Davey Johnson, the only person to manage for Marge Schott and Peter Angelos, will manage Team USA in the World Baseball Classic next month, but before getting to that assignment he had some other business to attend to.

“I’m here with our daughter, who had twins about five weeks ago, a boy and a girl,” Johnson said last week, talking by telephone from Winter Park, Fla. “I’m the yard man, the maid, the cook, the washer. I try to avoid feeding the babies with a bottle because that’s how I hurt my back with the Orioles.”

Johnson, who was handling those domestic chores because his wife was on a clothes-buying trip to Las Vegas for her store in Florida, was refering to a back ailment he suffered when he was Baltimore’s second baseman 42 years ago.

“In spring training in 1967,” he related, “I’d feed the baby for about an hour. One day I got up and my back went out and I hit the floor.”

As the manager of the Cincinnati Reds from 1993 through 1995 and the Orioles in ‘96 and ‘97, Johnson had more headaches than backaches. His teams finished first three times and won the wild card once, but those achievements weren’t enough to please the owners, Schott and Angelos.

Schott was the owner who once fired her scouts because, she said, all they did was sit in the stands and watch baseball games. Angelos was the owner who objected to being compared with George Steinbrenner but turned out to be more Steinbrenner than the original.

“I thought going from a major market to Schott and Angelos would be easy, but I was wrong,” the 66-year-old Johnson said, alluding to his 6 ½-year tenure with the Mets, whom he managed to the World Series championship in 1986.

Speaking of his experience with Schott, Johnson said, “We basically won two titles. I could have won the World Series and Ray Knight was going to be the manager the next year.”

Schott liked Knight and wanted to make him the Reds manager. She did that for the 1996 season, but that was the only season Knight managed them. They finished with a .500 record and haven’t finished first since.

In Baltimore, Johnson said, “We did well, but I couldn’t quite make Mr. Angelos happy. My first year we won a wild card. My second year we won the division; we went wire to wire and beat the Yankees. Both times we got eliminated in the league championship series. We were headed in the right direction, but as much as I tried I couldn’t get on Mr. Angelos’ good side.”

It seemed clear that Angelos would fire Johnson, but he delayed the move. Convinced that he was out and concerned that Angelos would wait until all of the managerial vacancies were filled, Johnson resigned.

“He wouldn’t fire me so I resigned and a year later Gillick left,” he said refering to general manager Pat Gillick. The timing of Johnson’s resignation was exquisite. It occurred on the same day Johnson was named American League manager of the year.

“I was at a press conference to acknowledge the award,” Johnson said, “and at the same time Mr. Angelos accepted my resignation.”

The Orioles have had five managers but no more division titles since Johnson’s departure. Nor have they even had a winning season under any of them. The Orioles have followed Johnson’s division championship with 11 successive losing seasons. Last year was the fourth of those seasons in which the Orioles didn’t win even 70 games.

Through the year of Johnson’s division title, the Orioles finished first nine times and had 25 winning seasons in 32 years. Of the seven losing seasons in that stretch, six came in the 10 years before Johnson became the manager. As Johnson said, the Orioles were headed in the right direction. But then under Angelos’ destructive operation, they took a drastically different turn.

I doubt that Angelos allows himself to think or admit what he hath wrought, but for three decades the Orioles were the classiest organization in baseball and now they are among the most glaring garbage-heap teams.

Johnson, meanwhile, went west and managed the Dodgers for two years, 1999 and 2000. The venture was not successful.

“That organization was in a big rebuilding process,” Johnson said, recalling the team under general manager Kevin Malone. “Their farm system was just a shadow of what it used to be. The team was put together not very well to compete in that division against Arizona and the Giants. Basically they had no left-handed batters, no left-handed pitchers, no speed.

“After what I had been through, then not having much impact in putting that team together, I was burned out. I gave it everything I had, but I couldn’t enjoy it. That was it for me.”

With a .564 winning percentage and 11 winning seasons, his 14-year managerial career was over, but his problems weren’t. His daughter died in 2001.

“My daughter was a world class surfer,” Johnson related. “She won a lot of competitions here in Florida and went to New Zealand and surfed over there. She got sick at about age 20. She was hearing voices, and we went through some tough times with her trying to get her well.”

