Davey Johnson by Davey Johnson

Author:Davey Johnson
Language: ara
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2018-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

18. October 13, 1983: Bringing the Magic Back

“I have a list of 10 skills I look for in a manager,” Cashen said to me during my interview in an Atlanta Fulton County Airport lounge. “Fearless, intelligent, good communicator, energetic, tough, dedicated to player development, patient, hardworking, cooperative, and positive.”

“Yeah, I got all those,” I told him. “Anything else?”

Frank, my GM when I played in Baltimore, gave a slight grin at my cockiness, which he knew all too well, then moved the talk to salary.

“We can pay you $50,000 a year.”

I kind of laughed and said, “Frank, I can’t take that job for less than a hundred grand. It’s New York City!”

After getting close enough to the figure I wanted, we had a two-year deal, but I told Cashen, “I’m only going to deal with one general manager. Not you and Lou Gorman. I’m only going to deal with you, Frank. I don’t want two different opinions getting filtered into the organization.”

At the time, Gorman was the Mets’ VP of player personnel, but more important to me, he was like the chief deputy to Cashen.

Frank agreed that I only needed to report to him.

Of course, it all became a moot point when Gorman left the Mets to accept the Red Sox’s general manager job just prior to spring training. Another team vice president, Al Harazin, and McIlvaine, who was now director of scouting, would absorb Gorman’s duties.

If I seemed direct or even brash during my interview with Cashen, it’s because I was confident he was going to offer me the job. In fact, I believed he didn’t have a choice. There was a lot of young talent in the minor league system and nobody had a better knowledge of it than I did.

I have long believed that, ideally, the prerequisite to becoming a first-time manager should be to manage in a team’s minor league system and see how the organization reacts to your judgments and how they deal with you so you’ll get constructive feedback from them before going to the big-league level. I felt like that was what I did and it made it easy for me to transition to the major leagues.

The announcement of my hiring was made in Philadelphia at a press conference during the ’83 World Series.

“I’m really happy to be here,” I told the reporters. “I like working for smart men and Frank Cashen is a smart man for hiring me.”

In an unconventional move, I announced the hiring of Frank Howard, the manager I had just replaced, as one of my coaches. Although I didn’t agree with him on some of the ways he managed the ballclub, I thought he was an outstanding coach. He would relentlessly work with the outfielders—who usually never got enough practice.

A few days after the press conference, I made another hire that could be perceived as uncommon. I brought on a young data processing manager named Russ Richardson. I wanted offensive data on how every one of my players hit against

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