WHERE ARE THEY NOW: JIM GATTIS : He Took Intensity to a Different Level : Baseball: With financial independence came a mellowing. Now it’s not quite life or death.

The wheels of Jim Gattis have seen plenty of miles. Grab an atlas, pick a page and Gattis has been there as a ballplayer or coach.

Wherever rubber meets the road, Gattis has been there: California, New York, Florida, Alaska, Canada. Lately, though, it’s been one blowout after another.

Just the other day, Gattis bought two new tires for his Jeep, then blew a tire. He replaced it, then blew out the replacement.

“I think I ran over an elk horn or something this time,” Gattis said.

That’s entirely possible, because Gattis, 41, is the baseball coach at the University of Wyoming. He is no deer in the headlights, though, frozen in place and waiting for something to happen. As usual, Gattis is making something happen.

During his career as manager or head coach in the minor leagues and college, Gattis has won four pennants in three different leagues. Then again, a manager in the low minors could win every game and few would ever know.

Not with Gattis, though. Not since 1984, a year after noted baseball author Roger Kahn bought the Class A Utica Blue Sox of the New York-Penn League, the team Gattis managed. Kahn detailed the frenetic 1983 season in a bestseller called “Good Enough to Dream.”

Colorful? Gattis was paisley. A graduate of North Hollywood High and a former first-round draft choice, Gattis hated the book for years. Made him look like a lunatic, he said. Kahn embellished too many facts and incidents, he told his friends.

Actually, Gattis called it a pile of you-know-what.

Years rolled by before Gattis again picked up the book. A lightning bolt called perspective struck him.

“I thought I got a raw deal,” he said. “But I read it again a couple of years ago. You know what? It’s more accurate than I cared to admit at the time.”

Gattis has softened, to be sure. College players aren’t paid professionals, after all. Many actually play for, ahem, fun.

*

“For some of these guys, baseball’s not life or death,” Gattis said.

“Now listen up, everybody,” Gattis said.

He was a powerful 6-footer, 31 years old, with straw hair and a remarkably mobile face. He had firm, even features and a lantern jaw and sometimes under his straw-colored hair the manager, Jim Gattis, looked like a movie version of a grown-up Huckleberry Finn.

Sometimes, when his blue eyes raged and his mouth set and his jaw jutted, Jim Gattis was a sadistic drill sergeant. He looked at his charges with equal measures of hatred and contempt.

“Baseball,” he would say, “is not like life. It IS life. The games are a three-hour lesson in life every day.”. . .

The young players were startled by Gattis’ eruptions . . . certain players would wonder if Gattis’ single-mindedness did not exceed the bounds of reason, and perhaps, sanity.

--Roger Kahn

Good Enough to Dream--1984

*

Gattis learned to battle, scratch and claw when he was young. His parents died before he turned 15. His brother, Rick, 10 years his senior, became his guardian while Gattis grew up in North Hollywood.

“My parents being deceased is probably why I really, really got into sports,” Gattis said.

Hardship as a kid taught him to appreciate the value of a buck, too. After years of grinding out a living as a minor-league coach while trying to support a family, Gattis has spent the past three years building his own little business empire.

“I’m currently a rich bastard,” he said. “I was once a highly debted bastard. That I’m still a bastard is the constant.”

*

“One year I found out that Volvos weren’t selling around Tucson, (where I lived),” Gattis said. “Not at all. But out here in Beverly Hills, the Volvo is a hot car for people who can’t afford a Mercedes.

“So I borrowed some money from a friend and bought a Volvo in Tucson for $8,000. Then I drove it here and sold it for $11,000. I must have done that with six or seven cars.”

--R.K.

*

Gattis’ chain of espresso coffee shops in Orange County--five of them, to be precise--is so successful, he doesn’t need to coach. At least, there’s no financial need.

“I have no desire to be a famous baseball coach,” he said. “This is just about baseball.”

When Gattis took over the Wyoming program in January 1993--just a few weeks before the season began--it didn’t much resemble a baseball team at all.

Gattis had never managed a team that finished lower than third in his eight years of pro ball. Though the Cowboys jumped to a surprisingly fast start, Gattis was acutely aware that reality would eventually set in.

Wyoming traveled to Cal State Northridge in the spring of ‘93, surrendered 44 runs and was swept in a three-game series. Gattis’ eldest son, Luke, watched from the stands and wasn’t getting much positive feedback from Valley-area fans, some of whom remembered his dad.

Afterward, son approached father and issued a Luke-warm review.