Then things seemed to improve. “She was going to go with her mother to Texas,” Johnson said. “We thought she was doing better. Then she had a rough night, went to the hospital and died of a septic infection from the drugs she was taking. She was 30. She was Davey’s little surfer girl. That was real rough. I still have her ashes in my office. I know she’s happy where she’s at.”

Johnson has been working for USA Baseball since 2004, he manages a team in the Florida summer collegiate league in June and July and most immediate he will manage Team USA in the World Baseball Classic next month.

Johnson, who was a coach for Team USA in the inaugural WBC in 2006, got the managing assignment after Team USA failed to reach the semifinals under Buck Martinez. It’s not only the major leagues where managers get fired.

“I didn’t really want to manage in ‘06,” Johnson said, “because I felt the way they were going about it it would be a fiasco.”

Why did Team USA do so badly?

“The word was out that we weren’t prepared, we didn’t take it seriously,” Johnson said in a conference call Thursday. “Competition around the world is a lot tougher than we thought. A lot of our guys weren’t ready to play, but that won’t be an issue this time. What happened last time sticks in the minds of a lot of guys and that won’t happen. They’re pumped up.”

Johnson doesn’t expect to return to his major league career. “I love baseball,” he said. “I guess since 2000 you can consider me a dinosaur. I’d be glad to talk about it if someone wanted to, but I don’t see that happening. I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I think USA Baseball likes me, and I like what I’m doing.”

“I’ve got my wife working,” he added, “I get to see my kids and I don’t have to work 12 months out of the year. And I’m still in baseball.”

Johnson has his wife working because, he said, in 2001 he told her she had to get a hobby.

“I said you’ve been going around the big leagues shopping. I’ve had to pay the bills so I know you’re good. She opened a small dress store and now it’s probably the No. 1 women’s boutique in the southeast.”

The boutique, in their hometown of Winter Park, has led to a new type of recognition for Johnson. “She usually goes to New York seven, eight times a year to buy clothes for the store, and I go with her,” Johnson said. “We stay at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. I’m more well known in the garment district than at Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium. These designers know me better than the scouts.”

 

If this is too much inside baseball, I apologize, but I am too devastated and outraged to write anything else at the moment. Major League Baseball, which can’t kill steroids, has killed the Red Book and the Green Book.

Baseball officials would say the books died of atrophy. No one was using them any more. But I used them, often on a daily basis. They sit on a shelf an arm’s length away from my desk. I can get them that quickly when I need information from them.

Right now the Red Book is on my desk open to page 161, American League Managers, 1901-2008. It is there because I was looking up information about a manager I had planned to write about before I got the news release from Major League Baseball announcing the demise of those trusty books.

What are the Red Book and Green Book? They are league reference guides for club executives and the news media, Red for the American League, Green for the National. They have more information than we need to know, but they have what we need when we need it.

Each book has five pages on every team, each team’s won-lost record and place in the standings for every year of its existence, each team’s managers for every year of its existence, all sorts of hitting and pitching statistical lists, year-by-year list of 20-game winners, club leaders each year in hitting and pitching categories, teams’ top marks since their beginning, individual league champions, award winners, comprehensive statistics from the previous season, the previous year’s player transactions, relevant rules and that season’s schedule.

The release announcing this development is shrewdly written. It doesn’t say the books won’t exist any more – that would be negative – but it says the books will be available exclusively online for the first time, as if that’s a good thing.

“The 2009 editions of the Red and Green Books,” the release says, “will mark the first time that these annual publications will be available online only.” Then it drops the bombshell: “While printed copies of the Red and Green Books will no longer be distributed by Major League Baseball, the publications will be available in an easily downloadable format on MLBPressBox.com.”

With that wording, MLB is trying to make this a positive development, something good for me and my colleagues, but there’s a clue at the bottom of the release that indicates otherwise. Usually at the bottom of MLB news releases, it lists two names to contact if more information is sought or there are questions: Rich Levin and Pat Courtney. They are baseball’s top two public relations executives.

At the bottom of this release, however, there are no names, only telephone numbers, one for each book and one for Major League Baseball public relations. I called the numbers for the two books.

