Speaker 1: If you look at what major league managers make, there
Speaker 1: are some college baseball coaches that make more than some
Speaker 1: major league managers.
Speaker 2: Hey, we've got Scott Miller joining us right now. New
Speaker 2: York Times contributor and Fresh Book appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Uh yesterday, it actually hit the shelves yesterday. It became available,
Speaker 1: So Eddie, as they say wherever books are sold, or
Speaker 1: as we say today, Amazon dot com, Target dot com,
Speaker 1: Barnesandoble dot com, whatever.
Speaker 3: Or Scott Miller's gonna send me a free one because
Speaker 3: all those damn interviews I did, for all those years
Speaker 3: of them. So at some point I'm expecting an autograph
Speaker 3: copy to show up at my house.
Speaker 1: AJ, I'll be happy to I. Yeah, I knew AJ
Speaker 1: when he was a young up and comer with the
Speaker 1: Minnesota Twins when I was covering them.
Speaker 3: And your hair is a little different. What's our hair
Speaker 3: was a little diff Your hair was a little different,
Speaker 3: Scot back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I don't know if you had a beard
Speaker 1: back then, but you know Tom.
Speaker 3: Kelly, Tom Kelly, there was no beards being allowed to
Speaker 3: Tom Kelly's world. You were no sunglasses, You weren't allowed
Speaker 3: to wear sunglasses. You weren't you had to wear your jersey.
Speaker 3: There was no like pullovers.
Speaker 1: Twins didn't pay for shaving cream.
Speaker 3: We had to buy our own fleeces. At one point,
Speaker 3: man Terry Ryan had to buy his own shorts. I mean,
Speaker 3: God knows all these story that's the best.
Speaker 1: I talked to TK for a while. He's in the
Speaker 1: book about managing during his time. AJ, you'll get a
Speaker 1: kick out of this. I wanted to talk to TK
Speaker 1: for many reasons. Tom Kelly managed the Twins back in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, in eighty seven and ninety one
Speaker 1: or two World Series wins. So anyway, I covered TK
Speaker 1: and the Twins from ninety four to ninety nine. AJ
Speaker 1: came up during that time and we got to know
Speaker 1: each other a little bit. But anyway, one of the
Speaker 1: things I wanted to do in the book, among other things,
Speaker 1: shows how managing used to be and how it is now,
Speaker 1: was kind of comparing contrast the famous John Smoltz Game
Speaker 1: seven in nineteen ninety one World Series, the ten inning
Speaker 1: you know strong complete game performance against you know in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, when Kevin Cash famously hooked Blake Snell early
Speaker 1: before he faced the Dodgers, lineup the third time and
Speaker 1: Kevin Cash, God bless him. He was great. I know
Speaker 1: he's tired of talking about the topic, but anyway, two
Speaker 1: extremes of how baseball used to be. Anyway, ajack back
Speaker 1: to the Tom Kelly things. So that's one thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to do in the book. So I called t K,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I haven't been through Minnesota in a while.
Speaker 1: I always preferred doing interviews in person because it's just
Speaker 1: better than you know, on the phone. So I called
Speaker 1: TK a couple of years, you know, when I started
Speaker 1: this project, and he answers and he and I ended up.
Speaker 1: We had a good relationship, even though he could be cantankerous.
Speaker 1: So I tell TK what the issue is or what
Speaker 1: I'm looking for to try to talk to him. I said,
Speaker 1: I'd love to come to the Twin Cities, you know,
Speaker 1: sit down over lunch, maybe spend some time with you
Speaker 1: talking about managing. And Tom Kelly says, Scottie, I don't
Speaker 1: even talk to my wife that much. I don't want
Speaker 1: to have lunch. You don't need to come to the
Speaker 1: Twins City. Now I'm like, oh, man, I really want
Speaker 1: to tell you. So we keep talking and he says Finally,
Speaker 1: he says, I don't even know why i'd want to
Speaker 1: help somebody write a book anyway. Oh my god, I'm
Speaker 1: losing it, you know. I'm like, oh, and so I
Speaker 1: give him my best pitch. I'm like, Tom, you won
Speaker 1: two World Series in nineteen eighty seven and nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: You were a great manager. But you know, all the publicity,
Speaker 1: all the pub comes out of the East coast New
Speaker 1: York or the West coast. I said, I really would
Speaker 1: like to have you in my book. So we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit more. Finally he says, all right, I
Speaker 1: don't know why I'm gonna say it. I'll help you,
Speaker 1: he said, but I can give you a few minutes
Speaker 1: if you want to call me next week. So we
Speaker 1: agree on Monday, he's golfing in the morning. I'll call
Speaker 1: around noon. Okay, great. I call him three and a
Speaker 1: half hours on the phone. He was superb.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, of course, that's it's such TK. I mean,
Speaker 3: I could tell you I told the story before.
