Ready to Deliver

The former baseball player was a box salesman.

Eighty-seven career games had landed him in towering butter tubs and giant cardboard cans of soup. He sold grocery displays. He worked the phones until his ear swelled and his ego shrunk.

Still, it was not enough.

He and his wife had one young child, another on the way, little left after paying the mortgage.

“I’ll get a job,” she said.

“No,” he said, wanting her to stay with the children. “I’ll get a second job.”

He combed the classified ads, searching for moonlight, until something hit him like a thump on the front door.

News delivery agent.

Paperboy.

So it happened that, 15 years ago, Jim Tracy would awaken at 2 a.m. and drive through the streets of suburban Chicago throwing newspapers.

The Chicago Tribune. The Chicago Sun-Times. The Wall Street Journal.

In two hours, he rolled and stuffed 400 papers into plastic wrap, then tossed them onto driveways and doorsteps.

Driving down the middle of deserted streets in his yellow-and-white Dodge Omni, he was a paperboy who could hit to all fields. He threw them out the left window, the right window, and even over the roof.

During the winter, on icy roads, with both windows rolled down and the heat blasting on full, he worked with a ski mask and a prayer.

When his front passenger seat emptied, he returned home, slept for an hour, then awakened to life-size cutouts of Mr. Clean.

Two years. Two jobs. Six sets of brake pads.

A sense of survival that will carry him into Dodger Stadium today as perhaps the most unlikely, but unflappable, new manager in Dodger history.

His wife Debra talks about those days and her throat thickens.

“What Jim has done for his family . . . I cannot even describe,” she says.

Tracy talks about these days, and his voice hardens.

“I respect this Dodger job, but I am not awed by it,” he says. “I am not awed.”

*

He’s not a skipper, he’s a typo.

Wilbert Robinson. Casey Stengel. Leo Durocher. Walter Alston. Tom Lasorda. Jim Tracy.

Jim Tracy?

He wasn’t even the best player on his high school baseball team.

“That’s accurate,” said Dick Fiehrer, his coach at Badin High in Fairfield, Ohio. “Nobody expected him to be anything.”

Jim Tracy?

He was a Chicago Cub outfielder, but the only thing he had in common with greatness was No. 23. Tracy rented it until Ryne Sandberg immortalized it.

Tracy kept his major league jersey as a souvenir until somebody stole it from a minor league clubhouse in Rockford, Ill.

With only one more major league hit than years spent on this earth--46--Tracy figured the thief wanted to sell the jersey as Sandberg’s.

“A bunch of us will never forget how we drove up to Wrigley Field to see his first major league plate appearance,” recalled hometown friend Bobby Schuster. “He struck out looking.”

Jim Tracy?

He declined his first chance to become a minor league manager because it would be a cut in pay from the twin jobs as the box salesman and paperboy.

A year later, he began his managerial career in Peoria, Ill., then Chattanooga, Tenn., then Harrisburg, Pa., then Ottawa, Canada, and don’t you dare say a word.

“We are Harrisburg kind of people,” said wife Debra. “We are Peoria kind of people.”

Jim Tracy?

His only major league leadership experience is six years as a bench coach for strong-willed Felipe Alou and Davey Johnson. He has never been involved in a World Series, a major league playoff series, or even an All-Star game.

He went 3-1 last season as temporary boss when Johnson suffered heart problems, but there’s a catch. Under major league baseball rules, those games belong to Johnson.

The major league managerial debut of this most anonymous major league manager fittingly never happened.

Jim Tracy?

This town doesn’t know him from Adams (Terry). He has virtually no Dodger history, scant baseball history, and a post-game rap that sheds little light on either.

This spring, while Tracy was spouting his usual Muzak above the usual Dodger cacophony, a writer sitting on his office couch fell asleep.

Jim Tracy?

At first glance, beneath the giant glasses and jutting jaw and goofy grin, there is nothing there.

But maybe, on this glorious opening day, we should do what Tracy has promised to do.

Maybe we should examine little things.

Instead of looking for home runs, maybe we should look for hit-and-runs.

Maybe we should search for Jim Tracy not in places he has never been, but in places he has been forever.