“They’re no longer doing a publication; they’re available online,” said Andrew Davis, an aide to Katy Feeney, senior vice president for club relations and scheduling, who answered the Green Book number. Why are they no longer doing a publication? “I couldn’t tell you the exact reason.”

Was that a permanent decision? “I don’t know. For 2009 it will be available at Pressbox.com. Beyond this year I don’t know. Nothing has been determined for future seasons.”

I called the Red Book number and left a message. Greg Domino returned the call.

“That was a decision made not by me,” Domino, a public relations intern, said. “That was in the hands of my superiors, Phyllis and Katy, and everyone else.” Why was the decision made? “To be honest I’m not entirely aware of why they decided to do so. I suppose to go green and to cut down in the repetition in other books.”

Would the printed books return? “I do not know the answer to that. You’d have to ask Phyllis or Katy.”

Phyllis Merhige is senior vice president for club relations. “We asked the clubs, and they said we should do it online only,” she said. “Nobody wants them anymore. You’re the only person. I take that back. Marty Appel wanted one.”

Appel is a former Yankees’ public relations director. In a column he wrote on his Web site, appelpr.com, he said, “The Red and Green Books are among the last things that have distinguished the leagues since the abandonment of separate league offices in 1999 and the end of American and National League presidencies.”

Merhige (left) and Feeney (right) didn’t let the printed books go easily. “It was very distressing to Katy and myself,” Merhige said. “People used to wait for those books on March 1.” But she added, “We asked the p.r. directors do you feel the books get used. They said no. It was an expensive book to produce, expensive to mail. We weren’t getting our money’s worth.”

Feeney noted that she had Green Books in her office dating to 1936. Asked if the books would ever return, she said, “If enough people say the loss of it is detrimental we’d go back to doing it next year in some form. That’s if enough people say they use it. Apparently people have said they don’t use it.”

Bob Nightengale of USA Today is one reporter who uses it.  

“I loved the Red and Green books,” he wrote in an e-mail. “They were part of baseball’s fabric, and to see them suddenly disappear from print leaves a huge void in baseball. These were the bibles for every baseball executive and writer. You wouldn’t write a story without having them by your side.

“I know these are new times, the day of the Internet and all of that, but it was a rite of passage every spring to get those books and immediately thumb through them, even going to bed sometimes looking for tidbits. I miss them already!”

The decision to eliminate the printed books probably should not be surprising. Two years ago MLB reduced the size of the books from 8 ½ inches by 11 inches to 8 ½ inches by 5 ½ inches. However, the number of pages rose from 112 to 187 (AL) and 208 (NL).

One explanation given for the elimination of the printed books is the repetition of some of the elements of the books. The previous season’s statistics, for example, are in the average book that is published after the season. Rosters of the 30 teams appear in the spring training media guide.

But once spring training ends and the season starts, the spring training guide is put away, and the Red and Green Books become the references of choice. I don’t blame MLB for abolishing the books. I wish they hadn’t, but if they find that no one uses them, it’s just another unfortunate development of today’s coverage of baseball.

Younger writers, more attuned to the use of the Internet than their older colleagues, may not have a problem with the disappearance of the books. But in past years they didn’t have the Internet as an alternative reference site. They apparently just didn’t feel the need for any information the books provided.

That says more about them than it does about baseball’s decision.

 

The Red Sox have joined the growing number of clubs that want to establish a payroll cap. Will the Yankees be next in line?

All right, the Yankees aren’t about to call for a cap. But the fact that the Red Sox owners say a cap is needed is almost as funny as it would be if the Yankees did join the cap crowd.

When owners of teams like the Pirates and the Brewers call for a cap, it’s understandable because their payrolls are dwarfed by the payrolls of teams like the Yankees, the Mets and the Red Sox. But the Red Sox? A cynic might say the Red Sox want a cap to save themselves from themselves. They’re like a serial killer who keeps killing because he wants to be caught.

These are the same Red Sox who this winter offered Mark Teixeira a contract for about $170 million, and who in a 10-day period in 2006 spent $103 million to add Daisuke Matsuzaka to their pitching staff and $70 million to put J.D. Drew in their outfield.

