There’s Smoke, but Will There Be Fire?

Managing the Angels can be a stressful occupation on occasion. The occasions when it is not stressful occur in the dead of winter. So any time the Angels’ front office is interviewing for a new manager, one question asked of the candidate is, “Do you smoke?”

If the answer is no, the next question is, “Can you learn?”

I don’t know exactly why, but if you’re facing a firing squad or a season as skipper of the American League fleet’s jinx ship, a cigarette seems to be the right tool to help you cope. Not that I recommend smoking, but it can’t be any worse for your health than facing a firing squad or managing the Angels.

Gene Mauch could smoke. The man was a human smudge pot. Behind buses and forest fires, Gene Mauch was Orange County’s third-leading cause of smog.

The new guy, Doug Rader, can smoke, and does. Unlike in his previous managerial job, however, Rader has managed to confine his smoking to times when he has a cigarette handy.

Rader, so far, is the managerial story of the season, with all due respect to Frank Robinson. The Angels have the best record in baseball and Rader, who was excused from his last job after picking up a reputation as a blowtop bad guy who also couldn’t manage too well, is the leading candidate for Genius of the Year.

Notice I didn’t say he earned that bad-guy reputation. Heck no. He talked all spring about the mistakes he made as Texas Ranger manager. But Sunday morning, when I mentioned something, casually, about the old Doug Rader, the current Doug Rader bristled.

“(Incidents) happened two or three times and I’m branded for the rest of my life,” Rader bristled. “The era of self-flagellation should cease. It’s been documented. There were two or three occurrences (problems in Texas), and they were not necessarily fair.”

OK. Case closed. End of era.

As the era passes, however, I would like to quickly express my admiration for a baseball manager who can use the term self-flagellation in proper context.

Now let’s change the subject. So, Doug, what about the relaxed atmosphere in the Angels’ clubhouse we’ve all been hearing about?

“I don’t think I should be given credit for that,” Rader said, bristling anew. Or is that re-bristling? “We’ve got guys like (Bert) Blyleven, (Bill) Schroeder, Claudell (Washington), people who have brought with them a lot of positive, intangible things.”

The fact that I seemed to catch Rader in a grumpy mood was actually refreshing. I was getting worried. Anyone who can be as relentlessly upbeat as Rader has been this season has either experienced a religious conversion or a lobotomy, or is about to embark on a major crime spree.

Most baseball managers express mild grumpiness by screaming, throwing food and cursing like the little girl in the Exorcist. The fact that Rader, the alleged hothead, has gone through half a season without erupting, is a tribute to a man who is fighting and winning a battle to control his emotions and channel them into something more constructive than clogging the microphone of a radio reporter with shards of barbecued chicken.

The word this season is that you can’t ruffle the Rooster.

Sprain an ankle in spring training playing basketball? No problem. Guys will be guys. Hurry back.

Miss a team flight? Hey, it happens, thanks for scrambling to catch up with us.

Boot an easy grounder, miss a sign, get lost on the freeway and show up late for work, miss a cutoff man? Let’s talk this over, kid. Privately.

I swear, Rader has yet to publicly utter one faintly negative word about any member of his team, or the team as a whole.

When Rader heard that George Steinbrenner said you have to light a fire under a ballplayer by ripping him in public, Rader commented, “Trust me on this, George, you’re wrong.”

Rader won’t take credit for the relaxed atmosphere of the Angels’ clubhouse, but the players swear he’s the cause of it. He sits in on the kangaroo court, and he encourages and revels in the pranks of Blyleven and his band of merry hotfooters.

When the Angels lost seven in a row in June, Rader kept his cool. He did seethe quietly a time or two, but never erupted. You get the feeling that this is a man who has developed an enlightened philosophy of managing and is trying hard to apply it.

“Those closest to the wondrous goings-on,” one national magazine writer wrote, “including the players themselves, insist that the (players) have gone from sad sacks to contenders on the wings of Rader’s own vital personality and his skillful manipulation of the personalities around him.”

Unfortunately, those words were written six years ago, during Rader’s honeymoon as Ranger manager.

A cheap shot, digging out that old quote? Maybe, but I think Rader would agree with the point, that as smooth as the first three months have been, he and the Angels still have much to prove between now and October, that he and they can avoid the pitfalls of the past by applying the lessons of history.

Besides, that cheap shot was three paragraphs ago, and my era of self-flagellation is over, too.