FEELINGS OF EJECTION

By Kevin Baxter and Bill Shaikin

May 25, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

ATLANTA —

It will happen sometime in the next few weeks, maybe because of a checked swing. Or a close play at second. Chances are, though, it will be a ball-strike call. Those are the ones that Bobby Cox can’t resist arguing.

Whatever it is that brings the Atlanta Braves manager onto the field, the umpires won’t let him stay long. They never do. And when he’s ejected this time, he’ll take a little bit of baseball history with him.

Cox has been thrown out of 128 major league games. That’s almost as many games as Dontrelle Willis has played in. Only Hall of Famer John McGraw, with 131, was run more often.

Not that he’s counting. Cox doesn’t even want to talk about it.

“I never watch that until writers bring it up,” he snaps. “It’s not something that I’m marking off, OK? Who wants to be thrown out the most times?”

Geez, this guy will even argue about arguing. But there’s a method to his madness.

“He protects [his] players the way you should. He stands up for his players,” says Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen, who played briefly for Cox.

“He’d rather us stay in the game,” says Braves third baseman Chipper Jones, “and him get ejected.”

Even umpires give a thumbs up for the way Cox gets thumbed out.

“He takes the heat off all his players. And that’s the job of a good manager,” says veteran umpire Hunter Wendelstedt, whose father, Harry, also argued with Cox during a 32-year umpiring career. “He knows what to do. He’s an expert at it. And it’s part of the game.”

The all-time ejection list isn’t the only one Cox is climbing. This month he moved past Sparky Anderson into fourth place on the all-time wins list with 2,195. And in the last 38 years only two managers, Earl Weaver (.583) and Davey Johnson (.564), have a higher lifetime winning percentage than Cox’s .563.

Weaver, it should be noted, also holds the American League record for ejections with 98. So is there a connection between winning your games and losing your temper?

“That’s really so hard to say,” Weaver says. “In trying to win you’re so intense and so into the ballgame and wanting to win so bad, that if a call goes against you -- or you think it goes against you -- you let your feelings be heard to the umpire. Now whether that’s right or wrong, I don’t know.”

Sometimes those feelings boil over, with comic results. Lou Piniella and Lloyd McClendon had tantrums in which they uprooted bases. Countless managers have hurled bats, helmets, even coolers on the field. Weaver tore up a rule book page by page and Leo Durocher, who was ejected 124 times, once kicked dirt on an umpire -- only to have the umpire kick back.

“You do enough things to make a fool of yourself so the people are laughing,” Weaver says. “But when you get home and you see the replays, you’re a little embarrassed.”

Nevertheless, Weaver was among those who perfected a timeless manager theatric, covering the plate with dirt.

“Why use this home plate?” Weaver would ask the umpires. “You’re not calling the balls that go over there.”

“Everything,” he says, “had a meaning. More or less.”

And though few managers will acknowledge it, sometimes that meaning is simply to wake up an uninspired team.

“Some guys use it as a motivational tool,” says Dodgers third base coach Rich Donnelly. “I don’t know if that works. I know it works a lot better if your 2, 3 and 4 hitters are hitting .300. Some managers go out and tell the umpire, ‘Throw me out.’ ”

But Donnelly warns against including Cox or his manager, Grady Little, in that bunch. “Bobby is a straight arrow. When he goes out there, he’s not going out there for style points,” he says. “It’s like Grady. He isn’t going out there for show.”

Yet no matter how or why managers are asked to leave, rarely do they actually do so. When he was managing the Mets, Bobby Valentine was ejected only to return to the dugout in a disguise that included a jacket, sunglasses (during a night game) and a fake mustache painted on with eye black. And in the old days managers would just go stand in the tunnel between the dugout and clubhouse, out of sight of the umpires, and dictate game moves to their coaches.

That strategy didn’t work in the old Class-A Northern League, where some parks had no clubhouses behind the dugouts, much less tunnels connecting them. That was the case during a long-ago game played on a hot, sticky summer night in Mankato, Minn., in which St. Cloud manager Carroll Hardy was ejected.

As Donnelly tells the story, Hardy crawled beneath the bleachers, hiding in the weeds and barking orders to his third baseman.

Not all of Hardy’s instructions had to do with the game, though. After a while Hardy yelled at the infielder: “When you go in can you get me some mosquito spray? These mosquitoes are killing me.”

But perhaps the greatest ejection story of all time -- which may be more apocryphal than factual -- allegedly took place at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and involved Hall of Fame umpire Jocko Conlan and Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh. A raucous bat day crowd was on hand, the story goes, when in the middle of the game Conlan made the correct call on a close play at second.

“Watch this,” Murtaugh told the bench before sprinting out to second base.

As Conlan listened dumbfounded, Murtaugh complimented the umpire for his fairness and integrity, all the while gesturing wildly, waving his arms and kicking dirt toward Conlan. The crowd, as Murtaugh had predicted, went crazy and Conlan finally had to run the manager for, as his written report to the league made clear, “being overly complimentary to an umpire.”

kevin.baxter@latimes.com

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

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Staying power

Most victories by a manager in the majors:

*--* MANAGER YEARS WINS 1. Connie Mack 1894-1950 3,731 2. John McGraw 1899-1932 2,763 3. Tony La Russa 1979-present 2,316 4. Bobby Cox 1978-present 2,199 5. Sparky Anderson 1970-1995 2,194 6. Bucky Harris 1924-56 2,157 7. Joe McCarthy 1926-1950 2,125 8. Walter Alston 1954-1976 2,040 9. Leo Durocher 1939-1973 2,008 10. Joe Torre 1977-present 1,994

*--*

Source: baseball-reference.com

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You’re outta here!

Major league baseball’s all-time ejections list.

Manager Total

John McGraw: 131

Bobby Cox*: 128

Leo Durocher: 124

Earl Weaver: 98

Frankie Frisch: 86

Paul Richards: 80