Nice Guys Finish First

Few dream of growing up to be manager of the Anaheim Angels. Certainly not Mike Scioscia, a Philadelphia kid who became a fierce, formidable catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not the man who learned his craft at the knee of Roy Campanella, who learned about baseball strategy and managing men from Tommy Lasorda, who learned how to love a team from Peter O’Malley.

But four years ago, after having spent 23 years in the Dodger organization, Scioscia was told he was welcome to leave. He learned that his willingness to bleed Dodger blue wasn’t so prized by the new corporate ownership. So now Scioscia is manager of the Angels--the World Champion Anaheim Angels. He got there not only by knowing what he wants, but who he is. “One thing I’ll always believe,” he says, “is that I have to do the things I believe in, and do them my way. It’s the only way I can be. If I’m going to be fired or if I have to quit a job, I can accept it only if I know I behaved the way I believe was right.”

Scioscia believes, above all else, in family. And so, on President’s Day Monday, a February school holiday for 14-year-old Matthew Scioscia and 11-year-old Taylor Scioscia, their father has grabbed a bat, a glove and four balls and ducked out of his small office at Tempe Diablo Stadium in Arizona, where the Angels conduct spring training. His kids and wife, Anne, have come to spend a three-day weekend. This might be the fourth day of spring training and there might be a dozen messages on his voice mail and an insistent list of requests and obligations, photos to be taken, interviews to be conducted. But the Angels manager is hustling his son and daughter out onto the field.

It’s a perfect day in the desert. The sky is blue, the temperature is 72 degrees. The field is bright green and not yet trampled by the games to come. The only sound is that of Scioscia’s voice and his bat striking the ball. He is hitting pop-ups to his son, who is nursing a broken wrist, while his daughter chases the uncatchable balls. It’s a simple half hour of play. It’s one of the little things Scioscia believes a father should do with his children, because it’s what his father, Fred, did with young Mike. There are other things that Scioscia believes. He believes that baseball is a game, not life, and that life is not complicated: have some values, have a plan, live. He believes, too, that little things--whether a stolen half hour with his kids or a well-executed squeeze play--can add up in the end.

As Scioscia’s team moved from laughingstock to oddity to lovable world champions last season, what was said most often about them was that the Angels played as a team. The players were applauded for setting aside their egos. Fans saw their work ethic unfold each time home-run hitter Troy Glaus sacrificed an at-bat to move a runner, or outfielder Darin Erstad hurled his body to make a catch. They saw it whenever David Eckstein or Tim Salmon or Scott Spiezio played hit-and-run, knew when to take an extra base, considered a run-scoring infield hit as important as a spectacular home run. It became known as small ball, or little ball.

“There’s no secret,” Scioscia has said, in various ways, again and again. “It’s fundamental baseball. It’s understanding that you need an entire team doing things the right way.”

To Scioscia, the rules are never difficult. Life is simple. Not easy, but simple. Study hard, get good grades. Make your bed, clean your room. Understand the rules, don’t be late. Respect your parents, aunts and uncles, teachers and coaches. Treat people as you expect to be treated. Make good choices. So instead of joining other Angels coaches for a golf outing, Scioscia spends an afternoon with his kids. Nothing dramatic; it’s just what a good father does.

“It’s how Mike operates,” says Mickey Hatcher, the Angels hitting coach and one of Scioscia’s former Dodger teammates. “Mike does things the right way in every part of his life.”

Can that really be true? Let’s check the box score to see how Scioscia’s simple ethic played out in nine of his life’s most important innings.

*

Anne

Anne Mcilqueham was living in Inglewood in may of 1981, going to school, learning to become an X-ray technician. She was living a student life, short on money and always looking for fun things to do on the weekend. She and a friend made plans every Saturday and Sunday to see a movie, to have brunch. Nothing fancy, always cheap. On a particular summer weekend 21 years ago, Anne’s friend had good news.

“Her family had Dodger season tickets and they weren’t using them,” Anne recalls. “We could have the tickets for Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. For free.”