“Dad, there were some guys talking in the stands,” said Luke, now 15. “They said, ‘That Gattis guy used to be a good coach. I wonder what happened. I guess he’s no good anymore.’ ”

While trying to keep a straight face, the coach said: “Geez, give your old man a chance.”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Luke said. “I think they might be right.”

Wrong. The Cowboys finished 19-31 in Gattis’ first year, but it didn’t take long for him to work his mercurial magic. Last spring, Wyoming turned heads across the nation by giving heavily favored Brigham Young all it could handle in a battle for the Western Athletic Conference East Division title.

In fact, had Wyoming swept a doubleheader from BYU on the final day of the ’94 season, the Cowboys would have won the division title.

Gattis didn’t walk away empty-handed, though. He was named the division coach of the year for a team on which seven starters played out of position.

Wyoming improved to 32-23, which made Gattis a man of considerable stature in a state with 500,000 residents and one major university.

“I was infamous last year and famous this year,” he said.

It’s a toss-up as to which he was in the minors--probably a little of both.

Gattis couldn’t turn off the emotional spigot. He took each game home, ruminated on the day’s successes and failures, and let it eat away at him. He started as a minor league manager at age 28 in Victoria, Canada, soon after his minor-league playing career sputtered to an end.

“I had pretty good instincts for the game,” he said. “It was on-the-job training. I admit that I had a burning desire to win.

“I was reasonably well-prepared. Not necessarily emotionally.”

*

He had the managerial tools. Good head for strategy. Strong instructional capabilities. English major with an ability to communicate. A steel-trap memory for the names and tendencies of the opposition. A cool head at all times. Well, maybe not the latter.

“I was a very poor loser,” he said. “That can be helpful, that can be detrimental.”

The Blue Sox coach, after a defeat, was sometimes blue in the face.

“Tomorrow had a lot of yesterday in it,” Gattis said. “Things would eat me up. Things would terrorize me.”

*

The year before (in 1982), Gattis had gone wild on at least two occasions when he felt the umpires were weighting their decisions against the Blue Sox. After a fiery protest got him nowhere one night, he uprooted second base, walked out to right field and scaled the bag over the wall.

On another protest, he walked to second base, took off his spikes and pretended they were hand grenades. Biting off an imaginary firing pin, he hurled the spikes in the general direction of the umpires. . . . The fierce Utica grenade thrower was given a week of enforced rest.

--R.K.

*

Perhaps Gattis’ playing career affected his temperament. He once had the professional game in the palm of his hand, but it slipped away.

As a senior at North Hollywood High in 1970, Gattis was a standout quarterback and third baseman. He was cut from the football team as a freshman at Nevada Las Vegas, however, and came home to play baseball in the spring of ’72 at Valley College.

Before long, scouts remembered the name. In fact, he was atop the talent list. The Atlanta Braves selected Gattis in the first round of the June amateur draft in ’72. The Braves dangled dollars in his face. He said no thanks.

“I have some regrets,” Gattis said. “Since both of my brothers had gone to college, they wanted me to go to college too. I could have taken the money. Then, who knows what happens?”

What did happen, in fact, was horrific. While playing for UC Santa Barbara in the spring of 1973, Gattis was beaned in the cheek, near the eye socket.

A surgeon painstakingly pieced his cheekbone together, with the help of some wires and hardware. Teammates called him Plate Head for years, though Hard Head also would have applied.

“I was not a pretty picture at the time,” said Gattis, who was sidelined for six weeks.

Black and blue became his least-favorite colors. His senior year was marked by a series of nagging injuries. By the time June rolled around again, scouts decided that he hadn’t improved much since his days at Valley. Gattis, who graduated with an English degree, was not drafted.

Gattis signed with an independent team with no big-league affiliation, not unlike the club he would later manage at Utica. The fiery third baseman played well--he was named the most valuable player of the Northwest League in 1978--but not well enough to catch on with a big-league organization. He retired in 1979 and was offered the managerial position with Victoria a year later.

“It was real easy to say yes,” Gattis said.

Gattis’ first three minor league teams finished second in their respective leagues. Gattis insists his teams had the talent to finish first.

“I had ‘em wrapped too tight,” he said. “They were too intense. I was too intense.”

*

One still, hot August afternoon, I heard my name called with great urgency. It was Gattis, who said he was worried because the team was unresponsive to his latest assortment of fight speeches.

“I’m gonna do something now that will set fire to this team’s butt,” Gattis said. “I’m gonna activate myself as a player. I may not run well anymore, but I still know how to hit.”

“With intensity,” I said.