Speaker 4: TK.
Speaker 3: I never knew I made the major leagues until Tom
Speaker 3: Kelly had a conversation with me where he wasn't like
Speaker 3: telling me how I'm crappy.
Speaker 4: I was he just came up to you one day.
Speaker 3: In my locker. He was like, Hey, you're gonna be
Speaker 3: in the fantasy football league.
Speaker 4: This is like.
Speaker 3: June, and I was like, I made it.
Speaker 4: He actually talked to me like a normal human.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you're there, I'm doing okay.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's how managing used to be. Though. I told
Speaker 1: to Dan Peatree, who played He was the number two
Speaker 1: pitcher Jack Morris's number one for the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: Tigers World CERTA his team and Sparky Anderson was similar.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know Sparky either by reputation or
Speaker 1: dealing with him as being this affable guy, but he
Speaker 1: didn't want to get to know his players. Partly, he
Speaker 1: used to say, because I know one day I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to release them or trade them, and it's
Speaker 1: going to be too painful, so I don't want to
Speaker 1: know them. And anyway, Dan Petrie told me he pitched
Speaker 1: for Sparky. He said when he first came up, he said,
Speaker 1: we were scared the death of Sparky. He said. The
Speaker 1: only time you ever went into Sparky's office was a
Speaker 1: if he's going to send you down to the minor
Speaker 1: leagues or b if he was going to chew your
Speaker 1: ass over something that happened in the game. He said
Speaker 1: he never stopped by to say good job, and he said,
Speaker 1: I never wanted to talk to Sparky. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to keep letting him do my job. And you know
Speaker 1: that's where you know, managing back then versus managing today
Speaker 1: is all about communicating with your players.
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Speaker 2: I want to make sure I hammer the name of
Speaker 2: the books and people can find it online available. Like
Speaker 2: Scott said, everywhere skipper, why baseball managers matter and always will.
Speaker 2: So let's fast forward to now, did you get into
Speaker 2: the state of managers in today's game, the psychology game,
Speaker 2: the way that they have to work with the front
Speaker 2: office on setting the lineup and any other kind of
Speaker 2: prep and why the manager still matters so much now
Speaker 2: even though they essentially have less power or have to
Speaker 2: spread the power around amongst the organization.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely kind of in a nutshell, Scott, the book
Speaker 1: is it starts in the late seventies when managers had
Speaker 1: all the power, you know, Billy Martin, Earl Weaver, Sparky Anderson.
Speaker 1: And also it starts in late seventies because that's when
Speaker 1: the very first rudimentary computers were available to the public.
Speaker 1: So I kind of that's why I picked them to
Speaker 1: start to kind of move from then to now as
Speaker 1: manager and the game change as computers moved into all
Speaker 1: of our lives and changed every aspect of it. So
Speaker 1: the book kind of goes looks at managing from the
Speaker 1: late seventies to now, what the job was like then,
Speaker 1: what it's like now, how we got from then to now,
Speaker 1: and why we got from then to now, and yeah,
Speaker 1: today's job. It's interesting what the job Aaron Boone is
Speaker 1: doing today in New York. If you just look at
Speaker 1: a list of Yankees managers, you know you'll see whatever
Speaker 1: Billy Martin, Bob Lemon, Joe Torrey, and on paper, that's
Speaker 1: the lineage. But the job Aaron Boone is doing in
Speaker 1: New York today as a manager is completely different than
Speaker 1: the job Joe Tory did or any other manager did
Speaker 1: back in the day. And that's true for all organizations.
Speaker 4: Did you find any crossovers. Did you find any manager
Speaker 4: like like Aaron Boone is now from back in the
Speaker 4: seventies and eighties, more of that like player kind of happy,
Speaker 4: go lucky, not as much of a hard ass or
Speaker 4: did you find anybody that's currently more like a Sparky
Speaker 4: Anderson or a Tom Kelly in the game dealing with
Speaker 4: a bunch of snowflake players.
Speaker 1: You know, I would say Jim Leland's a little bit
Speaker 1: like Sparky and Casey Stango from the standpoint of of
Speaker 1: remember famously in the early nineties when he and Barry
Speaker 1: Bonds got into it in spring training very publicly. And
Speaker 1: you know, for Jim Leland doesn't take any guff. Also,
Speaker 1: he's got that philosophical side where the way he speaks
Speaker 1: it just sounds like a wise philosopher. But you know
Speaker 1: that that would be one I would say, Eric. You know,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is the question keeps coming up, could
Speaker 1: a guy managing today and name any one of the
Speaker 1: thirty man going right now, could he have managed back then?
