CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

At his favorite deli not far from the modest house that he and his wife, Carol, built in Thousand Oaks in 1967, Sparky Anderson was still trying to digest the fact that “a nobody who couldn’t play the game is going into the Hall of Fame. It’s wild. You start out as a kid with all these dreams, as kids should, and they have all come true. You couldn’t ask for anything better.”

With his unparalleled success as a manager in both the American and National leagues, Anderson will be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y., on Sunday. Carol will be there, as will their three children and 10 of their 14 grandchildren. So will many of the people “who touched the circle” of his life and career, who helped “pull a 9-year-old boy from Bridgewater, South Dakota, to that podium,” and they will all be remembered in a speech that Anderson thinks many may find boring. So be it.

“This only happens once, and if I don’t remember and talk about those people . . . well, then there’s no sense to any of it,” he said.

For the thousands who will fill that sweeping green plain in front of the podium, they will also be expecting Anderson to talk about all of the glamorous players he managed with the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers, but they will be disappointed, maybe even bored, as he suggested.

George “Sparky” Anderson doesn’t deceive himself into thinking that he could have made it to Cooperstown without Pete Rose and Joe Morgan, Tony Perez and Johnny Bench, Kirk Gibson and Jack Morris, Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker, but if he mentions only one, where does it end and whom does he forget?

Besides, what about all those other players with less glamorous names who also touched the circle before he even became a major league manager?

“You start naming players and you’re going to get yourself in trouble,” Anderson said. “Remember this, whether it was Rock Hill, Modesto, Asheville, Cincinnati or Detroit, every player and coach who wore the same uniform that I did was part of my life. I mean, all those kids who played in the minor leagues for me were as important, and maybe more important, than the Benches and Morgans, all of them, because they taught me that I was the father and the mother and the uncle, that I was everything during those years. They taught me how to truly talk to people and treat people. Those guys in the big leagues with me can’t be more important than those kids. If they are, we’re not looking at the right things. Those kids couldn’t help that they weren’t good enough, but they sure tried as hard.”

So, he will thank all those players as a group but mention none by name, although it will be hard to ignore Bench and Morgan, who will be on the dais with him as members of the Hall, and Rose, who is ineligible for the Hall but has spent the weekend in Cooperstown signing autographs at his own little museum, and Trammell, now a San Diego Padre coach who is among many former players coming to Cooperstown to honor him. And it certainly will be hard to ignore Perez, his first baseman on the Big Red Machine of the ‘70s, who is also being inducted and whose name might just have to be mentioned because he “was as good a person as he was a clutch hitter,” and isn’t that what Sparky Anderson--father, mother, uncle--was and is about as much as anything?

*

“With Sparky, it was never just about baseball,” says Trammell, for 17 years the Tiger shortstop. “He helped make us better people, as well as players. He was another father figure. We were a young club that needed direction when he took over and he brought leadership and a presence to the clubhouse. He was tough early on, but it was a tough love, and he taught us the importance of conducting ourselves like professionals. He taught us the importance of dressing properly on the road and cooperating with the media. The total package. He taught us to respect the game and to treat people the way we wanted to be treated. I guess the greatest compliment I can pay him is to say I’ve tried to raise my kids the way he helped raise me.”

*

He is the only manager to win a World Series in both leagues, to post 100-win seasons in both leagues, to lead two franchises in victories. He won the World Series with the Reds in 1975 and ‘76, and with the Tigers in 1984. He won two other pennants and a division title with the Reds and one other division title with the Tigers. His total of 2,194 wins over 26 years as the Cincinnati and Detroit manager is surpassed only by Hall of Famers Connie Mack and John McGraw.

Much of that will be on his plaque. What isn’t, however, is a legacy in which he takes even greater pride--his contribution to the community, the message he gave to his players. Play the game right. Act right.

“Johnny Bench used to call me Preacher,” Anderson said of his catcher with the Big Red Machine. “Yeah, I guess you could call me Preacher, but it wasn’t about religion. I think guys can get totally out of line on religion. All I was saying is just be right with people. Give back. Don’t just take. I cared about those kids, and I wanted them to understand that it’s all right to have, that they were entitled to ask for whatever money they felt they were worth, but that when we have, we also have to give back.”

Maybe it was because he had so few amenities as a youngster growing up in Bridgewater or in the house at 35th and Vermont after moving to Los Angeles and was so fortunate to have so many people touch the circle that Anderson viewed it as imperative that he and his players give back, that they treat the game that was their life with respect, as he did in the spring of 1995, taking a leave of absence from the Tigers rather than participate in what he viewed to be the demeaning process of using replacement players for striking major leaguers. It was the right thing to do, said Anderson, who was widely criticized by the industry’s labor leaders.

