Smoke, but No Fire for Collins

For as long as Bill Bavasi has been around baseball, you would have thought he would have learned by now that, as the cliche goes, “You have to fire the manager because you can’t fire 25 players.”

Bavasi, the Angel general manager, didn’t fire any players Tuesday. But he didn’t fire his manager, either.

On the contrary, he extended Terry Collins’ contract.

That should have served to get the message across to the 10 malcontents who complained a couple of weeks ago about Collins’ management style that Bavasi will show them the door before he does his manager. Just in case that went over their heads, he let them know in plain English that they can read on Angelsbaseball.com.

Asked in a question-and-answer session released by the team whether he had any concerns about how the news of Collins’ new deal would be accepted in the clubhouse, he said, “Who cares?”

For those who long for a simpler days when management managed and players played, such as the days when Bavasi’s father, Buzzie, ran teams, that must have been music to the ears--like listening to an old 78 rpm recording of a song that had a melody you could hum along with and words you could understand.

Those days in baseball, of course, were not as simple as they seemed. No one who possesses a sense of fairness regarding the relationship between management and labor should feel nostalgic for a time when players were slaves to a system that allowed them to jump only when owners told them to.

In the last 30 years, though, the pendulum has swung. The players, through the efforts of the Major League Players Assn., have as much power, and, in the case of some, almost as much money as the owners.

Now even some of us who have always been pro-union don’t want to hear any grievances unless they’re very good ones, unlike the majority of those directed toward Collins that alleged he wasn’t sensitive enough.

To Bavasi’s credit, because he is sensitive, he listened.

“I’m disappointed with the way it came down,” he said during a conference call Tuesday of the attention paid by the media to the mini-revolt. “But we don’t have chains on these guys. If somebody has a complaint, they have a right to speak their minds. As employers, we have the responsibility to at least listen and evaluate.

“In this case, it took us 15 minutes to evaluate.”

In that 15 minutes, he decided that he wasn’t “very impressed with any of the complaints.”

But that wasn’t all that emerged from his sessions with the players. He also delivered a decree to them through the media and the Angels’ web site Tuesday.

Among his comments:

“Any way Terry handles players is up to him. I’m not looking for him to change.

“We want him to remain as intense and demanding as when he got here.

“It’s [the players’] responsibility to react to what he wants done, not his responsibility to react to what they want done.”

“He and his coaches are on the same page and the players are compelled to get on that page.”

Asked on the Web site whether he or Collins would meet with the players to discuss the extension, Bavasi said, “What Terry does in the clubhouse is up to him. For my part, I know I have a responsibility to the media today, but, after today, I expect to deal with other issues.

“I mean, what questions could there be in the clubhouse? Terry’s the boss. Period. If there are any other questions from the players for me, they’d better be good ones.”

He also quoted his father, the former Dodger general manager who wouldn’t let Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale brush him back in a famous contract negotiation more than three decades ago, saying, “We need good players, not happy ones.”

This was not tough love from Bavasi, the son. It was just tough.

Now the Angels can turn their attention to more important matters, such as putting together a winning streak that would enable them to climb out of last place and into contention in the American League West.

Gary DiSarcina returned from the disabled list Tuesday night in Seattle. If Tim Salmon can do the same in the near future, and Jim Edmonds by the end of the summer, they will have regained the nucleus they were counting on when spring training began.

As Bavasi said Tuesday, “We have a much larger group of guys on the ballclub who are more hard-edged and have a desire to win, and they far outnumber the soft guys we have.”

They also have the right manager to lead them.

The only thing troubling about the Angels’ announcement was that they didn’t announce the length of the contract extension, meaning that, if it’s for only one year, we could see a repeat of this episode next season. But there was nothing in either Bavasi’s words or tone to indicate that Collins’ job isn’t secure.

“He was the right guy to turn this thing around three years ago,” Bavasi said. “He’s still the right guy.”

And if the soft guys aren’t comfortable with that?

“If they aren’t, they know where they can find me,” Bavasi said.

Dodger General Manager Kevin Malone was right. We do have a new sheriff in town. The town is Anaheim.

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.