Cleveland Indians' way of business is gaining respect throughout baseball Terry Pluto . Thursday, November 15, 2007
The Cleveland Indians are doing a lot right, that's what all the postseason awards should be telling you.
The latest is Eric Wedge being voted the American League Manager of the Year. That comes after C.C. Sabathia winning the AL Cy Young Award, center fielder Grady Sizemore being voted a Gold Glove and Mark Shapiro being named the Executive of the Year by The Sporting News.
Some Tribe fans tend to view the team through a microscope. They find some trade that backfired, a managerial decision that blew up, a comment made by the manager that just made no sense. It's sort of like dwelling on a few dents in a race car, missing the fact that the motor is humming that the driver has it running with the leaders.
That's what Wedge did with the Tribe this season.
Forget about the Indians being in the bottom third of major-league payrolls, the bottom line was 96 victories - tied with Boston for the most in the majors. And being the only team to even win a game against Boston in the postseason. And having a group of players who do "respect the game," as Wedge says over and over. They play hard. They don't embarrass themselves or the fans.
And they were the second-best team in baseball, period.
If you can agree that the team overachieved, the manager had something to do with it. So did the front office.
“From Mark [Shapiro] to Eric [Wedge] to the rest, those guys have their courage of their convictions,” said Mike Hargrove, the Tribe’s manager from 1991 to 1999.
Hargrove said a key to the Indians’ success was Shapiro believing in Wedge, and not taking the easy way out by changing managers when things on the field didn’t meet expectations.
“This organization doesn’t point fingers,” said Hargrove. “I appreciate how Eric doesn’t hang his players out to dry. There are times when you as a manager know a player screwed up. You called the right play, but he missed it. You deal with that in private. But with the media, you bite your lip and shoulder the blame. That can be real tough.”
A manager does that because players will soon turn on a boss whom they believe does not have their back. That’s also why Hargrove, Wedge, Joe Torre, Terry Francona and most other successful managers don’t throw fits in the dugout where the cameras broadcast it to the fans. Players believe that a manager kicking a helmet or screaming after an error is, in Wedge’s words, “showing them up.”
Hargrove then recalled a game sitting in Shapiro’s box, “It was in 2004, and some fan was calling Mark every name in the book. Mark just took it. He manned up. That’s what I like about Mark and Eric, they act like men. They don’t pass the blame.”
It actually begins with the Dolan family, which turned the team over to Shapiro after the 2001 season. They stuck with him during a demanding and sometimes frustrating rebuilding plan. Shapiro believed he could field a winner primarily through signing and trading for prospects.
Sabathia and fellow 19-game winner Fausto Carmona were both signed and developed by the farm system. Sizemore was a Class A player hitting .258 with zero homers in 256 at-bats when the Indians obtained him as part of the Bartolo Colon deal with Montreal. Wedge managed at every level of the Tribe farm system before Shapiro brought him to Cleveland in 2003.
Having managed the Indians to AL pennants in 1995 and 1997, Hargrove knows what it’s like to be Wedge. He also knows what it’s like to manage elsewhere, having worked in Baltimore and Seattle after leaving the Tribe.
“People in baseball notice what the Indians have built and the character of the people running it,” said Hargrove. “That’s why they have such a great reputation around the game.”
To reach Terry Pluto: terrypluto2003@yahoo.com, 216-999-4674
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