Rodgers Back Home, to Where Angels Play, Managers Die

He set an American League rookie record by catching 150 games with the Angels in 1962, their second year.

He formed a Buckeye Battery with Dean Chance and was known as the prospect from Prospect, his hometown in Ohio.

Hand injuries, an occupational hazard for catchers, cut into his effectiveness, and he eventually became the suspect from Prospect, his own label.

In defining the Buck Rodgers who returned to the Angels as their manager Monday, 30 years after they selected him in the 1961 expansion draft, this may be the most significant consideration:

He hasn’t changed as a person, but he has changed as a manager.

“He’s always been a quality guy and he’s become a quality manager,” said Bill Rigney, who isn’t surprised.

Now a senior adviser with the Oakland Athletics, Rigney was the Angels’ manager during those formative years when Rodgers shared an inquisitiveness and love for the game with teammates Lee Thomas, now general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, and Jim Fregosi, managing the Phillies after previous stints with the Angels and Chicago White Sox.

“They cared about the game,” said Rigney. “They took it to the next step. They always had questions.”

Rodgers provided answers as a major league manager during his seven years with the Montreal Expos, after being fired by the Milwaukee Brewers.

Of Rodgers’ tenure with the Expos, Detroit Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson said Monday night: “I don’t think there was a manager in baseball who did a better job in that stretch. His best players kept disappearing. It makes it a little tough.”

The Expos lost Andre Dawson, Jeff Reardon, Hubie Brooks, Bryn Smith, Mark Langston and Tim Raines, among others. They couldn’t keep a free agent or attract one.

Amid mounting defections and the emergence of a young general manager, Dave Dombrowski, who wanted to put his own man in the managerial chair and, in time, did, Rodgers compiled a 520-499 record with the Expos. He was the National League’s manager of the year in 1987, four times finished third with his patchwork team and was selected best manager in club history in a recent readers poll by Le Journal de Montreal.

He had recognized his rookie mistakes with the veteran Brewers and adapted.

“As a young manager you want to try and do it all yourself,” Rodgers said Monday.

“It was my first job and I made mistakes with the Brewers. I’ve since learned to delegate authority and give young players the chance to fail. I’m a little more laid back now.”

Harry Dalton, the Milwaukee general manager who fired Rodgers in 1982, said Monday he also thinks Rodgers became more knowledgeable in the handling of individual players, a mandatory trait now.

Rodgers, then a Brewers’ coach, took the managerial reins when the popular George Bamberger became too ill to continue late in 1980. He led the Brewers to a split season title before losing the 1981 division playoff to the New York Yankees, and was fired early in ‘82, when the late Harvey Kuenn stepped in and led Milwaukee to an American League pennant.

“The change wasn’t meant to be a negative reflection on Buck,” Dalton said. “I never felt he couldn’t manage. We had high expectations in ‘82, and I felt Buck wasn’t the right man for our cast of veteran players, though he had handled our pitching in ’81 as well as any young manager could.”

Paul Molitor, reached at the Brewers’ hotel in Seattle, said a veteran team simply didn’t respond to a young manager trying to implement a disciplinary ethic.

“On a personal level, I thought he was a great teacher who helped me a lot,” Molitor said. “And I know he did a great job in Montreal because I’ve talked to Bob McClure (a former Brewer who went on to pitch for Rodgers there) about it,”

In a game of adjustments, Rodgers remembered that “you have to bend in the wind” when it comes to dealing with players, former teammate Thomas, the Phillies’ general manager, said.

“He became more patient, and from what I saw and heard, his players loved him in Montreal,” Thomas said.

“He was one of the league’s best managers over the last few years. As a former catcher, there has never been a question about his ability to handle pitchers.”

Rodgers seems to have become a manager who can handle a game, a team and the media, with time left over, in this case, to kibbitz with the owner, something predecessor Doug Rader seldom did.

Gene Autry loves that part of it and loves his original Angels, particularly Fregosi and Rodgers.

As Rodgers said, in a figurative sense, he has come back to the place where he was born.

And to the place where 14 managers before him, in a figurative sense, have died.