Next Move Will Reveal a Lot About Harrelson

Gil Hodges didn’t have to squeeze the earbrows off his players because they knew he could have. Bud Harrelson cannot, and his players know that, too. He’s not going to establish his control of this team by frightening players.

In the calm that followed the shove, some players said Harrelson had helped his situation by showing for the first time he has a temper. A nice thought -- to be filed with other meaningless expressions like wakeup call and jump start. The manager poking his finger or shoving his hand into the chest of his wayward pitcher will be a demonstration of either loss of control or gain of control only by what he does next.

Harrelson has to grasp leadership of this team with bearing, not with shoving. Or, as one player put it, “Was Hodges like that?”

Well, what Hodges did was walk all the way from the dugout to left field to the pace of muffled drums to escort balky Cleon Jones, only leading the league in hitting at the time, off the field in the most significant single event of the great season. Jones never raised a word of protest. But more about that later.

On the day he took over the team, Harrelson drew the connection with Hodges. The office is a tribute to him. Harrelson can’t try to be Hodges, but there were characteristics that apply.

Hodges didn’t have physical confrontations with players partly because he was such a physical presence, but mostly because he knew better ways to deal with conflict. He left no misconception that whatever input he took from his coaches, he was in charge. He remains the best manager the Mets have ever had -- Davey Johnson notwithstanding.

“Things on the club never would have deteriorated to the point it has,” said Ed Charles, who played third base on the team with which Hodges turned 1969 upside down. And things on this team have deteriorated to this point because of a combination of failings by the manager and the front office that comes before him. “First of all,” Charles said, “Gil never swept anything under the rug.” Hodges would have known that if Gregg Jefferies’ play was being obstructed by the taunting of selfish veterans, it had to be dealt with, not bypassed as Harrelson did.

Hodges was not going to be manager of a team that dictated he start novice Julio Valera in the heat of the September race. That was established very early. So was the end to the shuttling of players. Hodges wanted stability and would not shuttle young players between shortstop and third base, or second base and third base. If that was imposed by the front office, Hodges would not have held still for it. He had too much personal stature.

He would have told David Cone right there in the dugout in front of his teammates that he was being a baby and that the manager would not tolerate disrespect for him or any of his coaches. So there was none. He would have singed Mark Carreon’s ears in full view for getting himself thrown out for arguing a strike call when there was no other outfielder on the bench.

“If he thought the magnitude of the violation had an effect on the whole team, Gil did it in front of the team,” said Tug McGraw, who was a young pitcher who wore emotions like Cone does. “If Gil thought it was an individual thing, he’d do it man to man. If he thought the player had the wisdom to think about it on his own, he would let the player come in on his own to talk about it.”

Of course, Hodges had learned to manage before he got to the Mets. The first flaw in this case is that Frank Cashen’s front office thought Harrelson was ready with only marginal managing experience at little Little Falls and part of a season at Columbia, S.C. It’s different. It’s revealing that people who played beside Harrelson, like Charles and McGraw, and newspeople who knew Harrelson as a player feel much more positive about him than newcomers do. He was witty and insightful and a big part of what Hodges put together. That team had veterans willing to impart what they had learned to younger players. Can you imagine Ron Darling or Kevin McReynolds offering a guiding hand to Jefferies?

When McGraw fixated on a tricky play with an inexperienced, backup shortstop with the bases loaded, Hodges went to the mound and told McGraw, “‘If I wasn’t able to establish priorities I didn’t belong in the big leagues.”’ Hodges and coach Rube Walker talked to McGraw for a long time in private after the game. When Jim McAndrew failed to cover first base in an early inning, Hodges tiptoed on his way to the mound, put his hand out for the ball and McAndrew was out of the game. Harrelson should have done the same to Cone.

And then there was the Incident in Left Field when Jones, batting .353 on Aug. 25, casually ran down a ball during the Astros’ 10-run second inning and floated his throw back to the infield. Hodges stood up in the dugout and began that tiptoeing walk, deliberately stepping over the foul line. At first people thought he was going to McGraw on the mound, and then thought he was going to Harrelson at shortstop. Then Jones saw Hodges coming and looked to see if something was happening behind him.

When he got to Jones, Hodges asked, “What’s wrong?”

He knew Jones had been nursing an ankle. Hodges said, “I didn’t like the way you went after the ball.” He turned and made that slow walk in from left field with Jones behind, a tug towing a barge. He never explained himself to Jones or the media or anybody else. Hodges made his point: Nobody is above hustling, nobody is above keeping his head in the game.

That’s how Hodges was. Could these players have dealt with him? Certainly those players valued their earbrows too much to have challenged him in the dugout.