Mind Over Manager : In Major League Debut as Field Boss, Boone Turns to Mauch for Help

As he crams for his major league managing debut in an abbreviated spring, getting to know his personnel while implementing his system, Bob Boone is secure in the belief that he is prepared for the assignment and doubly secure, he said, in that “it’s like being on a trapeze and having a net below me.”

He referred to the presence of Gene Mauch, 69, the renowned Little General who will serve as Boone’s bench coach and first lieutenant with the Kansas City Royals.

“It’s like a gift from heaven fell into my lap,” Boone said. “I’m a compilation of all my experiences and the people I’ve been around, but Gene has the best baseball mind of any of those people.

“I had won Gold Gloves, been on All-Star teams, managed hundreds of games from behind the plate, but it wasn’t until I went to California that I started to learn the game.

“After thinking I knew everything, Gene taught me more than I knew.”

Now 47 and having spent 19 years as a major league catcher, two as a triple-A manager in the Oakland Athletics’ system and one as Davey Johnson’s bench coach with the Cincinnati Reds last year, Boone said he is apt to run everything past Mauch--from game strategy to one-on-one talks with players.

It was while revitalizing his career with the Angels, from 1982 through 1988, that Boone and Mauch, the Angel manager in ’82 and again from 1985 through ‘87, formed a mutual admiration society--the thinking man’s catcher, a Stanford psychology graduate, and the intense and tightly wound skipper, guru of the rule book, master of the mind game.

They would often sit together in the dugout during opposition batting practice, dissecting each hitter, plotting defenses and pitch patterns.

“I was always appreciative of what Bob did for me,” Mauch said, sitting in the coach’s corner of the Royals’ clubhouse and referring to the decision to leave the green fairways of retirement in Rancho Mirage.

“You’re talking about a vulnerable 69-year-old ego being stroked by a guy I admire a lot. I was living pretty good, but this (tugging at his uniform) is where I’ve always had the most fun.”

Boone called after the Royals fired Hal McRae and selected their former catcher--Boone finished his playing career with Kansas City in 1990--over Chicago Cub coach Tony Muser.

Mauch had retired, suddenly and surprisingly, as Angel manager in the spring of ‘88, realizing, he said, that after 26 years and 3,943 games as a major league manager, the resiliency was gone. The ability to recover from the baseball vacuum in which he lived from February through October was no longer there.

“Even now, though I’m not directly responsible, I still get that awful feeling in my belly when things go wrong,” he said. “I have no desire to manage again. I know what it was doing to me. I’d be dead.”

He said he might have rejected the invitation to return, no matter who the manager was, if it hadn’t been with a Midwest team, lessening travel demands.

However, the opportunity to help Boone avoid some of the “potholes we’ve all stepped in” and establish a system emphasizing the fundamental approaches of the past, the right methods and attitudes, was paramount in his decision.

“Bob is going to be good,” Mauch said. “He’s academically brilliant and articulate. He knows how players think. He has the type credibility that automatically gets their attention and respect. He also knows it’s just as important to give them respect. Hopefully, he’ll have enough players that deserve respect.”

Boone, of course, knows the players he doesn’t have. David Cone, the American League’s Cy Young Award winner, and Brian McRae, one of the league’s premier center fielders, were traded in cost-cutting moves.

When Boone was hired on Oct. 7, he said he was warned that economics could be a factor. But the strike hit harder than the Royals anticipated, threatening survival of the franchise.

Mauch could have prepared him for that too, having gone through it with Calvin Griffith in Minnesota.

“The numbers are larger now, but I understood it then and I understand it now,” Mauch said. “We could win 90 games, the playoffs and World Series, and the Kauffman Foundation (which owns the Royals) would still lose money.”

Boone said he was attracted to the Kansas City opportunity because of the commitment to build from within and the fact he will have a voice in that.

The Royals’ farm system is considered one of baseball’s best, but it is uncertain how much immediate help he will receive as he revamps the outfield, looks for a No. 4 and No. 5 starting pitcher and, to some extent, starts to reshape the organization’s priority from speed to power as grass replaces AstroTurf at Royals Stadium this year, and the fences are moved in 10 feet.

Suggesting it is a long way between the promise he has seen in some of his young players during this shortened spring and fulfillment amid the pressure of the season, Boone said, “We have the capability to win it all, but the probability of that is unlikely.”

The strike that began on Aug. 12 curtailed a Kansas City charge last year. The Royals finished four games behind Chicago in the American League Central after another inconsistent start under McRae.

The Royals think they will be better under Boone. Sources say he received important support from club Vice President George Brett during the selection process.

Boone had come close before. He was a finalist in Houston before the Astros hired Terry Collins. He was interviewed in Seattle before the Mariners hired Lou Piniella. He was retained by an Orlando expansion group as its prospective manager in 1990, but the group failed to get a franchise. He was also offered a chance to manage in the Angels’ farm system by Gene and Jackie Autry, but it was the late ‘80s and he was still interested in playing.

Boone won seven Gold Gloves and caught 2,225 games, the major league record until Carlton Fisk caught 2,226.

And every time he went behind the plate, he was a masked manager.

“Good catchers, smart catchers, are acquiring a lot of simulated managing experience,” he said. “You have to relate to your pitchers. You have to know the most important aspect of the game, which in my opinion is to deliver the right pitch in the right spot. That’s probably the most important aspect you need as a manager, teaching that aspect of the game.”

Although he long appeared to be a manager in waiting, Boone said he wasn’t sure he wanted the control, wasn’t sure he wanted to be subjected to the abuse, the sleepless nights, the responsibility of motivating players who shouldn’t have to be motivated, until he was hired by the A’s to manage Tacoma.

In the two years there, despite long hours, numerous obligations and the absence of success, he discovered that he “loved it and found nothing more gratifying than imparting something and having a player grasp it and use it.”

There were other discoveries in the A’s organization. Boone said he had always hated Tony La Russa--”I always felt he was the one guy who knew something I didn’t know”--but it was a hate born of respect, and Boone came to understand the full measure of it, learning to admire the Oakland manager’s methods of organization, communication and sophisticated approach to offense and defense.

“It’s what we’re going to try to do here,” Boone said. “Only good players can handle it, and that’s how we’re going to try to sell it.”

Good players? The Boones have been producing them for years.

They are the only three-generation family in major league history. Bob’s father, Ray, spent 13 years in the majors and was an All-Star infielder. Bret Boone, Bob and Sue Boone’s oldest son, is a second baseman with Cincinnati, and Aaron Boone, Bret’s brother, is a third baseman with the Reds’ double-A farm club in Chattanooga. Matt Boone, 15, is a sophomore second baseman at Villa Park High in Orange County.

It may be in the genes, but Boone hopes some of it rubs off on the Royals.

There are bound to be disappointments, however, and Mauch can prepare him for those too, having experienced some of the most bitter.

His is a career that will always carry the star-crossed memory of the Philadelphia Phillies’ pennant collapse in 1964 and the wrenching defeats of the Angels in the 1982 and ’86 playoffs.

The demons never seemed to leave his side, but it is a career better remembered, perhaps, for his success with a series of seriously deficient teams, prodding them to play above their level.

“I’ve been disappointed, but I’ve never disappointed myself and never bored myself,” Mauch said. “I knew I wasn’t always right, but I knew I had the best chance of anyone I knew of being right.”

Back on the bench, he will encourage Boone to approach the trapeze with the same confidence.