Now, at 66, the Hall of Fame aside, he can look back with pride at the hundreds of players he managed and find scores of examples, such as David Wells and Travis Fryman, who “may have been two continents apart when it came to their lifestyles and personalities, but who both had a burning desire to be good and understood the importance of doing right.”

Wells, the Toronto Blue Jay left-hander, talked about Anderson’s contributions to his citizenship at the All-Star game, but it was not only their meetings behind closed doors.

Anderson’s actions spoke louder than his words. On every home stand during his nine years with the Reds he would visit Children’s Hospital, insisting that hospital officials never make it public. In Detroit, where the late and longtime Tiger team doctor, Clarence Livingood, called him the Pied Piper, he started a foundation benefiting the Children’s Hospital of Detroit and the children’s wing at Henry Ford Hospital. The foundation, known as CATCH (Caring Athletes Team for Children’s Hospital), is administered strictly by nurses and has raised about $2.5 million in 13 years.

“It’s probably the best thing I’ve done in my life,” Anderson said, planning to stop in Detroit on his way to Cooperstown for a fund-raising dinner.

“We’ve given so many kids a chance, and it’s also given me something to occupy my mind when things weren’t going good.

“As Jack Morris said in ‘87, [when the surprising Tigers rallied to catch Toronto down the stretch and win the American League East], if I hadn’t had [the foundation] to keep me busy when I wasn’t at the park, I might have gone nuts. He was probably right.”

*

A football star at Michigan State who came to the Tigers with a fiery, free-spirited mentality that at times blurred his focus and interfered with his skills, Gibson said, “It took Sparky four or five years to get through to me, but with his help I managed to conquer the beast. The thing I respect the most about him is that he always allowed me to come into his office, close the door, and speak my mind--whether it was warranted or emotional or irrelevant. He would never interrupt me and he would also say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gibson,’ when I was done, pointing me toward the door. I always knew, whether I was right or wrong, he thought about what was said. He was the boss, the manager, but what more can you ask from a human being?”

*

The list of people Anderson will thank in what may be his “boring” and syntax-shattering speech is a long one and includes:

Lefty Phillips, the Dodger scout who signed him out of Dorsey High, spent hours talking baseball with him and was later influential in his managerial progress; Bud Brubaker, his Dorsey coach, and Ben Lefebvre, his American Legion coach at Rancho playground, who fostered fundamentals and discipline; George Scherger and George Kissel, baseball men Anderson encountered in the minors and who would coach for him in the majors and “had all the brains even if I had my name above the door”; Sheldon Bender, Bob Howsam, Dick Wagner and Jim Campbell, the baseball executives who had faith in him, even when so few knew who he was and even when it came time to fire him, as Wagner did in Cincinnati, flying out to Thousand Oaks to give him the word with tears in his eyes.

“It surprises people when I tell them that Dick and I never lost our friendship,” Anderson said. “I mean, if he was a bad guy for firing me, was he a bad guy for hiring me?”

Basically, Wagner wanted Anderson to fire two of his coaches “and I would never allow someone to fire my coaches, but I would never fault a man about making a decision about his business. There’s business and pleasure, and don’t get it confused. I understood his position. If I had handled it a little better, a little softer, I might have won that war. There’s a new lesson every day.”

It is impossible for Anderson to rank the people he will thank, but certainly Phillips, Howsam and Campbell would be among the leaders if he did.

Anderson values the contributions of the late Phillips so highly that he has never worn any of his World Series rings because “Lefty died before I won the first one and it’s my only way to show him and to show others that he earned them, not me.”

Phillips, as well as signing Anderson to his first professional contract, was influential in the St. Louis Cardinals hiring him to manage their Rock Hill farm club after Anderson had been released as manager of the Boston Red Sox’s triple-A Toronto franchise. He was 30 and selling cars at Bones Hamilton Buick in Van Nuys when Bender, at the urging of Phillips and then-Dodger executives Dick Walsh and Bill Schweppe, called and offered him the Rock Hill job at $7,000 a year.

“He was apologetic about the money,” Anderson said, “but I told him that I didn’t care what he paid me, that I just wanted to prove I belonged in baseball.”

Aside from a brief period between Cincinnati and Detroit, he would never be out again. He received the opportunity at Cincinnati in October 1969, when Howsam, then the Reds’ general manager, called and offered him the managerial reins as Anderson sat with Walsh, then the Angels’ general manager, at Anaheim Stadium. Anderson had just left a coaching position with the Padres and was about to sign on as a coach with Phillips, then managing the Angels.