Anne had been a cheerleader for the Thousand Oaks High football team. She wasn’t much of a baseball fan. But she was enthusiastic. In the middle of the Saturday night game, Anne asked her friend a question: “Who’s the receiver?” It wasn’t a receiver, her friend told her. It was a catcher. His name was Mike Scioscia. “He’s cute,” Anne said. “I’m going to meet him.”

Before Sunday afternoon games, Dodger fans were invited to get autographs from selected players. At the end of the Saturday night game, Anne heard an announcement that Scioscia would be one of the players available Sunday. He would be signing autographs. “It’s meant to be,” Anne told her friend.

Late Saturday night, Anne baked cookies. Tollhouse chocolate chip with Anne’s improvisations on the recipe--some extra vanilla, a little more butter. She brought the cookies to the Sunday game. Anne and her friend then marched off to the right-field bleacher area where Scioscia was to sign. Except he wasn’t there.

“I was standing there with my plate of cookies and I guess I looked pretty pathetic,” Anne recalls, “because a security guard asked who I was looking for. I told him. He said that it happened all the time, players needed treatment or extra work and another player came out to sign. But I wanted Mike. So the guard gave me his name and told me to see him after the game, that he thought Mike would like to meet me.”

True to his word, the security guard escorted Anne down to the clubhouse area following the game. After Scioscia had showered and dressed, the guard introduced Anne to Mike. These sort of things sometimes happen to professional athletes, but it’s not what you’re thinking.

“I gave him the cookies,” Anne recalls. “Mike took the plastic wrap off the plate and started eating.”

“Yeah,” Scioscia says, “I probably did. I never turned down food.”

Mike asked Anne if he could walk her to her car. Embarrassed that she was parked far away, in the cheap lot, and because her friend was waiting in the car, Anne suggested she and Scioscia walk to his car. “When we got to the players’ lot and Mike’s car,” Anne says, “I looked up and there were dozens of girls standing there waiting with cookies and cakes and brownies. I was so embarrassed. If I could have evaporated right there, I would have.”

Scioscia didn’t notice, and offered to get Anne tickets to other games. A couple of weeks later, Anne went to another. Then another. Then came a night out at the movies and then a dinner.

“And then we were dating,” she says. “Simple.”

For five years Anne McIlqueham and Mike Scioscia were a couple. Anne went to Philadelphia and met his family. He was welcomed by Anne’s parents in Ventura County. One day, Anne picked up Scioscia at the airport after a Dodger road trip. She thought they’d go out to dinner. He suggested the drive-through window at In-N-Out Burger, then eating at home. So they did. As they dined on Double Doubles and shakes, Anne says Scioscia pulled out “the little box” and proposed. The stadium security guard came to their wedding. They’ve been married more than 17 years, and still hold hands.

*

Family

At 44, Scioscia is still the baby of a family of three--older brother Fred is in the insurance business, sister Gail is a speech pathologist. They both live in Normal, Ill. His mother, Florence, was a grade-school teacher. His father, Fred, sold beer. His large, extended, Italian family lived in the same development in Morton, a suburb 10 miles west of Philadelphia. “Every weekend it was a celebration of something, a birthday, an anniversary, a holiday,” Scioscia says. “We ate together, we played together.”

Fred and Florence have both died. But whenever the Angels play in Baltimore, Scioscia’s aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews drive 90 minutes south from Philadelphia, a small band of Angels fans on these trips to Camden Yards. “What I am today is because of my mother and father,” Scioscia says. “What am I? I’m not a complicated guy. I just have my core of beliefs and I stick with them. They worked for my mom and dad and they work for me.”

Scioscia carried those beliefs west. In the thick of last season’s playoff race, with the unheralded Angels team chasing the American League Championship and its first-ever World Series and its first-ever World Series title, a Los Angeles radio station dialed Scioscia’s cell phone number to conduct a live on-air interview. The deejays reached him on a school bus, where he was chaperoning one of his daughter’s classes during a field trip. One of that same station’s listeners called weeks later to report a Scioscia sighting at Matthew Scioscia’s baseball game--just hours before the Angels were scheduled to take the field for a World Series game.

