Johnson’s Now Part of Manager Paradise

Welcome to the National League West, Davey Johnson. We know you have the credentials to manage the Dodgers. We know you have a World Series championship ring from your days managing the New York Mets. We know you have a reputation as a players’ manager.

But, as you well know, impressive managerial credentials are not unusual in your new division, where managers not only match wits, but can match resumes as well.

There isn’t much of an edge in any dugout, and here’s why:

JIM LEYLAND, Colorado

When the Leyland family gathers in Perrysburgh, Ohio, to welcome in the new year, predictions for the 12 months ahead are scribbled on pieces of paper and read aloud.

As the arrival of 1999 is heralded, watch for lots of good things to be written about the fortunes of the Colorado Rockies. Because brother Jim is going to Denver.

And wherever brother Jim has gone in the past, good things have happened.

That’s why his name is always the first mentioned when a managerial position opens. That’s why the Angels were interested in him when they were looking for a field boss several years ago. That’s why his name popped up in connection with the Dodger vacancy. And that’s why the Rockies took him.

People have complained that baseball at Coors Field is not baseball as we have come to know it. Routine fly balls become home runs. Earned-run averages look like slugging percentages. Scores look like football scores.

But be assured that Leyland will bring sanity to the insanity. He won in Pittsburgh, where he never knew what his lineup would look like from one year to the next because management’s first concern was the payroll.

No matter.

Leyland won the National League East title with the Pirates three consecutive years beginning in 1990.

He won in Florida in 1997 when financial restraint wasn’t a consideration, taking a team rapidly put together by a free-spending owner and winning a World Series with it in one year.

So what are a few gopher balls to a man like Leyland, who stresses fundamentals and calmness regardless of the storm around him?

BRUCE BOCHY, San Diego

Bochy is the Padres’ volcano, a towering presence at 6 feet 4 and 225 pounds who is normally content to remain part of the background while his players take center stage.

But every once in a while the lava starts flowing and the emotions start bubbling and anybody with any sense runs for cover.

Padre third base coach Tim Flannery, a former teammate of Bochy’s, has seen the eruptions and they are not pretty.

“I don’t want to see him mad,” Flannery said.

“If you notice, he [Bochy] is very quiet, very deliberate,” said former manager Sparky Anderson, who was known to create a few sparks of his own during his managerial days. “He’s not out there to show you up. But don’t you try to show him up.”

Bochy was heavily criticized in the World Series for the way he used his starting pitchers, his bullpen and his pinch-hitters.

But four games wasn’t enough to besmirch the last four seasons. Having inherited a club stripped and left on the scrap heap by the previous management, Bochy has won two division titles in four years and got his club to the World Series.

DUSTY BAKER, San Francisco

Motivator is the word most observers use when describing Baker.

“He has to be the best at getting the most out of people who don’t deserve getting anything out of,” Anderson said. “Let’s face facts. Dusty Baker drags the marrow out of people. The thing he is so good at is making people believe they can do something.”

In Los Angeles, Baker was long appreciated for his skills as a Dodger outfielder, a slugging teammate of Steve Garvey, Ron Cey and Reggie Smith.

But that has been replaced by appreciation in L.A. of what Baker has done since then in his six years as Giant manager.

In 1993, Baker’s rookie season as a manager, he took a club that had finished 72-90 the season before and improved that by 31 games to 103-59, the most wins without the benefit of a playoff the franchise had had in 81 years, since John McGraw won 103 with the 1912 New York Giants.

Baker won a division title in 1997 and nearly pulled out a wild-card spot with a fast finish in 1998.

He still wears sweatbands along with his uniform, a holdover from his playing days. But since Baker has started managing, it’s the rest of the division that is doing most of the sweating.

BUCK SHOWALTER, Arizona

One minute, Showalter was the toast of New York. The next, he was roasting in Arizona.

After leading the New York Yankees in 1995 to their first postseason berth in 14 years, only to suffer a first-round loss to the Seattle Mariners, Showalter found he could no longer coexist with owner George Steinbrenner.

That put Showalter in some pretty good company. It also put him into a dream situation, a managerial job in which he couldn’t lose a game for at least two years.

The expansion Diamondbacks hired Showalter two years before their first game, allowing him to be part of the building process.

Giving a man like Showalter, for whom no detail is too small, too much time can be a dangerous thing. While trying to build a team from scratch, Showalter found time for getting involved in everything from the planting of bushes at the team’s spring training complex to the adding of the dirt path between home and the pitcher’s mound in the Diamondbacks’ new stadium, reminiscent of an earlier era.

Showalter spent plenty of time beating his own path to the pitcher’s mound in a season in which the Diamondbacks, as expected, finished last in the division, winning only 65 games.

But Showalter remains optimistic that things will soon improve.