Those numbers don’t put the Red Sox on the same level as the Yankees’ $423.5 million signing of Teixeira, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett this winter, but both teams are spending the money they have. If the Red Sox revenue were in the Yankees’ ball park, they would most likely spend much more than the $147 million that gave them the second highest payroll last season.

The Red Sox spend what they have to spend to get the team to the World Series, which they have won two of the past five years. The Yankees haven’t won the World Series for the last eight years so they keep spending to make their team good enough to win the championship again.

The Red Sox have obviously done a better job of building a championship team so they are in position to sound magnanimous and selfless. They have figured out that with their judgment and ability to identify winning players they can operate within a payroll zone whose upper level would not be far from the payrolls they have used to their benefit in recent seasons.

Payroll zone is the term that was used in the Blue Ribbon Panel’s 2000 report on baseball’s economics. The study was done by a panel of four, two of whom have since played other roles in baseball. George Mitchell conducted the steroids investigation, and Paul Volcker spoke to the owners last November, serving as Bud Selig’s bogeyman on the nation’s economy.

The panel didn’t propose a payroll cap but a payroll range with a ceiling and a floor. That’s the concept the Red Sox owners raised last week when they spoke to reporters at the team’s training camp in Fort Myers, Fla.

Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox chief executive officer, declined to discuss their plan when he returned a telephone call Friday. “I said all I intend to say on the subject of salary caps or payroll zones,” he said. “I’m not going to have any more public comment on it. I think we’ve said enough about our feeling.”

The curious thing is if the Red Sox owners are so proud of their idea why wouldn’t Lucchino want to talk about it? He didn’t say.

There was one thing he commented on. At the owners’ appearance in Fort Myers Lucchino was quoted by mlb.com as saying that the payroll zone idea was “being addressed at the highest level by baseball and its labor negotiators.”

Asked if such meetings were actually taking place, Lucchino said. “I probably said more than I intended. We are bringing it to their attention. I don’t know now what they’re considering. The Red Sox are calling it to the attention of the people at the highest level.”

Rob Manfred, who as baseball’s chief labor executive sits at the highest level, declined to address Lucchino’s comment to mlb.com. “I have no comment with respect to that particular story,” he said.

Donald Fehr, the players’ chief executive, said he wasn’t aware of Lucchino’s comment but speaking generally said, “Basically we have an agreement, everybody says it has been working well, we have a number of years before we have to bargain again and I hope everyone waits until that time comes. We’ve gotten away from the bargaining that we did for 30 years. I’d be pretty cautious about getting us back to that kind of bargaining.”

Five strikes and three lockouts punctuated labor negotiations between baseball and the union in the union’s first 30 years of existence. The last two agreements have been achieved without a stoppage. The current agreement runs through the 2011 season.

The owners have tried desperately in the past to get a payroll cap, going so far as to force the disastrous World Series-killing strike of 1994-95. But the players have always resisted a cap despite its existence in the other three major professional sports. There has been no indication that the players would be any more willing to accept a cap now than before.

Baseball, meanwhile, has established record revenues and attendances since the last negotiated labor agreement in 2006. Selig, in fact, has proudly boasted of those records. Neither side should want to derail that direction, but the Yankees got everyone’s attention with their financially gargantuan triple play, and some of the owners, with a knee-jerk reaction, have reverted to the call for a cap.

“The clubs have views as to what should happen from a bargaining perspective,” Manfred said. “Sometimes they get expressed publicly. As we get closer to the negotiations we’ll develop a position that will be the industry’s bargaining position. I don’t care to say more about it at this point. When the time comes, we’ll talk to all of the clubs to hear what they have to say and we’ll form a bargaining position.”

Asked if owners’ public comments make his job more difficult, Manfred said, “Players say things; we had players talking about changes that should be made to the drug policy. I take that for what it’s worth. I assume the union takes owners’ comments for what they’re worth. I think the relationship has matured enough that both sides have learned not to make comments on everything that is said.”

Past cap disputes have created an odd but yet understandable alliance between the union and the Yankees. Not that the Yankees have ever publicly opposed the management position and endorsed the union’s, but the Yankees have always quietly rooted for the union to win the cap debate.