Since leading the Angels to a dramatic seventh-game victory over the San Francisco Giants, Scioscia has done . . . What? Stuff. Normal stuff. Games and carpool and maybe a dinner out now and then. Six days after the Angels won the Series, Scioscia was at the Burbank Hilton with Anne to watch Taylor’s dance team in a regional competition. He would no more miss Taylor’s dance team than he would miss one of Matt’s basketball or baseball games.

*

Home

In 1993, when the Dodgers were still Scioscia’s future, the family designed and built a home at the end of a street at the end of a development at the end of the world, it seems. There are nothing but mountains behind the house in Westlake Village. The silence is deep and peaceful. There is a pool and a basketball hoop and a tennis court. Inside is a jukebox, a pool table, a little practice putting green. The kitchen is open and is part of the family room. When the Scioscias have friends over to “make your own pizza” parties, they eat in the kitchen.

Pictures of Scioscia, Anne, Matt and Taylor cover nearly every wall. The sports trophies aren’t so obvious, tucked away on shelves or in Mike’s office. Matt and Taylor go to the same Catholic grade school where Anne went as a child. Anne’s parents live nearby.

The home is 74 miles from Edison Field, where the Angels play home games. There is no easy way to commute, but the Scioscias don’t move easily. They don’t leave home. “On game days,” Scioscia says, “I leave at 12:30 and the traffic isn’t bad.” He’s usually in his clubhouse office by 2:30 for 7:30 p.m. night games. “After the games, it’s a great way to relax,” Scioscia says. “If I lived close to the ballpark and went right home, I wouldn’t go right to bed. With the drive, by the time I get home I’ve replayed the game in my mind, thought about everything and I’ve had a chance to unwind. It’s great. Why move?”

Scioscia doesn’t listen to sports talk radio on the drives. He listens to Bruce Springsteen and Elton John. Eating in the car has been a problem. All his life, Scioscia says, he has battled his weight. “I was born [weighing] 10 pounds and I’ve been trying to lose weight ever since,” is his favorite line. He hired a nutritionist this off-season, but Anne’s advice sticks in Scioscia’s mind: “She said I have to eat breakfast, and that it is really important to start the day with protein.”

So Scioscia goes to McDonald’s. He has the fruit and yogurt parfait. But he also wants meat. “Anne says Canadian bacon is the best meat in the morning.” Scioscia tries to get his own version of an Egg McMuffin. “What I want is the muffin and four slices of Canadian bacon,” he says. “No egg. But it’s not easy. I get regular bacon. Or no bacon and the egg.”

Scioscia perseveres, though. He knows what he wants. He will get it.

*

The blue period

Scioscia was 17. He had been offered a four-year baseball scholarship to Clemson. On a spring afternoon in 1976--Mike home at lunchtime, his parents at work--the phone rang. Dodger Coach Tommy Lasorda was on the line. “Tommy said he wanted to pick me up and take me to Veterans Stadium and work me out,” Scioscia recalls. “My stomach was jumping. It seemed like a minute later and Tommy was at the door to pick me up.”

Scioscia worked out with Lasorda and Steve Yeager, who was the Dodger catcher. The team drafted Scioscia No. 19 in the first round. Within a day, Scioscia told his mom and dad he wouldn’t be going to Clemson. “My mom cried,” he says. “I hadn’t seen her cry before. But she was a teacher and she wanted me to go to college. I understood. But I didn’t have any doubts. I had to go.”

Within a week, Scioscia was on a plane to Bellingham, Wash., where the Dodgers’ developmental league team was scheduled to play.

His career was above average. Yeager, whom Scioscia replaced as catcher, recalls that Mike handled the Dodger pitching staff better than anyone ever had. He was built to take a beating, with a strong chest, soft hands and an indomitable spirit. He will forever be remembered for a play in 1985 when he collided with Jack Clark of the St. Louis Cardinals while blocking home plate. Scioscia was knocked silly but held onto the ball. Clark was out. Scioscia was out cold.

