Inside the Mind of a … Genius?

Later, back in the United States, two dueling qualities — Manuel’s passion, and his self-command — served him well as a batting coach, the kind whose charges would gladly work themselves until their hands bled. Manuel himself worked through a heart attack, cancer, and quadruple bypass surgery; while with the Indians, he managed for a time with a colostomy bag tucked under his uniform.

The wobbling arc of Charlie Manuel’s career — from Virginia mine country, through adversity and injury, to the regimen of Japan — now gives him a peculiar view inside his ballplayer’s heads. He can offer them perspective and calm.

“Philadelphia is known to be a tough place,” Manuel says. “But it ain’t nothing like where I come from.”


BASEBALL IS A slow game. It takes on a luxurious, almost velveteen pace: a pitch, a swing. A little pause. Another pitch, but no swing. Maybe a chat on the pitcher’s mound. A moment for the fans to stand up and stretch. A little song. It’s also this:

“Charlie. Charlie.” Just his name. “Chaaarlieeeeee … ”

In March, the Phillies played the Yankees in spring training, and Manuel faced a number of Phillies fans who were still a little unsteady with their heckling material. They threw out weird stuff. Insults about his … weight, maybe?

“Yo Charlie! You want a hot dog?”

Manuel stood at the edge of the dugout, leaning on the fence with his forearms. Without moving any other part of his body, he chewed a wad of bubble gum in a slow rhythm, so otherwise unanimated that he looked for all the world as though he was working on a cud. Chew. Chew. Chew.

“Can I get you a HOT DOG, Charlie? A HOT DOG? CAN I GET YOU A FREAKIN’ HOT DOG?”

It’s something else a manager can do: Be a lightning rod. Take the abuse. Let it roll off you like, well, nothin’ much, because there’s a game on.

At mid-game, Tom Gordon came onto the mound for his first appearance of the season. Gordon is 40 years old, and each batter walked or hit given up seemed excruciating, because they weren’t just “pitches”; they were “how he pitches now” — that is, can he? And when things aren’t going well — and today, they weren’t, as Manuel kept chewing his gum — there’s no crueler game than baseball, because your failure unfolds at the game’s slow pace.

As a battered Gordon walked off the field and into the dugout, Manuel reached over and gave him an encouraging slap on the haunch. Gordon responded with a small, summarizing nod, as though they had just wrapped up a discussion in what pitcher Jamie Moyer calls “baseball language.”

In his office, after the 9-3 loss, Manuel shrugged off Gordon’s trouble on the mound. He wavered a hand at his temple to indicate a squirrelly mental state. “The first time out for pitchers is always a little strange,” he said. “And Tom always gets a slow start. It’s fine.”

That’s what the tap to the butt told ­Gordon: It’s fine. That’s what the nod from Gordon gave back: I know. Baseball, especially early, in spring training, is a slow accretion, physically and mentally. Failure is expected. Failure has to be accounted for. How would Bowa, as a manager, have handled that moment with Gordon? The safe bet says that at best, he would have ignored him: Pitchers. Their own breed. Let him figure it out. But how, exactly, would that help Tom Gordon throw the ball better?