Anderson would never work with Phillips, never wear an Angel uniform, becoming the Cincinnati manager at 35, youngest in the majors.

“Sparky Who?” the Cincinnati Post headline said.

“Anybody who says they knew about me before Howsam hired me would be lying,” Anderson said. “It took a lot of courage for him to turn that club over to someone who had never managed in the majors and who most people had never heard of, and if that doesn’t deserve being rewarded by my going into the Hall as a Red. . . . Well, I don’t know how you measure what you owe someone, but I do know that everything we have in our house has to belong to him. If he doesn’t hire me, chances are I never manage in the big leagues.”

Then again, he might have succeeded Phillips as the Angel manager during a period in the ‘70s in which that team had a new manager almost every year and even a future Hall of Fame manager might have had a tough time surviving. Instead, he enjoyed 26 years of reasonable security and stability--first with Howsam and Wagner in Cincinnati, then with Campbell in Detroit, passing on an opportunity to interview with then-Angel owner Gene Autry in 1988.

“If any other manager ever had it as good as I had it, I’d have to see it with my own eyes,” Anderson said. “I can’t believe any other manager ever worked with so many good people or had better working relationships--particularly with Jim Campbell. His word was his bond. He was more like a brother to me than a boss. I can honestly say it was a pleasure going to work for him every day.”

Of course, in a business where managers are hired to be fired, no one lasts 26 years without bringing a special gift to the office.

*

Alan Trammell: “The way I would put it is that Sparky had a sixth sense about when to push the right button.”

Kirk Gibson: “When we played teams like the [Baltimore] Orioles--who knew how to execute so well and play fundamental baseball--and they executed the right play, he would say, ‘See, that’s how the game is played,’ and the next day we would be out practicing that play. If he asked us to do something in a game, and we failed and looked stupid trying, he would always defend us in the paper as carrying out his decision. He talked about his garden and how we had to get rid of the weeds, and he’d be looking at a specific player when he said it and we knew that player would soon be gone. If he felt someone was challenging his authority he’d have his Cinderella slipper meeting in which he’d put his slippers in the center of the clubhouse and challenge anyone to walk up and try them on and if they fit, he’d say, ‘You can keep walking right out of here.’ ”

Johnny Bench: “There’s a difference between a good manager and a great one. The good one will tell you there’s more than one way to skin a cat. The great manager will convince the cat it’s necessary. Sparky had the cats carrying the knives to him.”

*

Leroy Anderson, his father, was a painter and paper hanger and a semi-pro catcher who, along with Sparky’s uncle and grandfather, would hire out on weekends as one-third of a starting lineup for maybe $10, big money in those lean years in Bridgewater.

“Dad loved the game so much that he’d get angry if I didn’t feel like playing catch,” Anderson said. “He considered it a sin.”

Of course, the son didn’t have to be convinced. In Los Angeles, he and his friends would hop on the running boards of the V car so that they didn’t have to pay and take it to Wrigley Field at 42nd and Avalon every Sunday to watch the Pacific Coast League Angels play a doubleheader, staying later to play “grounders” in which they challenged one another with baseballs bounced off the outside of the ballpark walls.

Ultimately, Sparky Anderson would spend 10 years as a minor league infielder, batting .218 in the 152 games of his only major league season with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1959, and five more years as a minor league manager. If he ultimately knew more than one way to skin a cat, his was a knowledge born in the cornfields of South Dakota, on the playgrounds of Los Angeles, on the anonymous diamonds of the minor leagues, in conversations with baseball lifers such as Rod Dedeaux, Phillips, Scherger and Kissel.

“I never went out and copied anyone, but I think I copied all of them without knowing it,” Anderson said at his table in the deli. “I know this game. I learned it well from good people.”

The point being that, yes, Anderson brought a special gift to the office, and isn’t afraid to say it.

“I was no dummy in the dugout,” he said. “I knew what was going on at all times. You weren’t ever going to trick me. You might have more personnel, but if I had more personnel, you didn’t have a chance, believe me.

“At the same time, I was always smart enough to know that the only guys who end up being great managers are the guys who have great players.”

Anderson had many, but he refused to discuss them or rank them, just as he won’t talk about them in his speech Sunday.

Someone would be offended, someone left out.

However, he said he was proud that his 1975 Cincinnati team that beat Boston in a dramatic World Series of long-remembered moments helped to revive baseball at a labor-related low point and he called his 1976 Cincinnati team that was 102-60 during the regular season and swept the New York Yankees in the World Series the best he has ever seen, the biggest and baddest of the Big Red Machines with which he will always be linked.