“That wasn’t the hardest hit Mike ever took or gave,” says Hatcher. “He had a collision in the minors with Rickey Henderson that I’ll never forget.”

Lasorda remembers a Dodgers game against the Expos “where Mike knocked down six or seven of their guys at home plate. The Expos complained to the National League the next day, said Mike wasn’t playing fair. Hah. All he was doing was blocking the plate.”

There was nothing Scioscia loved doing more than blocking home plate, Hatcher says. It’s what a catcher is supposed to do. “He relished it, he lived for it. Mike was never going to give that plate away. When people tried to score, when they walked away, they weren’t going to feel good . . . I really believe Mike could have been a lifetime .300 hitter, but the beatings he took for the team behind home plate took their toll.”

Lasorda says he will always remember Scioscia for hitting a two-run, game-tying home run against the Mets in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 1988 National League championship series. “He hit the ball off Doc Gooden, with two outs in the top of the ninth,” Lasorda says. “We won that game in 12 innings.” The victory tied the series at 2-2, and the Dodgers went on to win in seven games, then beat the Oakland A’s in five games to clinch the World Series.

Scioscia, nursing a bad shoulder and at the end of his Dodger contract, found himself a free agent after the 1992 season. He signed on with San Diego, but tore his rotator cuff in spring training in 1993. He was picked up by Texas in 1994, but the injured throwing shoulder kept Scioscia from playing again in a game. He finished his playing career with a lifetime batting average of .259. He had earned two World Series rings. He caught two no-hitters thrown by Fernando Valenzuela and Kevin Gross. He was a two-time All Star and, in 1990, became the first Dodger catcher since Campanella in 1954 to start an All-Star game.

*

The dilemma

Scioscia says he never thought about what he wanted to do after baseball. “I think I knew I wanted to stay in the game. Maybe as a broadcaster. Maybe as a coach. I had just focused on playing until the end.”

The Dodgers offered Scioscia a position as minor-league catching instructor in 1995 after he finally retired as a player, and he accepted the offer. He was forming a plan for his future. He understood the game. He would work his way up. He would learn how to manage.

“As a player,” Hatcher says, “Mike was a total gamer, a team leader from the start. He controlled the pitching staff with the best of them. We all came up with Peter O’Malley, who taught us a lot about the coaching side of things. And Peter also taught us about the idea of the team as a family and the ‘Dodger Way’ of doing things. Mike listened to everything guys like Peter and Tommy told him. He’s a natural at managing. Everything is simple to Mike.”

By 1999 Scioscia had been given the manager’s job with the Albuquerque Dukes, the Dodgers’ triple-A minor-league affiliate. It was the progression Scioscia had hoped for, but the experience wasn’t satisfying. The O’Malleys had sold the Dodgers in 1998. By then the team belonged to Rupert Murdoch and Fox, and the new owners instituted a system that left the minor league managers with little freedom to develop their own styles.

“Mike didn’t have an opportunity to manage that [Albuquerque] team,” Hatcher says. “Everything was so regimented. You could only pitch this guy on this day, you could only start this guy at this position on that day. It was the biggest joke. These guys were one step away from the majors and Mike was having to do all this kind of stuff. You could see it in his eyes. The season frustrated him. The focus now was not on the ‘Dodger Way’ or the Dodger people, and we all sensed that.”

Scioscia had thought he was being groomed to be the Dodger manager, and, according to a former Dodger teammate and a former Dodger coach, he was straightforward in telling the new management how he envisioned future teams. His strong opinions weren’t welcomed. The new owners wanted more new people and less of the “Dodger Way.” So after the Dukes finished with a 65-74 record in 1999, Scioscia quit.

He has never complained, blamed the Dodgers or expressed bitterness even though, Anne says, he had planned “to spend his life with the Dodgers. He truly believed that was his path. But paths change. Mike understands that. So he moved on and said, ‘Thank you.’ But it hurt him to leave.”

