Black tries to throw a curve at baseball bias

As a senior at San Diego State, Bud Black pitched and played first base, although he had no illusions. He knew his future was on the mound and not in the batter’s box.

“I was a first baseman only in the context that most young players play more than one position in school,” said Black, who would go on to pitch for 15 years in the majors and spend four more “learning the other side of it” in the Cleveland Indians’ front office before becoming Mike Scioscia’s respected pitching coach with the Angels for the last seven years.

Now, as a first-time manager at the helm of the San Diego Padres, Black will be trying to put all his experiences to work in confronting an industry bias against hiring former pitchers and pitching coaches as managers.

In other words, it doesn’t matter that pitching is 90% of the game. Former pitchers are rarely given a chance to direct the game.

“I’ve asked a lot of people why that is,” Black said from Arizona, “and nobody can pinpoint a reason. The only thing I can come up with is that pitching is so important and the responsibilities of a pitching coach are so important that those coaches tend to get pigeonholed as specialists rather than being considered knowledgeable in the broader spectrum.

“I’ve always considered myself a student of the overall game, and I think any manager or managerial candidate should stand on his own merit -- who is he and what has he done.

“It should all hinge on a person’s ability to lead and communicate, not what position he played. Name any position and great perspective can come from having played it.”

Black’s logic seems indisputable, but the reality has been quite different.

If position players have always tended to regard pitchers as members of a quirky and non-athletic fraternity -- “there was a slight edge between players and pitchers in every clubhouse I was ever in,” former pitcher and manager Larry Dierker said from his Houston home -- then maybe some of that edge has filtered into front-office thinking.

Of the 50 managers hired by major league teams since the end of the 2001 season, a year in which former pitchers Joe Kerrigan, Larry Rothschild and Dierker were fired as big league managers, Black is the only former pitcher -- and that’s not just a recent trend.

Of the 100 managers with the most wins in baseball history, only four were major league pitchers: Tom Lasorda (who ranks 16th), Clark Griffith (19), Fred Hutchinson (66) and Roger Craig (72).

Craig is the last former major league pitcher to have led his team to victory in a playoff series (his San Francisco Giants beat the Chicago Cubs in the 1989 National League championship series), and only five of the 102 teams to win a World Series were managed by a former big league pitcher: Eddie Dyer with St. Louis in 1946, Bob Lemon with the New York Yankees in 1978, Dallas Green with Philadelphia in 1980 and Lasorda with the Dodgers in 1981 and 1988.

“People in baseball just don’t believe that pitchers make an overall study of the game -- the defense, strategy, how to work with hitters -- and that’s why a lot of former pitchers who are probably capable of managing don’t get the opportunity,” Lasorda said from Vero Beach, Fla.

“That’s unfair. I don’t think you can generalize, because a lot of managing is about communication and motivation, about feel. You can’t only go by the book as a manager or in choosing a manager.”

Of the 16 people elected to the Hall of Fame strictly on the basis of their record as a manager, Lasorda is the only former pitcher. He ranks as baseball’s most successful former pitcher-turned-manager, and he was willing to pay dues -- which some now may not.

“I was schooled by Al Campanis and Branch Rickey and learned every phase of the game,” he said, “and I would never have got the opportunity to manage if I hadn’t spent eight years as a minor league manager and six in the Dominican [Republic winter league]. Campanis had my career planned out from the time I retired [as a pitcher]. I was fortunate in that regard.”

Now, Lasorda often visits Dodgers minor league teams, working with hitters as well as pitchers, as he did while managing. He laughed and recalled an incident after the 1976 season, in which Steve Garvey had collected 200 hits for the third consecutive season while slugging only 13 homers.

Said Lasorda: “I told Garvey, ‘I don’t care if you ever get 200 hits again, I want you to hit the ball out of the park. I’m not asking you to do something you’re not capable of doing.’ I remember Jim Murray writing a column saying ‘Can you imagine Tom Lasorda telling Steve Garvey how to hit? That’s like telling the Pope about religion.’ But Garvey came back to hit more than 30 homers [33] in ’77 and helped us win a pennant.

“I was confident working with hitters because I had seen that side of it as a pitcher and because of all the schooling I had received.”

Dierker undertook a different schooling. In his 17 years as a broadcaster, between the time he retired as a major league pitcher and his appointment as manager of the Houston Astros, he studied baseball history, read about managers and players, and made a “concerted effort” to understand the theories of statistical gurus such as Bill James, all of which helped give him “a new perspective on hitters and offensive production I didn’t have as a player.”

Yet, he said, it is almost as if a pitcher-turned-manager is always having to cope with that existing clubhouse edge he had mentioned, always having to satisfy the position players that he knows how to put “the right lineup out there, align the defense properly and make the right strategic moves.”

“It’s a challenge from first to last,” Dierker said, “and a lot of it is tied to success and failure. I didn’t have as much of a problem because we won the division four times. But when we finished fourth in 2000, of course, everybody started pointing fingers, and after awhile most of the fingers point at the manager.”

While that may be true for any manager, no matter what position he once played, Dierker is symbolic of the bias against pitchers. He led the Astros to the playoffs in four of his five years, built a winning percentage of .556, and hasn’t had one managerial offer since.

“At first I was surprised, although I wouldn’t have been interested in many of the openings anyway,” he said. “Now, I do a lot of writing and am pretty pleased with the way things have turned out. One thing for sure ... I have a good managerial record. As long as I don’t go back, I’ll keep that good record.”

The Padres are building a record while emphasizing pitching.

They have won the National League West for two consecutive years, and their staff led the league in earned-run average last year.

General Manager Kevin Towers cited the spaciousness of Petco Park and a division where pitching also tends to dominate amid the dimensions and designs of the Los Angeles and San Francisco parks.

“In our park and in our division it’s a real plus to have a manager with Bud’s experience and expertise in knowing how to get six or seven months out of a staff, knowing when to leave a starter in or when to go to the bullpen,” Towers said. “That’s a critical component playing 81 games in Petco.

“People talk about clubs shying away from hiring a former pitcher as manager, but I think it’s more a case of very few pitchers or pitching coaches wanting to manage.

“Bud is one who had those aspirations, who has had a successful and well-rounded career, and I think it’s fortunate for us that he went to San Diego State, lives in Rancho Santa Fe and felt the timing was right. He’s organized, energetic and not afraid to think outside the box. He’s made the transition [from Bruce Bochy] much easier than I thought it would be.

“I know it’s going out on the limb some at this early point, but I watch the way he’s been handling himself, the interaction with players and media, the team-building skills, and I can’t help but think he’s going to be a real star.”

At this point, as baseball’s first pitcher-turned-manager in five years, a future star is best to stay grounded, and Black has stayed with his strengths, emphasizing pitching and defense in his meetings while knowing he will be scrutinized eventually in how he runs a game and communicates with his position players.

He cited valuable lessons learned playing for and working with Craig, Dick Howser, Dusty Baker, John McNamara and Scioscia, but added:

“The most valuable advice I’ve received is to just be yourself. We’re together for eight months of the year. If you try to be something you’re not, it becomes very transparent.

“I’m aware of the small sample of former pitchers and pitching coaches who have had the opportunity to become major league managers, but that’s not where my thinking is. I just felt I was ready for the challenge of managing and confident of my ability to handle it.”

Institutional bias aside.