“I’m not kidding. I want to get in this pennant race with my bat,” Gattis said.

Before the season ended, Gattis inserted himself into the lineup five times. He did not hit safely once. I remember thinking that intensity alone was not enough.

Then I resolved to give the word “intensity” a good long rest over the winter.

--R.K.

*

Gattis was demonstrative, Gattis was demanding, Gattis was occasionally demented. Of course, Gattis also won.

In 1987, while managing the North Pole Nicks, a team composed of college hotshots in the Alaska Summer League, Gattis decided he didn’t like the overall effort during a loss to the Fairbanks Goldpanners.

Scott Cline, now the baseball coach at Camarillo High, batted cleanup for the Nicks, a team that included Eric Karros of the Dodgers and Luis Gonzalez of the Houston Astros. At the time, Karros and Cline were teammates at UCLA, playing under mild-mannered Coach Gary Adams.

When Karros and Cline learned they would be playing in the summer for Gattis, they spent an evening vigorously leafing through Kahn’s book, reading passages aloud and wondering what they’d gotten themselves into.

There, in vivid detail, was the story of Roger Kahn and his coach, Genghis Khan.

“We’d heard a lot of stories,” Cline said, laughing. “Gary is more low-key. It was like going from night to day.”

After the loss to Fairbanks, it was midnight when the bus arrived at North Pole and players were anxious to catch some shut-eye. Not so fast, said Gattis, who called a practice.

The burg of North Pole is located near the Arctic Circle, land of the midnight sun. Bad news for the players: Gattis’ practice didn’t end until 4 a.m.

“I think we spent most of the four hours running around the bases,” Cline said. “He was demanding, a perfectionist, but his way worked.

“I learned more about baseball than I had in a long time. We learned about growing up, too.”

So did the coach, eventually. After coaching at Miami of the Florida State League, Gattis served as an assistant at Pepperdine from 1985 to 1988. A wife and three kids kept his feet better planted on terra firma, too.

Dave Taylor has run across Gattis at three different stages of the coach’s career. Taylor, a 1982 graduate of Rio Mesa High, played for Gattis at Salt Lake City in 1986, then served as an assistant under Gattis in Miami three years later.

Taylor, a former head coach at Oxnard College, is now an assistant at Wyoming and can testify that change has indeed been effected.

“He has definitely mellowed,” said Taylor, 30. “I think he communicates better with players now. At a lower volume.

“There’s still a little Bobby Knight in him, though.”

*

Like a souped-up engine with plenty of miles on it, Gattis maintains that his high-compression days are over. Evidence supports the claim.

In fact, a different team directed by Gattis was roughed up this week and the coach didn’t utter a word. It was the season finale and Gattis’ crew finished eighth in a 12-team league.

“This one won’t go on my resume,” he said.

When the game ended, Gattis didn’t rant or rave. Heck, he took the team out for ice cream, whereupon his small army of Little Leaguers aged 7-9 mobbed him like he was Santa Claus.

Believe it. Gattis was hitting fungoes to the very same pee-wees a few weeks back when he noticed something curious. The ball went one way, the players another. Gattis spoke to his youngsters, carefully choosing his words.

“Uh, you know, you can’t catch a ball if you keep running in the other direction,” Gattis said, making a point to be upbeat and constructive.

Blank stares all around. Finally, from under the bill of an oversized ball cap, a kid piped up: “Yeah, but if I wait until it stops rolling, it can’t hurt me.”

Gung-ho Gattis was speechless, believed to be a career first. What the heck could he say? After all, it was only baseball, not an all-or-nothing proposition.

Message received.

“I accepted it as being absolutely right,” Gattis said with a laugh, “and we moved on from there.”

The Jim Gattis File

Jim Gattis’ career as a manager and coach:

Year Club League/Class W-L Finish 1980 Victoria Northwest/A 42-28 Second 1981 Utica NY-Penn/A 41-31 Second 1982 Utica NY-Penn/A 41-31 Second 1983 Utica NY-Penn/A 50-28 First* 1985 Salt Lake City Pioneer/R 46-21 First* 1986 Salt Lake City Pioneer/R 47-20 First* 1987 North Pole Alaska/Summer 32-13 First* 1989 Miami Florida State/A 29-36 Third 1993 Wyoming Western Athletic 19-31 Fourth 1994 Wyoming Western Athletic 32-23 Second

Minor league totals: 328-208 (.612)

College totals: 51-54 (.486)

*--Won overall league title

Other experience: Pepperdine assistant 1985-88; Arizona graduate assistant 1978.