Lasorda agrees. “It hurt Mike a great deal to leave the Dodgers. He was a real Dodger. He loved the Dodgers. His whole life was the Dodgers. He never wanted to leave. But he did, and the class of the man is that he said nothing. Mike could have blasted the Dodgers, really blasted them, and no one would have blamed him. Not even me. But he didn’t. He just moved on.”

“Nothing lasts forever,” is what Scioscia says now.

*

The opportunity

The Angels of 1999 were a fractured and fractious team. The clubhouse was an unhappy place. Previous manager Terry Collins, a decent man, had lost control and was fired in mid-season.

“The problem with Terry,” one Angel says, “was that he asked too many guys their opinions. But then, he never took those opinions. So the guys he asked and ignored, they lost respect for him. And the guys he didn’t ask, they lost respect for him. It seemed as if Terry didn’t have his own beliefs.”

The Disney company, which owns the Angels, had just hired Bill Stoneman as the new general manager for the team. Stoneman is a former major league pitcher and general manager of the Montreal Expos, and his first task was to hire a manager. Stoneman contacted Scioscia, a man he knew had strong opinions about how to manage a baseball team.

Kevin Appier, a 35-year-old Angel pitcher and a veteran of 14 major league seasons with four different teams, says he can’t remember how many managers he’s played for. But he can categorize them.

“There’s the manager who is walking around, telling players what to do, being rigid and letting everybody know who has the power,” Appier says. “There’s the manager who is always in the clubhouse, being everybody’s buddy, maybe too much so, and he doesn’t get much respect. And there’s the manager who can talk to the guys, who you feel you can talk to, but who you know is going to do things his way, and you’d better too. That’s Mike. You can go into Mike’s office any time and talk to him. But he has the respect of every guy in this clubhouse. Mike is confident enough about himself and what he believes in that he doesn’t need to establish extreme authority.”

The Great Ostrich Caper happened during Scioscia’s first spring training with the Angels, in 2000. To lighten the mood, Scioscia gave pitcher Jarrod Washburn the responsibility to do something crazy, goofy, funny, silly. It was something Scioscia would later ask of many players, but Washburn was one of the first, and he took his task seriously.

“I saw an ad for an ostrich festival in Gilbert,” Washburn recalls. “So Scott [Schoeneweis] and I went out to the thing. We asked one of the guys what it would cost to take one of the birds to visit the clubhouse. He said $150. We sucked it up and paid.”

The bird and its owner came into the clubhouse. Pitcher Ramon Ortiz, who is from the Dominican Republic and who was unfamiliar with the big bird, “was plastered up against the wall in his locker,” Washburn says. “It was the funniest thing.”

Scioscia’s arrival in the Angels clubhouse was just what the team needed.

*

The curse

Scioscia came to a team where the pressure to win wasn’t stifling. There was, in fact, no history of winning and a long-standing rumor about a curse on the team, whose stadium supposedly is built atop an ancient burial ground. The Angels were 82-80 in 2000, a seven-win improvement in the standings. A year later, the team took seven steps backward to the same 75-87 record of 1999. It seemed worse, though. The Angels finished 41 games behind American League West winner, Seattle.

There was a reason. Injuries, lots of them, especially to the stars--Tim Salmon, Darin Erstad and Mo Vaughn. “Mike understood that it wasn’t the system or the talent,” Hatcher says. “It was the injuries and there was no reason to lose faith.”

Even as the Angels lost 19 of their final 21 games in 2001, and 14 of their first 20 in 2002, and even when Scioscia’s name came up in polls as manager most likely to be fired first in 2002, he stayed calm. He believed in himself and what he had. “All the coaches were more antsy to make changes than Mike,” says bench coach Joe Maddon. “It was Mike who kept telling us to calm down and believe in the talent.”

*

The transformation

Maddon is intensely loyal to Scioscia. He served as interim manager in 1999 after Collins was fired in mid-season. Maddon, who has been in the Angels organization for 29 years, wanted to keep the manager’s job. When Scioscia was hired instead, Maddon didn’t know what to expect.

