|
Willie is "hip"
]
Willie's one of the guys
BY DAVID LENNON
SAN FRANCISCO -- Carlos Beltran wielded the electric razor in Tuesday's team-wide trimming session, but he had a few eager accomplices and plenty of cheering spectators inside the visitors' clubhouse at AT&T Park.
David Wright spearheaded the movement by getting his Marine-style buzzcut the previous night, and Paul Lo Duca helped him that afternoon in rounding up those who didn't immediately volunteer.
But they also had a vocal ally in manager Willie Randolph. He noticed the bald heads bobbing around the clubhouse and joined his players in what amounted to a bonding experience for the Mets.
It was a choice that few managers would have felt comfortable making. The majority might have checked on the uproar from the bathroom, made sure no one was fighting, returned to the manager's office and closed the door.
Not Randolph. He enjoyed the festivities as much as anyone, watching from the back of the crowd as Beltran went to work on the next victim.
When David Newhan sacrificed his wavy locks at the altar of team unity, the players howled, and Randolph even joked, "Do his eyebrows too!"
It can be difficult for a manager to strike the right balance between boss and friend, taskmaster and teammate, but Randolph, 52, has thrived in that relationship during his first two-plus seasons with the Mets.
Much of that probably has to do with his 18-year playing career, followed by another 11 seasons as a coach on the Yankees' staff. It can be easy to lose that perspective once you sit in the big chair, but Randolph hasn't lost that link to the clubhouse.
"It's one of my biggest assets, I think," he said. "I feel a lot of pride in the way that I communicate with my players. The game today has evolved to the point where you have to have some kind of connection with your players.
"I think you have to be tuned to the culture that we live in and I think that a lot of managers are not in tune with that. Sometimes it has to do with age. I'm very well aware of the culture we live in, and not just with the players. I have three daughters and a son, with one daughter graduating from college this year. They keep me hip. Maybe I shouldn't say keep me hip. I've always been that way."
Randolph did plenty of head-rubbing the next day, giving a "Nice!" here and there. But he also spent a few minutes talking to Shawn Green in the hallway outside of his office, listening to his rightfielder describe his wife's reaction to the whole head-shaving escapades.
Randolph doesn't often venture into the clubhouse; he knows every eye is on him when he does. But he wants players to know they can always approach him.
"When you have a guy that's the captain of the ship," Wright said, "that comes in here and jokes around like he did [Tuesday] but who you also respect as a manager, and is good at what he does, I think it's a special mix. He was dragging guys in there, too.
"Every guy in here respects Willie. Every guy in here, if Willie tells you to jump, they'll say, 'How high?' And I think a lot of that has to do with the respect he's had in the clubhouse since Day 1, and it's only gotten better as we've got to know him. I think he's a player's manager. Guys feel like they can go in there and talk to him about anything."
Said general manager Omar Minaya: "One of Willie's greatest qualities is that he's a player's manager. He understands the modern-day player. I think that the better you communicate with players, it helps as far as getting maximum performance from them. You can easily lose players if they don't respect you."
Julio Franco has seen it all in more than two decades of professional baseball and knows how bad those relationships can get - the grudges, the griping, players growing to despise a manager. With so much time spent together, that familiarity often breeds contempt.
"Willie has been a manager for three years now and he's getting to know his players real well because he's going to be here for a long time," Franco said. "He likes to participate and I think Willie's done a great job so far."
Said Lo Duca: "He's like one of the guys and he treats us like that. He definitely is all about having a family atmosphere in here. That's where Willie is at his best. He was a player and he understands all of us."
As Carlos Delgado pointed out, it's not as if Randolph served as the barber. He kept enough distance to avoid intruding on the players' fun, but he still could share in the experience.
It's not as if he needed to sit in the chair, either. Randolph always keeps his hair trimmed short.
"I did enjoy that because it allowed us to let our hair down a little bit - or off, as it were," Randolph said. "Then again, there's a fine line there and you have to know where that line is.
"I try to convey a very serious approach to the game, to play the game right on the field. But in the clubhouse, even though you're working, I like to keep things light because I think in New York especially, there's a lot of pressure to perform and you need to have some kind of balance.
"It just shows how close we are as a group. If we didn't trust each other and like each other, we wouldn't have done that. It shows that we were already solid in here."
|
|
