Pirates’ Leyland Has Look of a Winner

Jim Leyland moved himself to a flurry of action. He turned around on the sofa and put his feet up on the arm at the other end. He put down the stub of his cigar, lit a cigarette and took a sip of coffee.

“I’m not a rah-rah guy,” he said, in case anybody failed to notice. “Those players know what they got to do, whether they win or not. I don’t see anybody not giving his best effort.”

Those players had lost eight games in a row and the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates was going to deal with this situation in essentially the same manner as he has handled others. Those things he knew had to be handled, he attacked immediately and forcefully.

The first serious losing streak of the season was not one of those things. “You don’t pick on players when you’re going through something like this,” he said. He has the best players in the National League -- clearly better hitting and defense than the New York Mets, and often better pitching. And decisively better attitude.

Leyland’s point was to see their losing streak not as having let the Mets stay alive in the race, but as a missed chance to blow whatever semblance there is of a race to smithereens.

There are more chances to push the Mets to the brink beginning Tuesday night at Shea Stadium. But he wasn’t going to focus on that with nearly two months still to play.

He is a skinny, gray-haired, mustached optimist. He told them at one of his rare and brief postgame meetings after the sixth loss, “If you’re waiting for me to panic, you’re watching the wrong guy.”

Whatever tension and anxiety he feels, he takes pains not to pass them on to the players. He thinks they have enough trouble being players, which he remembers from seven years as a marginal minor-league catcher. “I was a maniac when I played; I just wasn’t any good,” he said. “I know how hard it is to get a guy home from third base.”

How the Pirates handle winning and losing is a reflection of him. “He handles players as well as anybody I’ve ever seen -- and without a lot of bull,” said Bill Virdon, the Pirates’ minor-league instructor who knows about bull. Virdon managed four teams, including the New York Yankees, and he’s the only manager I’ve known I’d swear never lied to me.

Virdon was at the center of one of those fire-storms that tested Leyland’s stuff. Left fielder Barry Bonds came to camp in a snit because he couldn’t get a Rolls Royce in contract negotiations. One day he laid a vile load on Virdon and Leyland sprang to go face-to-face.

“I just responded,” Leyland said. “I couldn’t look away. Because there was a coach involved.”

The situation called for immediate action -- in front of Bonds’ teammates and the media rather than behind closed doors. “That would have been planned,” Leyland said about a private conference. “I saw what happened and I was (irked).”

Leyland refused to be drawn into comparison, but comparisons are inescapable. Cranky Vince Coleman of the New York Mets laid his vile load on Mike Cubbage, a coach, and Bud Harrelson chose to do nothing until pushed. The problem wasn’t going to go away by itself and apparently still hasn’t.

Players give hot foots and the like in the dugout spontaneously over the long season, but taking a Nerf football onto the bench suggests planning.

In late June, reliever Bill Landrum had frittered away a big lead and Leyland lifted him one out short of a save. Landrum threw a tantrum on the mound and Leyland let him know right there that he hadn’t thrown anything that strong in the game.

Bobby Bonilla was another of those disappointed by the shallow-pockets policy of the team. He’s free to test the market after this season but there has been no suggestion in his play that he’s eager to leave. He has been willing to shuttle between rightfield and third base from game to game and inning to inning, and even take an inning or two at first base in emergency.

“What’s impressive,” said St. Louis Cardinals Manager Joe Torre, “is that Leyland hasn’t alienated those guys.”

What Leyland has done is enable a good team to play with a good attitude and, when it has lost, not to point fingers.

Sunny Bonilla and glowering Bonds are distinct personalities. “Barry is a good guy,” Leyland said. “Guys who walk to the beat of a different drum get picked on. I don’t think that’s fair.” Later on, when Bonds was not selected to the All-Star team, Leyland made it a point to tell him, “You’re an All-Star to me.”

Recently, with Andy Van Slyke injured, Bonds a fine defensive left fielder, volunteered to play center. Leyland chose to move former outfielder Gary Redus from first base. When Redus messed up two plays that cost loss No. 8, Leyland broke the tension the next morning, teasing Redus about making friends in the St. Louis crowd. “There’s one thing about it, Gary,” the manager said. “The effort was there; that’s all I worry about.”

He makes it his business to reach every player every day, some briefly to ask, “How’s the family?” and others to stop and joke and laugh. “I don’t manage players,” he said. “I manage people.”

He doesn’t pick on players or cultivate a mood of us-against-them between players and media. “I won’t embarrass a reporter, either,” he said. When a television hairdo asked why Leyland didn’t play John Cangelosi, briefly a hot bat last season, at shortstop, Leyland patiently explained the difficulty a left-handed man has at shortstop.

Of course, there was the moment recently when Leyland directed the Pirates’ plane to land because he thought he was having a heart attack. He went through a battery of tests and was told that the problem was probably cigarettes and coffee on an empty stomach. He said he ran the stress test off the scale. “The doctor told me I had the body of a 30-year-old,” he said. “That’s good. I’m 46; my wife is 30.”

He likes to kid about their affection.

That had its test, too, when he and Katie lost what would have been their first child, stillborn. “Everything was perfect,” he said, “and on the last day there was no heartbeat.” He recites the date and the size and weight and says that’s why they’re trying not to get too excited about the child expected in November.

“We had our hearts broken,” he said. “I handled it. I didn’t say I was good at it.”