“Mike called me,” Maddon says. “We talked for a long time, about baseball, about philosophies, about what he wanted to do, what he expected. He treated me with respect, he listened. It was an easy conversation, simple and clear. And I very much wanted to work with him.”

Angel players have mostly come to the same conclusion about Scioscia.

Relief ace Troy Percival: “His communication with his players is second to none.”

Erstad: “You can talk to Mike about anything . . . I’d love to play for Mike Scioscia my whole career.”

Second baseman Adam Kennedy: “He listens to his players, but he will do what he believes is right.”

Salmon: “He talks to us. I think he’s invited every player into his office at one time or another, just to talk.”

Hatcher: “I’ve met a lot of good people in this sport, but Mike’s special. He’s a good person.”

Maddon: “Mike is direct, he is honest, he is consistent in what he believes and how he treats people. He’s the most decent human being I know.”

Yeager: “Mike gives what he wants--respect. He wants to earn your respect. That was the way he was brought up. I don’t think Mike has an ego. He checks it at the door.”

Lasorda: “Whatever Mike gets in life, he deserves it.”

Lasorda was most impressed with how Scioscia handled Salmon in 2001 and the beginning of 2002. In March of 2001, the Angels gave Salmon the biggest contract extension in team history--four years, $40 million. In the first season after that contract, Salmon’s batting average dipped to a career-low .227. Last April during the worst start in team history, Salmon did worse, hitting .192. “Mike stuck with Tim, really believed in him,” Lasorda says.

Salmon says Scioscia treated him with respect and made it clear that he felt it was as much his responsibility to help Salmon work out of his slump as it was Salmon’s. “I called it ‘getting summoned to the principal’s office,’ ” Salmon says. “But, really, Mike would call me in and we would talk about what he could do, and I could do, to turn things around. I never felt pressured.”

“Mike has three rules,” Hatcher says. “Play the game hard. Practice hard. Be there on time. That’s what Mike wants. We all just follow the guidelines. Pretty simple.”

*

The postseason

Scioscia loves working with the Angel catchers, the Molina brothers, Bengie and Jose. He still gets into the stance, the crouch. He still blocks the plate. “He’s right out there,” Hatcher says. “Every day he gets dirt on his clothes, and it’s great.”

During this off-season, Dusty Baker, former teammate of Scioscia and manager of the Giants, left San Francisco to manage the Cubs. Baker signed a $14-million contract. Lou Piniella left the Seattle Mariners to take the Tampa Bay job for $13 million. Art Howe moved from the Oakland A’s to the New York Mets for $9.4 million.

Scioscia’s Angels finished ahead of the Mariners in the AL West. They outlasted the A’s in the playoffs. They beat the Giants in the World Series. Scioscia is in the middle of a four-year, $3-million contract, and the Angels have the option to re-sign him for a fifth year, at a renegotiated salary, in 2006. He didn’t ask for a raise, not even after winning the World Series. “I signed the contract and it was what I deserved with the experience I had,” Scioscia says.

He and Anne didn’t take any fancy vacations after the season ended. They shuttled the kids to games. They went to the movies. Scioscia’s favorite television show is “Everybody Loves Raymond.” It’s about an Italian sportswriter. “It’s funny as heck,” he says.

He loves history, but he doesn’t care much about names and dates. He wants to see how people lived. For example, if he could, Scioscia says he would like to go back in time, to the 1920s maybe, plop himself down on a dugout bench and see what it was like. “I’d love to see a workout, a practice, a game. I’d love to see how the guys wore their uniforms, how they practiced, whether they enjoyed the game, how hard they played. I’d love to compare then and now. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Ask Scioscia to cooperate in a magazine profile following his team’s championship season, and he says: “Why do you want to talk to me? Talk to the players. Talk to the owners. I’m not interesting.” What could possibly be interesting about someone so uncomplicated? “I just decided a long time ago that you have one thing in your life: your core values. I’ve got to do things my way, the way I believe is right. If I get fired, I’m going to get fired doing things my way. I couldn’t live life any other way.”

Simple.