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His 15-hour day ends at 0-1By BRUCE LOWITT © St. Petersburg Times, published April 1, 1998 The manager of the Devil Rays had arrived about 6 a.m., had run some laps around the warning track, had pored over statistics and his voluminous notes. "He's very detail-oriented," his pitching coach, Rick Williams, said. "Almost compulsively." He signed about 80 identical lineup cards, Devil Rays keepsakes. And he got comfortable in his new home away from home. Rothschild went to bed about 11 p.m. Monday and got a decent five hours' sleep. "About as usual," he said. "I didn't have trouble going to sleep, if that's what you mean." He'll replay the game in his mind a few times, he said -- more likely more than a few times. He'll talk it over with Jane. She'll be a good audience. "She's a fan," he said, "but she won't ask me any tough questions." And, no, he said, Tuesday was not the longest day of his life. "Not by any means. Just another day for me. There'll be a lot more." Not like this, one would hope -- not an 11-6 loss that wasn't even that close until the Rays scored four runs in the ninth and loaded the bases. But for his first official day managing a major-league game that counted in the standings, it wasn't that bad. "Totally different from spring training," Rothschild said. "Your lineup card is different, the players you have are different. This is what you play spring training for, to get ready for tonight. ... But I've been through two World Series (with the 1990 Reds and last year's Marlins). I know what this is like." And he knows that one game does not make a season. "I've been through the schedule," he said wryly. "It's 162 games; we've got 161 left. It hurts whenever (a loss) happens. You don't want to see your team go out and get beat up. But this team is resilient. ... We came back at the end. I thought that was a positive to take away from this game." So was the crowd reaction after the final out: cheers for the home team. "Their reactions told you they realized that, that it's not just tonight. You expect cheers at the beginning of the game. You don't get the kind of reaction at the end that we got tonight." For one inning it was a good game, Rays-wise. A scoreless tie. Then the Tigers jumped on starter Wilson Alvarez. Hit after hit, run after run, and suddenly it was 4-0 (with two more runs before he was lifted with one out in the third). For Rothschild it was a wait that was never rewarded. "I always feel like you're one pitch away from getting out of an inning. You can get a double play, a triple play, make a pitch for a strikeout and then get a double play. One pitch away from turning things around. It just doesn't always happen." If Rothschild had any Opening Night jitters, they didn't show. He was as intense as he always was when he was pitching coach for the Marlins the past three seasons, and the bullpen coach and pitching coach for the Reds in the three seasons before that. "I felt it a little bit coming into the game, but I think that's good. Gives you extra energy, extra adrenaline. But I think I'm going to feel that way every game this year. ... "Obviously you have an impact on every decision; you're making every decision," he said. "You see the game from a different perspective. But I was pretty intense as a pitching coach so the difference wasn't that great. Different decisions, different things to think about. But not that different to me." Indeed. When he leaned over to Williams, it was not to ask advice, only for the Alvarez pitch count; he didn't want to wear out his starter. Neither did he want to have to go too deep into his bullpen (Dennis Springer's three strong innings avoided that). "I'll ask questions," Rothschild said, "but I'll make the decisions."
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T. PETERSBURG -- By the time the clubhouse was emptying out and Jane Rothschild was bringing Charlotte and Claire in to see daddy, Larry Rothschild had spent 15 hours, give or take a few minutes, in Tropicana Field.
