There’s a Mad Dog Running the Phillies : Baseball: Lee Thomas has come a long way from his carefree days with Angels in early ‘60s.

The franchise was young and so were they, three men given a chance by the American League’s 1961 expansion to make their mark in the major leagues.

They were Mad Dog and Frego and Buck, and the world was theirs in the early years of the Angel franchise.

Three decades later, memories of their revelry bring smiles to Lee Thomas, Jim Fregosi and Buck Rodgers. The neat suit jackets and pressed slacks they wear are merely disguises for their respective roles as general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, manager of the Phillies and manager of the Angels. The spirit of the carefree expansion Angels lives on within each man’s heart. It is a bond that still unites them.

“We were a bunch of guys who had a good time,” said Thomas, who was acquired from the New York Yankees that first May and hit 50 home runs in his first two seasons, earning All-Star recognition in 1962. “We were rookies who shouldn’t have been there yet and older guys who were hanging on.”

“It probably was the most fun I had playing. I liked Bill Rigney, who was Mr. (Gene) Autry’s manager, and it was a lot of fun.”

Thomas, who played with the Angels from 1961 through ‘64, was the last of the three friends to return to the major leagues after his playing career ended. But he has quickly risen to the ranks of baseball’s most respected executives. Named general manager of the Phillies during the 1988 season, Thomas’ trades and astute draft picks have lifted them from the dregs of the National League East.

And he has accomplished it without becoming stuffy and staid.

“If you want a guy with a yellow tie, that’s not him,” Rodgers said of his former road roommate, who gained the nickname “Mad Dog” for hurling a three-wood into a tree during a tough day on the Rio Hondo Golf Course. “He’s a baseball man. He’s a good one.”

Thomas, 55, still knows how to have a good time, although the confines of a front-office job permit him less freedom than he enjoyed in his seven seasons as an outfielder and first baseman with the Yankees, Angels, Red Sox, Braves, Cubs and Astros. Since his playing days, Thomas has seen the balance of power shift from owners to the players and their agents, which has added a new and not always pleasant dimension to a general manager’s job.

His involvement in the negotiations for free agent Bobby Bonilla--who rejected a last-minute offer by the Phillies to sign with the New York Mets for $29 million over five years--reminded Thomas how much baseball has changed since he played.

“You have people going out and blowing your own horn,” said Thomas, one of the most active traders during the recent winter baseball meetings. “Back then, only movie stars had press agents. It was probably a little more fun back then than it is now. The game didn’t center quite as much around money. We talked about it, but not as much as they do now. And the owners pretty well had an edge over the players. Now it’s the opposite.

“It’s easy to let yourself feel like you were used. We went into the Bonilla negotiations thinking he would go to the place he was most comfortable with. We were told they weren’t after the top dollar, and we didn’t think they were until the last day. And that’s no sour grapes. That’s just the way it is now. . . .

“The thing I like about the job most of all is the challenge. It’s an exciting job. It gets you a little upset at times. Face it, it’s no fun dealing with agents. But I did play and I think I have an idea of what players are thinking.”

Thomas always wanted to stay in baseball after his playing days, but the route he took to the front office was more roundabout than most.

“When I played, and toward the end of my career, I knew I wanted to stay in the game,” he said. “I really had no thought of management then. Tommy Ferguson was the traveling secretary with the Angels then and I liked that job. I did that job for five years and I liked it, but I wanted to get in more on the baseball end. I had no thoughts of being a general manager. Once I got to be a farm director and got involved in that end, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I thought I knew as much about baseball as they did.”

Others shared his belief. Whitey Herzog, a senior vice president with the Angels, was with the St. Louis Cardinals when Thomas was the club’s traveling secretary and he saw Thomas’ potential.

“I’d known him a long time and played against him,” said Herzog, who made Thomas St. Louis’ director of player development. “I knew he wanted to get into the baseball side of things, and he did an outstanding job for me.

“When Joe McDonald left, I wanted Lee Thomas to be my GM there. But Fred Kuhlman brought in Dal (Maxvill), and Lee was out in the cold. He had really been the GM there.

“I was glad to see him get the opportunity in Philadelphia. I think he’s done an outstanding job.”

Thomas started with the Phillies as the vice president for player personnel in June, 1988, and was named general manager later that season. The club he inherited was dreadful, having finished last in the league in hitting and pitching.

“It was a challenge,” Thomas said with a laugh. “If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have gotten the job.”

He has done an exemplary job by all accounts, using his shrewdness at judging talent to steal highly regarded outfielder Wes Chamberlain in a deal with the Pirates and snare infielder David Hollins in the Rule 5 draft. He has made some one-sided deals, acquiring Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell from the Mets for Juan Samuel in 1989; acquiring Dale Murphy and Tommy Greene from Atlanta for Jeff Parrett, who flopped with the Braves; and sending Steve Jeltz to Kansas City for Jose DeJesus, who was 10-9 last season.

During the baseball meetings in Miami Beach, Thomas acquired top pitching prospect Kyle Abbott and outfielder Ruben Amaro from the Angels for 33-year-old outfielder Von Hayes. He also got reliever Barry Jones from Montreal for catcher Darrin Fletcher and signed free-agent Mariano Duncan.

Thomas has managed to assemble a team that, in one respect, reminds him of the early Angels.

“We’ve got some fun-loving guys--John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra, Darren Daulton--who are not worried about money and just go out and play hard because they enjoy what they do,” Thomas said.

Each year of his tenure, the Phillies have improved a little and Thomas’ contract has been extended twice. His team finished in a tie for third in the National League East last season with a 78-84 record, 20 games behind the Pirates but with one more victory than it recorded in 1990.

“I see progress,” Thomas said. “I see a lot of things happening. If we would have gotten Bonilla, we would have accelerated our progress, but that’s the way things go. . . .

“The farm system and scouting are getting better under Del Unser and (scouting director) Jay Hankins and that’s important. . . . As a GM, you have to delegate things for people to do. The job has changed over the last 20 years. At one time, a GM had the job for 20, 25 years. Now they change GMs as much as they change managers.”

Thomas changed managers last April, firing Nick Leyva and hiring his old pal, Frego--Jim Fregosi. Their friendship not only has survived, it has flourished.

“It makes for a very nice relationship,” Fregosi said. “We respect each other’s abilities, and we have no problem about communication. He’s the boss and he has the responsibility of making the final decision. He respects my input and listens to it.”

Not that Fregosi would have listened had someone predicted that he and Thomas would occupy their current positions.

“If you’d have said 30 years ago he’d be the GM of a team and I’d be working for him as his manager, I would have told you that you were crazy,” Fregosi said. “I think he’s done a wonderful job as GM of the Phillies. Every year that he’s been there, the club has improved, number-wise. The minor league system has gone from 100-plus games under .500 to seven games over .500 last year. He’s done a great job.”

Said Rodgers: “I can’t say anything bad about him except I had to order the pizza all the time when we were roomies. At that time, he wasn’t a phone guy. Now he’s a phone guy, on the phone all the time.”