Some might see that as treasonous, but the Yankees adopt that position in their own self-interest. It has always been George Steinbrenner’s practice to put the money the Yankees make back into the team because he has always felt their fans deserve the team’s best efforts to win.

That’s how the Yankees got to a record $222 million payroll last season, and that’s why they signed Teixeira, Sabathia and Burnett. If a payroll zone were in effect now, the upper level would very likely be in the $140 million-$150 million range, which, gee whiz, just happens to be where the Red Sox finished last season.

They had the second highest payroll, $147 million, while the Mets were third at $144.7 million. Could the Yankees get down to even $150 million? Better question: How could they get down to $150 million?

Where would the lower level of a payroll zone be? It couldn’t be as high as $100 million because 19 of the 30 teams were below that number last season and to get there they would have to add payroll ranging from $2 million to $73.5 million.

“If there was a way to put together an enlightened form of a salary cap, I think everybody among the owners would probably support that,” John Henry, the Red Sox principal owner, said in Fort Myers. It is unrealistic, though, to think the Yankees would find any cap system worth supporting, no matter how enlightened.

“I think there are 29 teams that exist within a certain band, and there has been, in the last several years, one outlier that has been much higher,” Lucchino said. “The outliers both at the top and the bottom would be most severely affected by a payroll zone.”

Lucchino said a payroll cap would affect the Red Sox but felt they could handle it. The Yankees, he acknowledged, “would be impacted even moreso than we would.”

But Lucchino offered another observation that raised a question germane to the whole discussion of the Yankees’ payroll. The Red Sox executive talked abut his team’s commitment to winning, saying it “requires that you reach into the free-agent market and try to acquire the best available pitching talent and position-player talent in that year’s market.”

That’s precisely what the Yankees did this winter in acquiring Teixeira and Sabathia. Should they be punished for succeeding in that quest?

And Lucchino added: “So we thought if we could still justify that in light of the expectations we had for the revenue of the franchise, we saw it as an effort to improve this team for our fan base.”

That’s all the Yankees were trying to do, improve their team for their fans. So what did they do that would justify a call from their primary rival for a cap?

Maybe the Red Sox have an ulterior motive. A payroll cap might lead to the elimination of revenue sharing, a plan in which the Yankees contribute the most money – about $90 million for last year. But by paying much of the construction cost of Yankee Stadium, the Yankees in future years will get a reduction in their share of revenue sharing. The Red Sox, who paid about $50 million for 2008, may see their share rise because the Yankees and the Mets will pay less.

Maybe revenue sharing has nothing to do with the Boston payroll plan, but those Red Sox owners are clever guys who are always thinking of ways to trump the Yankees.

I don’t like payroll caps of any kind, but if the owners want to try to cap their player payrolls, let them establish another cap first. Let them place a cap on the commissioner’s salary. Selig earned about $17.5 million in 2007 and is said to have earned more than $20 million last year.

The owners think he deserves that kind of money, and I have no problem with his earning it. But put a cap on his salary and see if he accepts it as quickly as the owners want the players to.

Latest Threat not Disheartening for Hampton

Mike Hampton has already threatened to increase his lead over A.J. Burnett, and the season is still six weeks away. Fortunately for Hampton, his heart scare turned out to be a false alarm and he won’t have to miss any playing time.

Hampton, a 36-year-old left-handed pitcher, has missed plenty of playing time in his 15-year career. In fact, that is the category in which he leads Burnett, a right-hander, who is 4 years his junior and whose career has been six years shorter.

Hampton has spent 685 days on the disabled list, Burnett 589. Hampton’s missed time is the equivalent of three and three-quarters seasons, Burnett’s three and a quarter. But because of Burnett’s shorter career, his time on the disabled list represents 37 percent of his career while Hampton’s disabled time is 26 percent of his career.

All but 39 days of Hampton’s disabled time have occurred since he became a free agent after his World Series season with the Mets in 2000 agent. That prompts a suggestion about the source of his back, calf, forearm, oblique and multiple elbow problems.

A player who has been injured so often must be cursed, and if he wonders why he is cursed, Hampton need look only to his explanation for why he took the Colorado Rockies’ offer of 8 years for $121 million.

