Thursday, May 15, 2008
The laid-back manager of the hard-charging Oakland A's does it his way, laconically and happily. And that drives his critics crazy.
Oct 16, 2001 | Some labels are hard to shake. Get tagged as a self-promoter, or a horn dog, or a cheapskate, and that characterization is going to follow you around like a strip of toilet paper trailing from your heel. But none of those is half as tough to overcome as that most lethal of putdowns: being dismissed as a nice guy, mild but harmless. That was the situation Art Howe faced when he arrived in Oakland, Calif., late in 1995 to take over the job of A's manager from Tony La Russa, an intense man who vibrated like a Chihuahua and often gave the impression he would bite your nose off if you did not show him sufficient respect.
How did Howe handle that? His first move was to do nothing, and I mean that literally. It was my job back then to cover the A's for the San Francisco Chronicle, but I was gone in the off season, so the Chronicle's slash-and-burn columnist Glenn Dickey was handed the task of writing up Howe's arrival in town. Dickey had wrongly speculated in print earlier in the week that a likable bullshit artist named Jim Lefebvre, a former A's hitting coach, was the leading candidate to replace La Russa. In his article announcing Howe's hiring on the front page of the Chronicle sports section -- the morning Howe arrived for his welcome press conference -- Dickey went on at length about Lefebvre and made clear his low regard for Howe. He even ridiculed his hiring as "just another step toward anonymity for the A's, once the most colorful team in baseball."
At the end of the press conference when Dickey went up to shake Howe's hand, Howe raised his hand to shake until he heard "Hi, I'm Glenn Dickey." Then he dropped his hand. It was an unmistakable snub of the powerful, head-hunting columnist for all to see. In fact, four different people all told me about it later, saying "It was amazing!" or "I couldn't believe it!"
It was a brazen, ballsy way to start his time in Oakland, and he paid for it, repeatedly. But that's Howe. And that's the key to his story: Howe knew just what he was risking in refusing to kiss anyone's ass, and he would make the same decision again, even knowing the consequences, and again and again. He's a calm nice guy on the outside, but get to know him and you find he's tough in ways that are not at first obvious. That's why his team made it to the playoffs, despite a wretched 8-18 start to this year's season.
"Obviously his greatest coup is that when the team was down this year he didn't panic, he stayed calm, and his players stood behind him," Phil Garner, the Detroit Tigers manager, tells me in a phone interview. "He's very solid and even-keeled. He doesn't seem to get too high, and doesn't seem to get too low. I don't know if that's the only way to be, but it's one way. Dusty Baker gets high as a kite, and his players feed off that. Art was a good player, a sound player who did not make mistakes. That's the way he manages, and that's what he expects from his team. He wasn't flashy, but he was a grinder, he did his routine every day. He had really terrific hands, very good defensively, and was very sturdy."
Howe, 55, had a respectable career as a player, batting an unspectacular .260 over 11 major-league seasons, seven of those playing for the Houston Astros. But he was always the kind of guy you want on your side. His strength was defense, and though he's known as a third baseman, he played only 400 of his 840 big-league games at third, and also 284 at second, 130 at first and 26 at shortstop. He was, in short, the kind of player always eager to do whatever it took to win -- lying to a manager about whether he had played second base before, just to stay in the lineup, playing hurt, whatever.
Howe had some tough seasons with the A's and his long-term job security has been in doubt as often as not. But the A's 102-win regular season this year bumps Howe's Oakland numbers up to a solid 497-474 mark, and he trails only La Russa (798-673) in wins for an Oakland A's manager. (Howe was 392-418 in his five seasons managing the Astros.) Howe, in short, is right on the threshold of moving up a notch, from well-liked baseball man, widely admired but never more than that, to something else. It just might be that his managing style makes more sense now than ever, as even young players have big money at their disposal.
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