It’s Day Three of Terry Collins Held Hostage

Fireworks echo through the Arizona night, but here inside Cell No. 3422, all is quiet.

A colorful baseball game is beginning at Bank One Ballpark between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Angels.

But here inside Cell No. 3422--actually a conference room on the second floor behind home plate--the walls are bare and white.

There are no windows. No phone. No bathroom.

There is one round table, several chairs, a TV, a tiny cooler.

And Anaheim Manager Terry Collins.

Entering the third night of his eight-game suspension stemming from a recent brawl with the Kansas City Royals, Collins settles down at 7 p.m. Thursday to watch nine innings of . . . “Jeopardy”?

“Wait a minute!” he says, jumping up, striding toward the TV, reaching for the channel changer. “This isn’t right!”

*

This is a man who is so intense, he was once sitting in his office before a game when he realized he didn’t know what time it started.

Because he didn’t remember what day it was.

When it was recently announced that Collins had been suspended for more than a week’s worth of games simply for ordering pitcher Rich DeLucia to hit a Kansas City batter in retaliation for an earlier plunk, one could only imagine:

How would he handle watching a team he has so splendidly managed . . . without being able to manage them?

During Thursday’s 10-5 Angel victory, we found out.

For one thing, when he says he feels like he’s in prison, believe him.

Outside Cell No. 3422, there stood a guard named Richard.

When Collins asked for food, Richard opened the door and a woman delivered it to him on a tray.

“Have I been put in detention or what?” Collins said, laughing.

A night earlier in this room, General Manager Bill Bavasi had playfully tied Collins to the chair, plopped a sign in his lap reading, “Day Two,” and taken a photo.

The rules for Collins’ suspension, as with any American League suspension, are simple.

He can put on a uniform and go through pregame drills with his team, but once the game starts, he must be out of the stadium.

The first night here, he watched the game from a nearby hotel room.

But the last two nights, the games were not shown locally, so the Diamondbacks agreed to put him in a secluded room in their office complex far from the field so he could watch an out-of-town cable feed.

For one of the game’s most involved and inspirational managers, the hardest part was not watching it in that room.

The hardest part, said Collins, was leaving his team for the walk to that room.

While his team was putting on their game uniforms Thursday, Collins was taking a shower and getting dressed in a dress shirt, slacks and tie.

While they were walking out of the clubhouse to the field, he was walking past them in the other direction, head down, mumbling occasional words of encouragement with soft pats on the back.

“The first night I did that, I was totally embarrassed,” he said. “I thought, look at me, this is really silly. I need to be with my guys.”

Instead, for eight days he will be only with a TV and frustration.

“I know every commercial in this town,” he said, shaking his head. “Last three days, I’ve seen them all.”

*

The channel is changed, the game is found, first inning, Darin Erstad singles, Dave Hollins steps up.

“We’re gonna get this guy going,” Collins says.

And there it goes, a long drive to right field.

“Get it Davey, get it!” Collins shouts as the ball leaves the park.

He got it. The ball lands in the right-field seats.

A couple of batters later, the Angels increase the lead to 5-0, and Collins looks down at his meal. It is a pleasant assortment of fish and salad delivered by Diamondback employees who, now, may not be so nice.

“I better eat fast before they come in here and take this tray away from me,” he said.

As the game progresses, Collins fiddles with his glasses case, shuffles his game notes, and makes comments that make you realize. He notices everything.

He notices a slight movement in catcher Matt Walbeck’s footwork. He correctly notices and predicts several pitches from the Diamondbacks’ Bob Wolcott.

Erstad hits a ball in the gap that the rest of us would assume is a double. . . and Collins shouts, “triple” . . . and Erstad steams into third base.

“I knew because of the way he was hustling around first, following the ball, knowing what he is doing,” he says.

But the cameras didn’t show Erstad running around first.

After the play, they did. And it turns out, Collins was right.

The other night, while watching on TV, Collins turned down the sound when Chuck Finley was pitching.

“The announcers were talking about what he was throwing, and they were totally wrong on everything, so I couldn’t take it anymore,” he says.

One thing he won’t do is change the channel. When Bavasi entered the room the other day and asked the score of the NBA game, Collins looked at him like he had just asked him to fly.

“The score of the what?” he said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

It is this sort of focus that Collins has transferred to this once-dormant team.

In leading the injury-tattered Angels into second place, just 2 1/2 games out of first place, with 10 wins in their last 12 games, Collins has given them more than just his knowledge.

He has given them his passion.

You can see this passion when players are running out grounders in the final innings while trailing by five. You could see this passion Thursday in a diving stop by Cecil Fielder, a cannon-like assist by Jim Edmonds, and Erstad running around second base.

So with Ken Hill’s injury, they have lost three-fifths of their starting rotation?

“So Terry just walks through here and lets us know that we can find another way,” shortstop Gary DiSarcina said.

Ironically, it was this passion that landed Collins in this cell in the first place. While he was ostensibly suspended for ordering the retaliation pitch--yeah, while Roberto Alomar was given just five games for spitting on an ump?--the punishment was probably caused by the ensuing brawl.

League officials must have figured that only through Collins’ inspiration could an entire Angel team chase down and run through most of a Royal team. Even though Collins was in the clubhouse at the time.

Whatever Collins is doing, it’s working.

In the fifth inning of Day Three in Cell No. 3422, the announcers say that Garret Anderson is a singles hitter. He promptly hits the ball over the right-field fence.

“Not many homers, eh boy?” he shouts at the announcers. “Not many homers, eh boy?”

Terry Collins smiles. They can suspend the uniform, but not the belief. Even after this eight-game sentence has ended, summer will just be beginning.