it for so long, the expectation kind of went away. Then it came back because they were struggling. The way it is in New York is that if you’re not in first place by 10 games in June, something is wrong. They had to do something. It’s something the club needed, to be honest, and they needed a right-handed hitter.

‘I knew the person to go would be me. I’m not sad about that. I helped them win a world championship. I knew I was a big part of that, but I also knew it was time to move on. In my heart, I want to know what I can do. I was tired of going to the park and looking at the lineup to see if I was in there. I’m going to prove to people what I can do. It might not happen real quick this year because I haven’t faced lefties consistently in a long time.

’... I’m not saying anything bad about the players that were traded. Juan Samuel has many offensive weapons, but the Phillies finished last with Juan Samuel. I’m not taking anything away from him. He needed a new life and a new charge, and I needed the same thing. I’m at the peak and I’m ready to bust. It’s a good situation and the people in the clubhouse sense that.”