Cox Built the Braves With Patience, Desire

To understand why Bobby Cox is one of baseball’s best managers -- why his Atlanta Braves are in their fourth World Series in the past five postseasons -- we should listen to David Justice.

Justice knows he may not be back with the Braves next season. He’s a $5 million star outfielder whose $160,000 backups may soon be stars themselves. Before he leaves, Justice says, there’s one thing he’ll do.

“I’d go in and shake Bobby’s hand,” he says. “No, I’d have to hug Bobby.”

As the Braves’ general manager, Cox made room for the rookie Justice by trading Atlanta icon Dale Murphy. Then, as manager, Cox tolerated Justice’s immaturity. Such whimperings. Such petulance. Such a spoiled brat. But, in time, Justice became the player he wanted to be, which, no coincidence, was the player Cox wanted him to be: a decent fielder who could approach hitting .300 with 30 home runs every year.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Justice says.

A baseball season is a novel written in the dirt. There’s no rushing to the end. In almost 40 years as a pro, Bobby Cox long ago learned that you go through a lot to get to success. So he waits.

He waited for Justice to grow up. He waited three years for Mark Wohlers to find the strike zone. He waited for John Smoltz to find himself. Even now he is waiting for Ryan Klesko to figure out left-handed pitching.

He’s good at waiting because his ego does not demand hourly feedings. He gives credit to players publicly and criticizes them privately. As a result, his clubhouse is a happy one. Anything that threatens the club’s stability is promptly repaired, as in the case of Deion Sanders, who was shipped out as soon as the Braves found a greater fool to take him.

As with all managers, fans argue Cox’s strategical decisions. But strategy is the least of a manager’s job. The most of it is recognizing talent and giving the talent its best chance to succeed.

That, Cox does brilliantly.

Listen to Braves players when asked for one word to explain Cox’s success. ...

Jeff Blauser: “Patience.”

Terry Pendleton: “Desire.”

Klesko: “Consistency.”

Marquis Grissom: “Character.”

Chipper Jones: “Fearless.”

John Smoltz: “Patience. And loyalty.”

Ask baseball writers. ...

Tracy Ringolsby, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News: “His temperament. His players think, ‘If Bobby’s not going to panic, why should we? It’s his job on the line, not ours.’ ... The toughest thing is to keep winning, and Bobby’s guys have done that.”

Rick Hummel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Bobby’s teams play hard. Even when they clinched it early, you never saw them loaf. That’s because they never take success for granted. They show up for one thing -- to win.”

It all began when Bobby Cox was a utility infielder with bad knees, washed up at age 29.

First the Yankees sent him to the minors. Then they told him it was over. “We were on the road in Richmond, and I was just going to go home from there,” he says.

What he’d do at home, he had no idea. After someone told him they’d pay him $200 a month to play baseball, he’d never had a real job.

His bags packed, his mood melancholy, Cox was about to leave the only life he had known. “But Lee came down that day.”

Lee MacPhail ran the Yankees’ organization. The wise old baseball man saw more in Cox than bad knees. “Lee asked me if I ever thought of managing. Well, I hadn’t. But I asked him for a day to think about it.”

Everyone knows it’s more fun to bang around the bush leagues in a bus than it is to pack a lunch pail.

So, 26 years ago, Bobby Cox became a manager.

Today he’s Hall of Fame material.

To make it to Cooperstown, he may need to win another World Series. But, even now, he has done extraordinary work. Historians searching for precedent to Cox’s achievements might review the career of Cornelius McGillicuddy, known as Connie Mack.

Once a catcher, later a tyrannical businessman, he came to own the Philadelphia Athletics. He managed his team from 1901 to 1950, a curious figure disdaining the team uniform in favor of a gray suit and straw hat. To position his fielders, Mack wigwagged a game program from the dugout steps.

Mack’s teams ranged from wonderful to woeful, depending on money. As payroll rose and profit fell, he sold off expensive champions and rebuilt with youth.

For most of this century, Connie Mack stood alone as a baseball lifer who built the teams he managed.

Casey Stengel did half the job -- he managed. Sparky Anderson, Earl Weaver, Tommy Lasorda, Tony La Russa and Billy Martin all had the last vote on their rosters. But none created the system that produced the players he managed. None created the teams he managed to world championships.

Only Connie Mack did that -- until last year.

Then Bobby Cox did it.

A fascinating journey it has been for Cox, whose first major league managing job came with the Braves from 1978 to ’81.

In those horrible seasons, Cox worked to dump bad players. But impatient Ted Turner fired Cox at a press conference made memorable by Turner’s quote: “If I hadn’t just fired him, Bobby would be the kind of manager I’d hire.”

Instead, Joe Torre took Cox’s team to a division championship the next season. Cox went to Toronto and took the Blue Jays to a league championship series in 1985.

Rehired by Turner after the ’85 A.L. Championship Series, Cox worked through the 1990 season as general manager, directing a revolution.

When the Braves had baseball’s highest payroll and worst record, team President Stan Kasten said, “Seems to me we’ve got this backwards.” So he and Cox quit buying free agents; they added minor league teams, and hired more scouts.

As Connie Mack had done with the Athletics, the Braves rebuilt with kids. Along came Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Steve Avery, Justice and Blauser. Then, in June 1990, Kasten asked Cox to manage the Braves again.

The rest, you know.