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SI [url=http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1019993/index.htm]profile[/url] of Manuel, by William Nack, from the high-flying Sox summer of 2000.
Key excerpts:
| ]"Jerry manages by the gut," says Ron Schueler, the White Sox general manager. "He does a lot of work on matchups, but then he says, 'I just got a gut feeling.' " Indeed, of all the things that define Manuel as a manager, that made him the American League's winningest skipper during the season's first four months, none describe the loft of his arc as clearly as his fearlessness in taking risks, his willingness to flout conventional wisdom. |
]This is not the mind of a typical baseball manager at work here. Rather, Manuel suggests a kind of New Age Casey Stengel, that unending font of wisdom, whimsy and charm. A born-again Christian, Manuel neither chews nor drinks nor uses profanity, the old triple play of sins in his profession, but there is nothing rigid or self-righteous about him—he hides his piety like a steal sign—and humor is part and parcel of his grace. When told that one of his more intellectually challenged players had just had two wisdom teeth extracted, Manuel smiled and said, "Dang, they should have left those in." His humor, at times intended to lighten darker moods, can be charmingly self-deprecating. Like Stengel, he is not afraid to play the clown.
On April 28, while serving the first day of his eight-game suspension for his part in the bench-clearing brawl with the Detroit Tigers on April 22, Manuel watched the Sox beat the Tigers 3-2 on the TV in his room at the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn, Mich. That evening, as the coaches and players stepped off the team bus at the hotel, a uniformed doorman, looking ramrod straight in his jacket and hat, held the front door open as acting manager Joe Nossek swept past.
"Welcome to the Ritz-Carlton," said the doorman.
"Yeah, yeah," grumped Nossek, not looking up.
"Hey, Joe!" yelled the doorman. Nossek turned back. It was Manuel, who had borrowed the uniform from the actual doorman. |
| ]Manuel imported the philosophy, the intense, single-minded purposefulness, and the players have been implementing it. "It's not the swinging for the fences that has won us games," he says. "It's the guy taking the leadoff walk. It's the guy hustling into second base to beat a throw—or take a guy out. These little things have made the difference. This team has a strong bond. They like each other. They pull for each other. They want to win badly. They are growing up very quickly, right before our eyes." |
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