The Good Humor Man : Twins’ Kelly Believes That a Happy Team Will Succeed--and Create an Atmosphere That Helps Attract Free Agents

The harsh Minnesota winter whitens the landscape, but it is always baseball season in Tom Kelly’s Metrodome office.

There is always a pitcher whose breaking stuff needs work, a hitter whose swing he wants to study and streamline next spring, a situation he wants to replay and remember. Those things draw the Twins’ manager to the Metrodome almost every day during the off-season to watch videotapes and glean a nugget of knowledge he might not use until August, if at all.

“I don’t have another job. My wife throws me out of the house,” Kelly joked. “I sneak down there. I don’t spend all day. I look at tapes of certain games to try and figure things out. . . . You never know. You do a few things when you get the chance, and it can only help, not hurt.”

Paying attention to seemingly trivial details has helped Kelly transform the Twins from the American League’s worst team in 1990 to its best this season, a team that stands two victories from its second World Series championship in five years.

Although fond of saying he is not smart enough to analyze every angle, Kelly is smart enough to know how much slack to give his players and how much responsibility they need to feel needed.

He was smart enough to grab the chance offered him by Minnesota as he neared the end of an undistinguished career as a minor league outfielder and became a manager, rising through the farm system until he became the Twins’ manager late in the 1986 season.

He was also smart enough to succeed quickly, turning a team that finished sixth in 1986 into a pennant winner and World Series champion the next year, when he was 37.

“I always wanted to play in the big leagues,” he said. “Some people thought I could manage, and I thought if I could help some people out, help them be better players, it would be fun. If it didn’t work out, I’d try something else.”

What that would be, he can’t imagine. Nor can his players.

“This is his life,” said first baseman Kent Hrbek, like Kelly, a native Minnesotan.

With few exceptions, the Twins unabashedly admire the man they call TK.

“I’d define him by saying if there’s something going on in the clubhouse that you don’t want the manager to see and he walks in, you don’t stop,” Hrbek said. “He might even be instigating. He likes to instigate, to get things going. And he loves the game itself.”

Kelly supports his rookies and defers to the veterans, calling Hrbek and center fielder Kirby Puckett “the building blocks.”

He urged General Manager Andy MacPhail to bring up second baseman Chuck Knoblauch last season but was frustrated when MacPhail insisted on keeping Knoblauch in the minor leagues.

Knoblauch has become a prime candidate for rookie of the year.

“This is a dream,” Knoblauch said when the Twins defeated the Toronto Blue Jays for the American League pennant. “But there was lots of hard work behind it and for that, you’ve got to give credit to TK. He seems to make all the right moves.”

Kelly’s understanding of his pitchers’ abilities has won him raves.

“I can’t say enough about how pleased I’ve been with how I’ve been used and I can say the same for the whole bullpen,” said closer Rick Aguilera, the leader of a bullpen that hasn’t given up an earned run in 21 1/3 innings of postseason play.

“He’s great about getting guys their innings in and keeping them effective. It’s rare to see a manager able to communicate so well with the pitching staff. . . . TK has a knack of keeping everybody happy and everybody knows their role, pitcher or (everyday) player.”

Almost everyone, anyway.

His relationship with catcher Brian Harper has been strained by his criticism of Harper’s defensive abilities, criticism that Harper declines to discuss.

Twenty-game winner Scott Erickson, who will start against the Braves tonight, disagreed with Kelly’s statement that Erickson wasn’t pitching as well as he had in the first half of the season. But Erickson didn’t make an issue of it when Kelly unexpectedly took him out of Game 3 of the playoffs with the Twins trailing, 2-1, a runner on first and a 1-and-2 count on the Blue Jays’ Joe Carter.

Erickson couldn’t argue with the results, not when David West struck out Carter, Kelly Gruber and Candy Maldonado to retire the side and keep the Twins in a game they eventually won, 3-2.

But Kelly has, on more than one occasion, argued with reporters whose questions he perceived to be second guessing. At MacPhail’s urging, he was coached on dealing with media representatives by former broadcaster Andrea Kirby, and he is less contentious and more able to enjoy himself than he was in 1987.

At least in part, his enjoyment stems from feeling more secure than in his first Seriesgo-round.

“Any time you go into something new, you want to take a step back and look. You don’t want to jump in,” he said. “You’re always learning. It’s helped me and helped the coaches.

“I tried to be a little bit more businesslike in ‘87, not knowing what to expect. Most of them had never gone through it and I was concerned with keeping them under control. I know how to handle it better. You can be loose and relaxed. I’m not worried about Hrbek and Puckett. I’m worried about guys like Knobby (Knoblauch). Knobby would be jumping up and down a little bit but I’d look at him and kind of say, ‘Calm down.’ And he knew. . . .

“I don’t know if I do anything special. I have an abundance of good players.”

Some of them became good because of Kelly’s guidance.

“He’s not much different from Billy Martin or Lou Piniella,” said Mike Pagliarulo, who platoons at third base with Scott Leius. “He’s a fundamental guy, a teacher. When you play for him, you learn to be a better ballplayer.

“If you make a mistake on the field, he’ll tell you about it in the dugout and it won’t be in the papers the next day,” said Pagliarulo, who was in a slump so deep in 1985 that Martin embarrassed him by ordering him to hit right-handed.

“It’s constructive criticism. . . . That’s one of the reasons we finished in first place.”

Besides being a teacher, Kelly sees himself as a salesman for the club to attract quality free agents. He made three notable sales last winter, getting Pagliarulo, pitcher Jack Morris, who was 18-12 and has won three postseason games, and Chili Davis, who led the Twins with 29 home runs and 93 runs batted in. Dave Righetti, however, was a no-sale, signing instead with the San Francisco Giants.

“Years ago, pitchers didn’t want to pitch in (the Metrodome), now they do,” Kelly said. “And the better I can represent the ballclub, the more chance we’re going to have for people to come in here. We got some people to sign with us and a couple of years ago we couldn’t do that. . . .

“You want to make this an attractive place to play. Everybody has a budget to work under.If it’s feasible to get the guy, we want him to come because it’s a good place to play. I never beg anybody.”

It’s the only place Kelly can picture himself managing. New York? His aw-shucks personality would be fodder for the tabloids. Chicago? Too far from home. Besides, he recently was given a two-year contract extension.

“I’m real happy here,” he said. “Mr. MacPhail and Mr. (Carl) Pohlad (the Twins’ owner) have treated me great. I’ve been a Minnesota Twin since 1971. I never had another uniform on except for one year in Rochester, and that was still the Twins. I’ve been here a long time.

“I’ve made my home here, my son goes to school here. I don’t ever think about what it would be like to manage somewhere else. Always, that day is going to come when you have to move on, but I think about what I have to get done now. . . .

“There are days when I’ve been disappointed and a little discouraged, but never to the point where I’d say I don’t want to do this anymore. In life in general, you have bad days.

“Look at Steve Palermo (the umpire partially paralyzed by a mugger’s bullet). That puts it in perspective. It’s not so bad when you get the stuffing knocked out of you.”