Speaker 1: Or could like Earl Weaver manage today? And I think
Speaker 1: there are a handful of guys today probably could manage
Speaker 1: back then. I mean, you know, Bruce Bouchie obviously has
Speaker 1: proven his stripes. You know that that's that's a guy
Speaker 1: that that could manage. I think in any era, probably
Speaker 1: Dusty Baker, you know, Leland they're a handful of guys,
Speaker 1: but not a ton of them. And you know, Bochie
Speaker 1: told me in the book, you know, I asked him
Speaker 1: he kind of crosses a couple of different generations, and
Speaker 1: he said, the biggest change in his job is when
Speaker 1: he first started managing. He said, I used to when
Speaker 1: I first started managing the job, I would tell players
Speaker 1: what to do. He said, Now, as I manage it,
Speaker 1: you can't just tell players what to do. Now it
Speaker 1: requires an explanation. You know, Hey, I need you to
Speaker 1: do this for this reason, or hey, this is this
Speaker 1: is why we're we're wanting you to do this. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of got to come. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if Eric you I love I love you,
Speaker 1: said snowflake players. And there are different different different feelings there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, managers today have to be so much more
Speaker 1: better at communicating with their players and relationships than old
Speaker 1: school managers did. And you know, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: you look at managing today and Sandy Alderson, I talked
Speaker 1: to executives as well as managers as well as players
Speaker 1: and ex players, you know, trying to get a handle
Speaker 1: on all of it. And Sandy Alderson said, managing today
Speaker 1: in your tool bag. You've got to have a handful
Speaker 1: of skill set that guys forty years ago didn't need,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's where the difference has come in
Speaker 1: about why the job is different today then back then.
Speaker 4: Big news was made when Craig Council got his forty
Speaker 4: million dollar contract to leave a division rival and go
Speaker 4: manage the Cubs. Dave Roberts has since eclipsed his annual value.
Speaker 4: But should they be paid more? Should they be paid
Speaker 4: With the way the player's salary is going up, managerial
Speaker 4: salaries have not kept up.
Speaker 1: No, you're right. That's a great point. And I did
Speaker 1: talk to Craig Counsel in the book about that. And
Speaker 1: if you look at what major league managers make compared
Speaker 1: to NBA coaches, NFL coaches, even college football and basketball coaches,
Speaker 1: and believe it or not, there are some college baseball
Speaker 1: coaches like Tim Corbin, the great coach at Vanderbilt, that
Speaker 1: make more than some major league managers do. Major league
Speaker 1: manager salaries have been depressed for years, and it's amazing
Speaker 1: because you all know, I don't have to tell you
Speaker 1: what a long season it is and almost required, you know,
Speaker 1: not just managing. Obviously, the games and the obvious things
Speaker 1: that go with it. But you know these guys today,
Speaker 1: especially take Dave Roberts in Los Angeles. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: he gets pulled as if he's made of taffy. He's
Speaker 1: got to deal with the players, he's got to work
Speaker 1: with a baseball front baseball operations department that wants him
Speaker 1: to do certain things. One day, the marketing department of
Speaker 1: the Dodgers may come in and said, hey, we need
Speaker 1: you to speak at a statue dedication ceremony. Or when
Speaker 1: Vin Scully retired, after Vin's last game, there's Dave out
Speaker 1: on the field kind of being mc is they lead
Speaker 1: a ceremony for Vin Scully. And there's so much today
Speaker 1: that goes into it. And yet you're right, they don't
Speaker 1: get paid very much relatively speaking. And you know Craig
Speaker 1: Council said, among other things, you know when he was
Speaker 1: in Milwaukee, he said, yeah, he said, every single day
Speaker 1: we got to do as baseball managers. We got to
Speaker 1: meet the press before the game, after the game. I mean,
Speaker 1: you talk one hundred and sixty two game season that
Speaker 1: my math isn't good. AJ may need to help me here.
Speaker 1: One hundred and sixty two games, pre and postgame. That's
Speaker 1: what that's. That's you know, three hundred and twenty some
Speaker 1: press conferences a year, let alone off days, spring training,
Speaker 1: on and on and on special when breaking news happens.
Speaker 1: And Consol said, whenever I bump into in the offseason,
Speaker 1: like the Green Bay Packers coach or the Milwaukee Bucks coach,
Speaker 1: he said that was that would be the one thing
Speaker 1: that would leave them shaking their heads. They're like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how you meet with the media that much.
Speaker 1: It's nuts.