It was the money, right? Not at all. Hampton said he had heard “nothing but good things” about the lifestyle in Colorado. Asked for an example of what he had heard was so good about the Denver area, he said “the school system.”

But sons Gage and Griffin didn’t get to attend schools in that system for too long. The Rockies traded Hampton to the Braves after only two years. The cursed injury cycle began even before he started his first season with Atlanta and quickly spiraled out of control.

News Media See Errors of A-Rod’s Way But Not Their Own

The news media clearly dislike Alex Rodriguez so he will never get the benefit of a doubt in his steroids escapade or anything else he does, but they can at least get the facts as he has told them correct.

If they don’t want to believe his timetable of steroids use, that’s their prerogative, though they have no evidence that he used them at times other than when he said he did. If they accept his admission, however, they should get it right.

Most of the reports about Rodriguez’s steroids use say he did it for three years, 2001, ‘02 and ‘03. But he said he quit using them during spring training in 2003, which means he used steroids for two years plus whatever part of spring training he had them injected in 2003 before he quit.

Typical of the reporting was one columnist’s reference to Rodriguez’s “three-year flirtation” with steroids. Make that a two-year flirtation.

At the Mets’ camp last week reporters asked Carlos Delgado how he felt about finishing second to Rodriguez when he won the 2003 most valuable player award now that Rodriguez has admitted using steroids that year.

But Rodriguez didn’t admit using steroids in 2003. He said he quit in spring training of 2003. Unless the effect of steroids lasts for six months, that would suggest that Rodriguez’s m.v.p. victory over Delgado was not chemically aided.

Does it matter if Rodriguez used steroids for two or three years? Not really. Two years would be just as bad as three. But it matters journalistically. The same reporters and columnists wouldn’t write that Manny Ramirez hit 55 home runs if he hit 45 so they should get it right on what Rodriguez said about his steroids dalliance.

Free Advice for A-Rod: Don’t Talk to M.L.B.

Major League Baseball investigators want to talk to Alex Rodriguez about his admitted steroids use, but there’s no reason he should talk to them.

The positive test Rodriguez supposedly had in 2003 was part of an anonymous, confidential, penalty-free testing regimen established jointly by the commissioner’s office and the union. The commissioner’s office agreed that players who tested positive would not be identified, and it should honor its agreement by not pursuing Rodriguez even if just for a chat.

The commissioner’s investigators would argue that the Yankees’ third baseman talked publicly about the circumstances surrounding his steroids use, and therefore is fair game. Anyway, they would say, they have no interest in punishing Rodriguez; they only want to find out if his steroids use involved an illegal breach of the clubhouse.

Rodriguez, however, acknowledged his use only because someone, presumably a government agent, leaked his name, leaving him with a choice of saying nothing and coming across as being guilty, lying and denying that he used the banned substances or admitting it, as everyone wanted him to. He chose to tell the truth and shouldn’t be subjected to an interrogation for his honesty.

He might have cheated, and he might have been stupid, but he doesn’t have to answer questions investigators would not have known to ask him had his privacy been honored.

When Commissioner Bud Selig directed Jason Giambi to meet with George Mitchell, the steroids investigator, in 2007, it was clear that if Giambi refused to talk to the former United States senator, Selig would take disciplinary action. Giambi had no choice because he wasn’t part of an anonymous testing regimen.

If Rodriguez talks to the investigators, anything he tells them could wind up in the hands of the authorities because it could be subpoenaed. His cousin, who Rodriguez said injected him and whom he initially didn’t want to identify, could wind up in trouble with the law.

Since they initially expressed interest in talking to him, investigators now can claim another reason for wanting to meet with Rodriguez. News reports have linked him to a Dominican trainer banned in M.L.B. facilities, Angel Presinal.

But other players also have been linked to Presinal, and Robinson Cano of the Yankees and David Ortiz of the Red Sox have acknowledged having worked with him. Will investigators seek to speak with them, too? If not, they have no reason to talk to Rodriguez about him.

Rob Manfred, baseball’s chief labor executive, declined to comment on the Rodriguez matter. Gene Orza, the union’s chief drug-testing lawyer, said of a meeting, “We haven’t even discussed it. It’s not on my radar screen now. I haven’t even talked to the player.”