A minor league outfield. A Catholic school playground. The heart of a small Ohio town.

At the cloudy dawn of another Dodger season, perhaps we should not judge Jim Tracy without ever leaving the house.

Perhaps, hearing this thump at the end of our driveway, we should walk outside and have a closer look.

*

Jim Tracy’s favorite piece of baseball memorabilia?

Nothing from a prep and college career that included inductions into the sports hall of fames of Badin High and Marietta (Ohio) College.

Nothing from an eight-year pro career that included as many stops in Midland, Texas; Pompano Beach, Fla.; and Wichita, Kan.; as in Chicago, where he spent only parts of 1980-81 with the Cubs.

“My favorite memorabilia?” Tracy asked. “The plaque from St. Martha’s.”

That would be the Catholic school in Sarasota, Fla., where Tracy has spent the last five years volunteering as the middle school basketball coach.

Yep, the man who must handle childish Gary Sheffield has had much experience with sixth, seventh and eighth graders. And under far worse conditions.

The school doesn’t have a gym, so his teams threw passes on the playground or dribbled through the hallways.

During one game at an opponent’s gym, it was so cold, the kids could see their breaths.

In another game, the floor was so dirty, Tracy ordered his players to wipe the dust off their shoes. Four complied. The fifth stood with his head down.

“Why aren’t you wiping off your shoes,” Tracy asked him.

“Because I have dog poop on them,” the player said.

He initially coached because his three sons were playing.

“But he worked so hard, and cared so much, he touched everyone,” said Tom Perry, a father of a former player.

Tracy practiced with them five days a week during the baseball off-season. He suspended them for bad grades, hugged them after bad games, taught them plays as if he were teaching them math.

“Extraordinary teacher,” said Dr. Chuck Rush, an opposing coach. “I would try to get my kids to run a pattern offense, and half the time they have no idea about it. His kids ran it every time.”

His teams won only eight of 25 games in his first season. But by his fourth season, the Knights went 22-2.

By then, he was so involved, he was once thrown out of a game after being hit with two technical fouls. Since the gym was so small, he retired to the parking lot, where he spent the rest of the afternoon trying to peek through a narrow door.

“After a while, it got so I would grab the back of his belt to keep him from leaving the bench,” said John Nicholas, his statistician.

This winter, even after he had been named Dodger boss, Tracy continued to coach.

“People would walk away from these little games saying, ‘Gosh, that’s the manager of the Dodgers?x” said Nicholas.

He missed several games because of Dodger business, his team fell to 11-13, but none of this mattered at the annual banquet.

After the usual award distribution, a parent flung open a side door.

Into the room marched every player who had ever played for Tracy.

This included Andrew Ferrell, a kid awaiting a bone-marrow transplant and risking infection to be there.

“I did not want to miss the banquet,” said Ferrell, who played three years for Tracy before contracting leukemia. “I wanted to tell everybody about the life lessons Coach taught me.”

More than 50 boys walked into the room that night, presenting their coach with a plaque bearing all their names.

For five long minutes, Jim Tracy cried.

“I know Dodger fans probably wanted somebody else, and I know it’s going to be a tough year,” Tom Perry said. “But Los Angeles people need to know, you are getting a good one.”

*

So what is Jim Tracy really like?

You could see it during his first spring training without visiting a field.

You could see it, instead, at a parking lot outside a closed restaurant, around midnight, on the hood of a car.

There sat Jim Tracy, entertaining seven childhood buddies who had flown down to see him.

“This is who he is,” said Tom Puma, one of those friends. “A small-town guy. One of us.”

His friends, from small towns about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati, tell two stories that describe him.

His high school team once took a trip to Louisville. The coach told the players that anyone causing trouble in the fancy big-city hotel would be immediately sent home.

About 10 minutes after they checked in, a guest complained that plaster was being pounded off the ceiling of his first-floor room.

An investigation revealed that Tracy was jumping up and down in the room above, testing out his new spikes.

“We used to kid him about his nerdy looks,” said Puma. “But he really worked hard at everything he did.”

The other story the hometown guys tell about Tracy is how he always comes home.

As recently as last season, as a bench coach, he visited his hometown during trips to Cincinnati.

