With Brenly in Charge, Old Rules Don’t Apply

Maybe the veteran-laden Arizona Diamondbacks didn’t need a new manager as much as they needed a handyman with a chainsaw who could sever Buck Showalter’s control-oriented shackles.

By now, of course, there are no maybes.

In Bob Brenly, the Diamondbacks got both--a manager with the strength of his dugout convictions and the wisdom to reduce the rules and relax the reins.

Coming down from the broadcast booth to replace Showalter, Brenly’s first act may have been his biggest.

He walked into his first full squad meeting in spring training, set down a large blue volume he was carrying (the apocryphal version has him hurling it into a trash can) and said, “Those were the rules last year and these are the rules this year.”

Brenly pulled a cocktail napkin from his hip pocket and read: “Be on time and get the job done.”

That was it and that has been it, and the relaxed Diamondbacks have thrived to the extent that in Game 1 of the World Series Saturday night they resembled the October-tested New York Yankees more than the Yankees themselves.

Only four years removed from birth by expansion, they got the pitching, hitting and defense that the Yankees didn’t and routed a team that had won 16 of its last 17 World Series games, 9-1.

Aura and mystique?

“Sounds like dancers in a nightclub,” a disdainful Curt Schilling had said of the Yankees, and his teammates got the message.

Then again, they had gotten the one they wanted from Brenly in March.

“That was a bit theatrical,” the Arizona manager said of his clubhouse meeting, “but I just wanted them to understand in my first meeting that we were going to be loose and we were going to have fun, but I expected them to conduct themselves like professionals. Hopefully, that helped drive it home. The best way to be successful in anything you do is relaxed and confident. Baseball is no exception.”

After three years as an analyst for Fox on Diamondback telecasts, after almost 10 years managing the game from behind the plate as a major league catcher, after gaining valuable experience as a San Francisco Giant coach under Roger Craig and Dusty Baker, Brenly is the first rookie manager to take a team to the World Series in 21 years (Jim Frey did it with Kansas City in 1980) and needs only three more wins to become the first rookie manager to win a Series in 40 years (Ralph Houk did it with the Yankees in 1961).

“I’m having the time of my life,” Brenly said. “This is what I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m fortunate to be able to do it with a good ballclub.”

It is happening about seven years later than anticipated. Then-Giant owner Bob Lurie promised Brenly he would succeed Craig, but Lurie ultimately sold to keep the team in the Bay Area and new owner Peter Magowan hired Baker, saying he wasn’t obligated to that promise. No regrets, no bitterness. Brenly stayed three more years as a coach before trying the broadcast booth.

Maybe it was a blessing.

“I think I’m a much different manager than I once thought I’d be,” Brenly said. “Seven or eight years ago I would have been the my-way-or-the-highway type of guy, and one thing I learned talking to other managers is that doesn’t work anymore.”

Showalter didn’t buy that. He won a division title with the Diamondbacks in 1999 insisting on my way or the highway, but his veteran team was slowly smothered by his control. A team with an average age of more than 32 didn’t need the manager standing at the foot of the stairs as the Diamondbacks boarded their charter flights making sure his players met the dress code. They didn’t need him railing at the clubhouse man in Milwaukee because the ketchup was in a plastic container and not a glass container.

“Buck did a lot to build this team and organization,” veteran second baseman Jay Bell said. “Nobody will ever complain about his understanding of the game or his ability to run the game, but [Brenly] has removed some of the pressure and allowed us to play in a way that has enabled us to get to the World Series.”

Which is not to say that Brenly simply threw away Showalter’s rule book.

He brought former Giant teammates Bob Melvin and Chris Speier with him for support as coaches but has been his own man in the dugout.

He benched the high salaried Bell. He used his best pinch-hitter, Eurbiel Durazo, in the fourth inning of a game. He employed Miguel Batista in relief only a day after he had started. He called for a squeeze play that was botched in the fifth game of the division series with the St. Louis Cardinals, only to have Tony Womack’s ensuing and decisive single take him off the hook. He started Danny Bautista in place of the hot hitting Steve Finley in Game 5 of the league championship series with the Atlanta Braves because he liked the way Bautista was swinging in batting practice.

“I’m more of a feel manager than a numbers guy,” Brenly said. “I look at all the reports and get all I can out of them but I still think your most important tool is your eyes.”

In leading the Diamondbacks to the World Series, Brenly has tossed his share of trash cans, done his share of cussing (“I like to have fun but I also have a dark side,” he said), but always in the privacy of his office. He has had only four team meetings, all positive.

Said Schilling: “BB walked into a situation that could have been the best of times, worst of times, with a veteran team, and I think he took the perfect approach early in spring training by just saying play as hard as you can and just get it done. That has a lot of meaning to veteran players.

“He’s handled the best bench I’ve ever been around perfectly. Our bullpen was lights out for an extended period of time and he handled it perfectly as well. He’s kept his hands off when he’s needed to keep them off. Our MO has been to play nine innings as hard as we can regardless of what happened the day before, and he deserves a lot of the credit for that.”

A manager, of course, can look a lot smarter when he has two pitchers go 43-12 during the regular season and continue their domination in the postseason.

Schilling stuffed the Yankees on three hits and one run in seven innings Saturday and could come back on three days’ rest in Game 4 if Brenly chooses. Now Schilling’s left-handed half, Randy Johnson, starts tonight with a chance to send the Yankees home 0-2.

It was a year ago, during the Yankee-Mets World Series in New York, that the Diamondbacks finalized Brenly’s hiring.

The terms were written on a cocktail napkin that is now in General Manager Joe Garagiola Jr.’s file cabinet.

The cocktail napkin on which Brenly wrote out his one sentence of rules is missing, but the relaxed and grateful Diamondbacks haven’t needed a reminder.