Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
Foundering club replaces Larry Rothschild with ex-Royals manager.
By MARC TOPKIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Something had to be done. The Rays tried changing the lineup and changing the roster, but that didn't seem to help. Wednesday, they decided to change the manager.
Larry Rothschild was fired after a 4-10 start and replaced by bench coach, and former Royals manager, Hal McRae, who signed on for this season and two more.
"I felt like the team had lost some of its competitive edge," general manager Chuck LaMar said. "We just needed to make a change and give the club a different air and a different direction."
Some of the differences McRae brings are obvious, such as changes to the coaching staff and the lineup. But there are others that are less tangible but no less important.
Unlike Rothschild, McRae comes to the job with managerial experience. He was an All-Star player in the major leagues. He has a reputation for being a fierce and fiery competitor. And he has built-in respect among veteran players.
"He's a winner," Greg Vaughn said. "He's been through good times and bad times and he can relate a little bit better. A lot of times it was, 'You're not getting the job done, sit down.' This guy can probably relate because he's been on both sides."
"I think being a player, he knows how to handle players a little differently," Fred McGriff said. "He's been there, he knows what we go through as a player, the ups and downs. He's maybe able to deal with those situations maybe a little differently. Another big difference I think is that Larry was a pitching coach and Hal was a position player, and that's a different ballgame. ... I think he'll get respect from the players."
McRae said he wasn't assuming anything. "You hope your reputation precedes you, but that has to be proven. It's not a given," McRae said. "I don't come here being respected. I have to earn the players' respect. And if I earn their respect, they'll respond to my desires."
LaMar doesn't expect there to be any problem. "I think he has the respect of everyone in that locker room," he said. "I know he said you have to earn that respect, but between his playing days, his managerial days, his coaching days, the way he carries himself ... I'd be stunned to walk into that locker room and there was a player there who didn't respect Hal McRae."
McRae, who got a 7 a.m. call from LaMar inquiring if he wanted the job, didn't take long to start reshaping the club.
McRae shuffled the coaching staff, firing first-base coach Jose Cardenal, hiring Lee May to replace him and moving Billy Hatcher to the bench, Terry Collins to third and Darren Daulton to the bullpen.
Then he altered the lineup, making Vaughn the primary DH, reinstating Vinny Castilla (at least temporarily) at third base, putting Jose Guillen in rightfield, moving Ben Grieve to left and dropping Steve Cox to reserve duty.
"We're going to try to make changes to improve the ballclub," McRae said. "We want to win as many games as possible, and I think the way you do that is that we have to play the game hard, we have to play the game right, we have to play together as a group. Collectively, we have to beat the opposition.
"It's important to me that everybody understands that we have to do the little things to win a game. You can't play selfish baseball."
McRae, 55, took over the Royals in May 1991 and managed them through the end of the 1994 season, with the same competitiveness he had as a player occasionally surfacing. He posted an overall winning record (286-277) and three plus-.500 seasons out of four, but was fired after his best season, a 64-51 mark in 1994, as the Royals decided to rebuild with a younger team and a new manager (Bob Boone).
Despite his relative success, McRae didn't get another chance to manage, working as hitting coach for the Reds for two years and the Phillies for four.
"I feel I'm better prepared to manage now," McRae said. "When I managed in Kansas City, I hadn't managed before. I'd gone from a player to a manager and my difficulty was that I wasn't far enough removed from a player to a manager. Now I have some experience. I'm more mature, more understanding. I think more like a coach than a player.
"I think I can manage. I thought I proved I could manage my final year in Kansas City, which was too little, too late. I think I can do the job."
Rothschild, 47, came here with similar ambition, a highly respected pitching coach but something of a surprise choice for the job since the Rays' March 31, 1998, inaugural game was the first he had managed at any level.
He worked hard and was forced to work through a seemingly endless string of injuries to key players, but the Rays didn't win as many as 70 games in any of his three seasons.
When LaMar made the somewhat unexpected decision to bring Rothschild back for the final season of his contract (at a salary of about $400,000), it was clear there wouldn't be much margin for failure.
"I felt comfortable with that decision, I felt it was the right decision and I will forever stand by that, that Larry was the right guy heading into this year," LaMar said.
Several things went wrong. The Rays lost seven in a row and played badly in doing so. There was some grumbling from veteran players. And though LaMar said he did not believe the players lost respect for Rothschild, he had concerns about the team's attitude and the manner in which the players were competing.
Still, he said there was no one reason for the move. "If you want to, call it my gut feeling or my job to sense when a change needs to be made," LaMar said.
LaMar and Rothschild tried several things to shake the team from its malaise, discarding second baseman Bobby Smith and benching Castilla. But after watching the Rays struggle while splitting a weekend series in Baltimore, LaMar said: "I knew in my heart I was getting close to making a change."
LaMar watched Tuesday game's from his centerfield office and said he decided well before the end of the 10-0 loss that it was time. He called Rothschild immediately after the game and asked him to come up for a meeting that he termed "tough and short."
Essentially, LaMar didn't see any other way to try to improve the team. "Am I supposed to sit and wait for the kids to be ready over the next 3-4 months and not do something to try and make this organization better?" LaMar said. "I've got to fire all my bullets and I just fired one today that I hated to fire."
Managing general partner Vince Naimoli said he respected Rothschild but supported the "painful" decision LaMar had to make. "Sometimes a change has to be made for change's sake," Naimoli said. "We'll see as time goes on."
Rothschild, contacted at home Wednesday evening, refused to comment to the Times.
He becomes the fifth manager in the past 40 years, and the first since Nick Leyva was let go by Philadelphia in 1991, to be fired before the 15th game of the season. With 499 games, he ended up with the sixth-longest tenure among the original managers of the 14 expansion teams.
LaMar said McRae, who was one of 10 candidates for the job in 1997, was the only person he called. Once McRae convinced LaMar that he wanted to manage again, they negotiated a bit over the length of the contract and struck a deal.
"He comes with a reputation, and a very good one, as a competitor as a player and as a competitor as a manager," LaMar said. "He brings past managerial experience to the table. And he's been here.
"He wasn't here for the three years of getting scarred building an expansion club, yet because of spring training and the last couple weeks he's been here enough to know where we came from to get here, good and bad, which is very important. Yet there's a fresh look that hasn't been here over three years. That's why only one phone call was needed."