He hung out with the guys on--and this is not a misprint--Pleasant Avenue. He slept in--also not a misprint--the house where he grew up.

He took special care to check in on Bobby Schuster, a quadriplegic who has been in a wheelchair since running into a light pole during a town softball game 29 years ago.

Tracy was once a batboy on Schuster’s Little League team. In tiny Fairfield, it was enough for a lifetime bond.

“He’s gotten me out of bed, he’s put me on the toilet, he’s taken me places,” said Schuster. “He calls my mother, ‘Mother.’ Like it’s his mother.”

Tracy’s parents, Jim and Ginny, live down the street from the childhood home now occupied by brother Tom.

Tracy is closer to them than he could ever admit, at least this spring. Amid all the Dodger turmoil, he was struggling with the news that his father was suffering from a recurrence of prostate cancer.

Friends told him his father didn’t look good. The treatments were wearing at the 74-year-old body.

Understanding that he needed to be the strong Dodger leader in this time of trouble, Tracy felt he could say little.

Then, a couple of days ago, while traveling from Vero Beach to Los Angeles, Tracy received a call from Debra.

The cancer had been beaten back. It was again in remission.

For the second time this winter, the paperboy cried.

*

So what kind of manager is Jim Tracy going to be?

Just read his book.

His book?

Unknown or not, Tracy may be the first Dodger manager to be featured in a hardcover book before taking the job.

It’s called, “The Boys Who Would Be Cubs.”

Written by Joseph Bosco, published in 1990, it chronicles a year in the life of the 1998 Peoria Chiefs minor league team.

A team managed by Jim Tracy.

“It’s pretty much all true,” Tracy said. “I let the guy do about everything but ride the bus.”

The book portrays Tracy as being as old-fashioned as those glasses.

He loves to teach, loves to talk ball, preaches to his team like this:

“Professional baseball . . . ain’t about quitting. That’s why there’s no clock. Somebody’s gotta beat you before you pack the equipment bag and go get ready to do it again tomorrow.

“That’s the only way I ever learned to play this game . . . I was never no prospect . . . I was a suspect all the way up . . . but I got there over people a lot better than me because I wanted it more than the other fellow. Youse can bet your [bleep] on that.”

His words are sprinkled with phrases like, “Jeez’em’tally” and “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

He spends much of the book, it seems, talking baseball in his underwear, a nickname for everybody, a theory on everything.

At the time, for reasons unknown, friends called him, “Shooter.” Earlier in his career, he was known as “Country.” Both of them fit.

When things really went south for his Class-A Chiefs, Shooter pulled out the rope.

During a hitting slump, he tied a rope between his player’s ankles during batting practice to keep them from overstriding.

Not that Tracy would ever try this with Shawn Green, but soon his players were not only voluntarily wearing the shackles, but coloring them and keeping them in their pockets during games.

The book ends with the manager leading a team not to a playoff, but back to 70-70 after being 36-54 at the All-Star break.

The book ends in typical Jim Tracy triumph.

“This is my greatest moment in baseball,” he whispers on page 328. “To see what those kids did . . . with nothing . . . and from nowhere . . . for nothing . . . but themselves.”

*

So what’s going to happen?

Sheffield could overthrow the clubhouse by May. Eric Karros could throw his hands up by July. Kevin Malone could be fired in October. Jim Tracy could be history in December.

Or, not.

Maybe the most fundamental spring training since the days of Walter Alston will translate into a good start.

Maybe the players will bond with a guy who will call them by their first names, never rip them in the newspaper, talk ball all night in his underwear.

Maybe the fans will love a guy who manufactures runs, insists on proper cut-off throws, works the game instead of just watching it.

Only one thing is for certain.

Tracy’s family will move here from Sarasota this week. They will subscribe to a newspaper. It will regularly show up on their driveway.

Tracy will learn the name and address of the person who delivers it, just as he has known the name and address of every person who has delivered his newspaper since the cold winter 15 years ago.

Come Christmas, this person should start checking his mailbox.

“I may forget some things,” said the new occupant of one the most prestigious dugout seats in baseball. “But I never forget to take care of the paperboy.”

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.