Speaker 3: Agreed, agreed, But this is this is all to me,
Speaker 3: the declining power of a major league manager. He used
Speaker 3: to be the manager had all the power. I mean,
Speaker 3: manager Tom Kelly, Like we had Terry Ryan as our GM.
Speaker 3: Terry Ryan, honestly, yeah, he had power to make player moves.
Speaker 3: But Tom Kelly'd be like, I don't want him to
Speaker 3: come up, and I want I need a guy this,
Speaker 3: and Terry would say, all right, I'm gonna bring up
Speaker 3: Praszinski and Tom Kelly say, Nope, not him, I want
Speaker 3: anybody else, right, And that was a difference.
Speaker 4: It's changed.
Speaker 3: That's why the roles have kind of reversed, Like now
Speaker 3: it's GM has power.
Speaker 4: Managers a little bit. But it used to be.
Speaker 3: I mean, the manager was the end all be all
Speaker 3: of the baseball organization and they got paid like it
Speaker 3: Now it's kind of flip flop.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's good or bad.
Speaker 3: God, I'll let you tell me the answer to this question.
Speaker 4: Is it good or bad?
Speaker 1: You know, probably like anything else, not to give you
Speaker 1: a wishy washy answer. Ajay, it's probably. You know, there
Speaker 1: are probably some good aspects and some bad aspects. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, one thing going way back, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean to date myself, and this actually was when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, but say, in nineteen seventy six, Mark
Speaker 1: the bird Fiedrich came up to the Tigers as a rookie,
Speaker 1: famously just took the game by storm. He is a rookie.
Speaker 1: He started the All Star Game that year, and he
Speaker 1: ended up getting hurt the next spring and he never
Speaker 1: reached those heights again. And I bring him up because
Speaker 1: that rookie year in nineteen seventy six, he threw like
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty four innings. I mean it was nuts.
Speaker 1: You talk about innings limits and how that we watched
Speaker 1: pitchers like hawks today and so on. One hand. You know,
Speaker 1: Ralph Howell kept running him out there. It's probably good
Speaker 1: to have some guardrails on managers today in that you know,
Speaker 1: the front office steps into a degree and says, hey,
Speaker 1: we got to really take care. We don't want this
Speaker 1: guy throwing too many innings. If he goes from pitching
Speaker 1: seventy innings last year to two hundred and fifty innings
Speaker 1: this year, he's going to blow his arm out, which
Speaker 1: is what happened to Mark Fiederich's way back when. So
Speaker 1: it's to a degree probably good that there are some
Speaker 1: checks and balances on managers today. But on the flip side, yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be we create a dicey situation because you
Speaker 1: know right now, as fans, as media people like us,
Speaker 1: you know so many people. And that's why I ended
Speaker 1: up being interested in writing the books. So many people
Speaker 1: look and say, do managers even matter anymore? They're more
Speaker 1: like middle managers. You know, they've been neutered, and you
Speaker 1: know most of their influence now is in We hear
Speaker 1: so much about building a culture, a team culture, and
Speaker 1: communicating with players and kind of selling the front office's
Speaker 1: vision of the team. Manager has to kind of sell
Speaker 1: that to the players individually. You know, certainly a lot
Speaker 1: of the passion has taken out of the game. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, who didn't love Earl Weaver or
Speaker 1: Sparky Anderson or Billy Martin just going nuts on an umpire.
Speaker 1: I mean that would fire up a whole stadium, and
Speaker 1: you know, it kept the game interesting, and you know,
Speaker 1: with managing not being what it was, certainly I think
Speaker 1: it removes some of the soul and humanity from the game.
Speaker 2: Scott, we appreciate the time. The book sounds awesome, cannot
Speaker 2: wait to dive into it. I'm just going to give
Speaker 2: you a yes or no because we're at a time.
Speaker 2: Do you think that Pete Rose will be voted into
Speaker 2: the Hall? Would you have voted him into the Hall?
Speaker 2: So give me a yes or no on each one.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say no. I don't think he will be
Speaker 1: I think it may take a while because I don't
Speaker 1: think executives and Hall of Famers that are voting will
Speaker 1: be ready right away to vote him. Man, and I
Speaker 1: would I think yesterday's ruling diminishes the integrity of the
Speaker 1: game to a degree.
Speaker 2: Nice Okay, obviously, AJ's on the same page. We spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time on that earlier Scott. Great to
Speaker 2: have you on. We'll have you back soon. Good luck
Speaker 2: with the book and we'll pump it again.
Speaker 4: I'll be waiting.
Speaker 3: I'll be waiting for my autograph cup, the best interview.
Speaker 1: A thank you, text me your address will be We'll
Speaker 1: be in touch. Thank you guys. Really enjoyed being with you.