Zimmer, Craig Are No Old-Boy Network

Before terms such as “old-boy networks” became cynical labels, before “friends hiring friends” became acts of heresy, there were Jim Frey and Don Zimmer and Roger Craig.

Frey and Zimmer were high school buddies and probably two of the tiniest basketball guards ever to emerge from the Queen City of Cincinnati.

Craig and Zimmer have been buddies ever since Craig joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as a lanky right-hander and became teammates with a fireplug of a third baseman nicknamed “Zim.”

Their paths crossed time and again, their way lighted by friendship and loyalty, unimpeded by an era that dictates that baseball should somehow find something sinister about close associations.

The paths of Frey, Zimmer and Craig meet again Wednesday night, when Zimmer’s and Frey’s Chicago Cubs play host to Craig’s San Francisco Giants at Wrigley Field in the first game of the National League Championship Series.

And suddenly, it’s fashionable to talk about how close the trio is, how well they have worked or do work together. Frey, the Cubs’ general manager, and Zimmer, his manager, worked to build the baseball team, then maneuver it to the top of the National League East. Zimmer and Craig have not only worked together as teammates for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers and the ’62 Mets, but for each other as manager and coach.

It always should have been all right that these men who played together wanted to work together. But it was not the case, at least for Zimmer and Frey in an era of heightened sensitivity regarding equal opportunity.

Zimmer and Frey did nothing to bar minorities, but the perception was that relationships such as theirs blocked minorities because avenues into baseball were clogged by guys heading into a system that was reserved for whites.

So former black players, such as Frank Robinson, Willie Stargell and Henry Aaron, took swipes at that “old boy network.” But it should be noted that that trio and other minorities never rejected the concept of “friends hiring friends,” basically because there is a difference.

The definition of the “old boy network” has always had a negative connotation, because cronyism based on skin color, religion or sex is seen as condoning and institutionalizing incompetence.

“Friends hiring friends,” on the other hand, seems to have a more liberal interpretation, or at least an interpretation liberals can accept. That interpretation holds that it is OK for friends to hire friends, as long as competence is considered and as long as everyone has equal opportunity at becoming the “friend” hiring the friend.

So when the late Bart Giamatti hired his close friend, Fay Vincent, as deputy commissioner, no one questioned Vincent’s competence. No one questioned it when Robinson, the Orioles manager, hired coach Tommy McCraw, who is also black, any more than they questioned his hiring of another longtime buddy, Johnny Oates, who is white.

No one questioned Zimmer when he retained Craig as pitching coach in San Diego after he succeeded Preston Gomez as manager 11 games into the 1972 season. Nor, conversely, was Craig questioned when he hired Zimmer as a coach in San Francisco in 1987. Theirs is a relationship based on mutual admiration, not only as people but as baseball men.

“He’s the only third-base coach I’d ever ask for his opinion during games,” said Craig, who worked out a set of two-way signals so he and Zimmer could still communicate while the manager was in the dugout and Zimmer in the third-base box. “He’s one of the most intelligent guys I ever met,” Craig said.

Zimmer speaks just as highly about Craig’s skills -- even though Zimmer once fired his friend. Ironically, that did have everything to do with friendship. Zimmer had promised that if and when he was in position to hire a coaching staff he would bring a one-time Dodgers teammate with him. But it was Johnny Podres, not Craig. Zimmer was in that position at the end of the 1972 season. As Zimmer told Craig he had to fulfill his promise to Podres, Zimmer broke down in tears, saying he never realized just how good a pitching coach Craig was.

Zimmer believed in Craig so strongly that when he moved on to Boston and became manager, he tried to take Craig with him, but was denied permission by the Padres. Both men made stops in different cities before reuniting in San Francisco. They stayed together until Frey, a former Cubs manager, returned to Chicago as general manager and asked Zimmer -- his one-time coach -- to become Cubs manager. After another tearful conversation with Craig, Zimmer accepted.

Funny thing is that a lot of people who felt that the bond between Craig and Zimmer was fine, could not accept the one that brought Frey and Zimmer back together, not in light of the acute embarrassment caused just months before by Al Campanis. Campanis, then the Dodgers’ general manager, told a national television audience that blacks lacked the “necessities” to hold management positions.

Campanis’ remark forced the game to take a serious look at its hiring practices. When it did, no one’s hiring was more closely scrutinized and condemned than Zimmer’s. “People were saying, ‘no wonder, they’re high school buddies,’ ” Zimmer recalled. “That wore on me a while.”

But both Zimmer and Frey refused to act as if a crime had been committed. They stuck by each other and, because they did, Zimmer is favored to be named manager of the year. And Frey may well be the executive of the year. Not just because he traded for Mitch Williams and Mike Bielecki, but because he spotted something special in Zimmer many, many years ago and simply refused to forget.