Heat Is on the Other Lachemann

A couple of days before the baseball All-Star game was to be played in the city of brotherly love, Rene Lachemann was fired as manager of the Florida Marlins. The brother he loves, Marcel Lachemann, seems very much in jeopardy of losing his own job managing the Angels, the way things are going.

If the new bosses of the Angels are even half as upset with the team’s play as club President Tony Tavares (justifiably) sounded last week, the managerial position could change hands, pronto. And Sparky Anderson is just a TV booth away, a natural choice, if he’s interested. Sparky looks as unnatural in that necktie as Bob Dole does without one.

From his remarks, Tavares seems like someone who isn’t about to tolerate mediocrity. Changing a team’s name from California to Anaheim is all well and good, but as they sit there tied for last place, the Angels are not playing appreciably better baseball than the Marlins, whose 40-47 record caused management to change managers, not rename the team Miami.

A weekend, a week, a month . . . Marcel Lachemann had better turn this thing around in a hurry. Otherwise, the Angels are still merely the Clippers, in longer pants.

Unless the ballclub indicates soon that it can come from behind this season the way it crashed from above last season, Tavares and the Disney organization must signal the public that they won’t stand for the Angels continuing to be one of history’s least successful franchises, on the field. They want to build a new park. But they want fans to come see the team, not simply the park.

Marcel Lachemann appeared to be onto something last summer, when the Angels were in rare form. He didn’t seem to be getting much personal enjoyment out of it, dreading some of the responsibilities that kept an old pitching coach from spending more time with his pitchers, but the team, at least, was responding to Lachemann in a way that it hadn’t for many a manager before him.

Then came the great, Humpty Dumpty-hard fall of ’95. And now that the Angels have gone back to their old habits, 8 1/2 games behind the historically hapless Texas Rangers and 4 1/2 behind a Seattle team that lost both Ken Griffey and Randy Johnson to injuries, about all Lachemann has been able to do of late has been to lay the blame on himself.

While no one questions either Lachemann brother’s ability or suitability to do the job, few managers are as self-critical as Rene, who said he could see the ax coming, or Marcel, whose response to a recent 10-inning loss at Oakland was: “What did us in was the manager. The manager screwed it up in so many ways.” Probably not, but each of these brothers plainly knows where the buck stops.

And so does Tavares, who isn’t about to sit around and endure atrocities such as that 58-minute first inning at Oakland, in which the Angels scored three runs and promptly gave up 13. Had it been the New York Yankees who surrendered 13 runs in the first inning, you can bet George Steinbrenner would have changed managers . . . after the third out.

Lachemann needn’t have blamed himself for that one. He should have put 25 players on public notice that trades, benchings and demotions to the minors were imminent if this was the best they could do on the field. A little righteous indignation would have gone a long way that day.

There is such a thing as being too tolerant, and this would have been a good time for Marcel Lachemann to have shouted to the public that he was mad as hell and not about to put up with play the level of company-picnic softball. Keeping a team’s discussions behind closed doors is one thing, but there comes a time when a typical baseball fan wants to hear a manager yell.

How refreshing, then, it was to read the next day what Tavares said that, “I believe in accountability. You know how competitive I am.”

Good to hear Tony growl like a tiger. This is an organization that could use a little honest anger at something other than its critics. This is a franchise that cannot seem to win its own (four-team) division title, let alone a World Series, at a time when even the Clevelands and Seattles are emerging from their Van Winkle-like sleep. If Texas gets in the playoffs before the Angels do, hell will officially have frozen over.

It gets worse. The way Cleveland and Chicago are playing, one of them seems a lock to claim the American League’s wild-card spot. That means to reach postseason play, the Angels will have to make up the 8 1/2-game margin that Texas has opened up, leapfrogging Seattle in the process. Therefore, Anaheim’s immediate playoff prospects can best be described as dim, except possibly in hockey.

Maybe you can’t fault a manager for everything, but when a team has seven hitters batting over .290, has a 22-save relief man and has a combined 17-4 record at the All-Star break from the anonymous mound trio of Shawn Boskie, Ryan Hancock and Chuck McElroy, someone has to be responsible for that team owning a piece of last place.

The manager, being accountable, might take the rap. If they wait a week or two, maybe the Angels could ask the Dodgers’ permission to interview Bill Russell.