Of course, there were special times in Detroit as well.

The ’84 Tigers opened the season 35-5, won 104 games and wiped out San Diego in the World Series. The ’87 Tigers, while defeated by the Minnesota Twins in the American League championship series, were even more rewarding.

“My wife always asked me before I left for spring where I thought the team would finish and I remember telling her that year that I thought we’d probably finish fifth,” Anderson said. “I told her we had no chance to win the division, but it was unreal. We won 98 games, and it wasn’t me. I mean, they played the game the way it was meant to be played, and I told them at the end of the year that in all their careers they’ll never have a year in which they do everything right again like they did that year. That’s the one team I’ll always cherish most.”

Trammell and Whitaker, Gibson and Morris were there, as were Darrell Evans and Matt Nokes, Mike Henneman and Walt Terrell. It was a last hurrah in some ways. The veterans left, and there was no one to replace them. There were changes in the front office and ownership. Anderson was pushed toward the door after the 1995 season, has since had a couple of managerial feelers while also doing TV commentary, but a triple bypass convinced him that it was time to focus on golf and grandchildren.

Sunday? Well, he said, that will be the ultimate recognition, the completion of the circle.

And if there is a measure of sadness to that, as he put it, it is easily diminished by the joyous opportunity to thank those who contributed most significantly to an improbable career and life by pulling on that long rope from Bridgewater to Cooperstown.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Hall Of Fame

* When: 10:30 a.m. Sunday

* Where: Cooperstown, N.Y.

* TV: ESPN Classic Sports

INDUCTEES

CARLTON FISK

C, Red Sox, White Sox

TONY PEREZ

1B, Reds, Expos, Red Sox, Phillies

TURKEY STEARNES

OF, Negro Leagues

BID McPHEE

2B, Reds

SPARKY ANDERSON

Manager, Reds, Tigers

* Only manager to win World Series in each league.

* Won five pennants.

* 2,194 victories rank third all time.

* Only manager with 100-win seasons in each league.

* Ranks first with 18 League Championship wins.

Sparkling Record

A look at where Hall of Fame inductee Sparky Anderson ranks among the top managers:

GAMES

1. Connie Mack 3,731

2. John McGraw 2,763

3. Sparky Anderson 2,194

4. Bucky Harris 2,157

5. Joe McCarthy 2,125

*

PENNANTS

1. John McGraw 10

1. Casey Stengel 10

3. Connie Mack 9

3. Joe McCarthy 9

5. Walter Alston 7

6. Miller Huggins 6

7. Sparky Anderson 5

7. Cap Anson 5

7. Fred Clarke 5

7. Bobby Cox 5

7. Ned Hanlon 5

5. Frank Selee 5

*

WORLD SERIES TITLES

1. Joe McCarthy 7

1. Casey Stengel 7

3. Connie Mack 5

4. Walter Alston 4

5. Sparky Anderson 3

5. Miller Huggins 3

5. John McGraw 3

5. Joe Torre 3

*

RECORDS

* Overall: 2,194-1,834, .545

* League championship series: 18-9, .667

* World Series: 16-12, .571

HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES

Bid McPhee

Born: Nov. 1, 1859 in Massena, N.Y.

Died: Jan. 3, 1943 in Ocean Beach, Calif.

Of note: Second baseman, hit .271 from 1882 to 1899; Played entire career in Cincinnati, first in the American Assn. and then in National League.

*

Thomas “Turkey” Stearnes

Born: May 8, 1901 in Nashville.

Died: Sept 4, 1979 in Detroit

Of note: Outfielder hit .359 during 18-year career in Negro League. Ranks first in triples, second in home runs and fourth in batting average in Negro League history.

*

Tony Perez

Born: May 14, 1942 in Camaguey, Cuba.

Of note: First baseman, had 1,652 RBIs, highest among Latin players. Had been the most RBIs among any player not in Hall until he was elected in January. Played in five World Series, four with Reds and one with Phillies.

*

Carlton Fisk

Born: Dec. 26, 1947 in Bellows Falls, Vt.

Of note: Caught more games (2,226) than any player in major league history. An 11-time all-star. Played 11 seasons with the Red Sox, 13 with the White Sox. Will wear a Red Sox cap on his Hall plaque.

WITH REDS

Years: 1970-1978

Record: 863-586 (.596)

NLCS Record: 14-5 (.737)

World Series Record: 12-11 (.522), 2 titles.

*

WITH TIGERS

Years: 1979-1995

Record: 1,331-1,248 (.516)

ALCS Record: 4-4 (.500)

World Series Record: 4-1 (.800), 1 title.