relationship with Pope allowed for brutal honesty.
“There’s no way in hell I’m doing that,” I told him. “I feel like I’m ready to come into the front office right now.”
“Nope, Dallas, you might feel like you’re ready, but you won’t really be ready until you know what it’s like to handle 25 guys all by yourself, two or three thousand miles from the home office.”
Damn that Pope and his superior logic!
I accepted the assignment.
I was supposed to be paid $7,000 to manage the South Dakota team. That was $10,000 less than I earned in my final season in the majors. I had to mount another protest: “Christ, Pope, I have three kids and one on the way! I can’t live on that.”
Pope pulled some strings and got me a few extra thousand dollars.
At spring training in 1968, still just 33, I took my place alongside all the older coaches who had been in the Phillies organization for years. I felt accepted right away by Lucchesi, Andy Seminick, Bob Wellman, and Al Widmar. They were all solid baseball guys who made me feel part of the family.
I knew Pope intended to send one of his guys to Huron to check on things. That was fine with me—as long as that person wasn’t Lou Kahn. Lou was Pope’s right-hand man, a real old-school baseball guy whose duties included evaluating the organization’s personnel. He was also a real pain in the ass, in my opinion. Over the course of my playing career, I had crossed paths with him several times. He drank a lot and would often come to the ballpark a little shaky. He’d sit on an aluminum chair and bark orders, instructions, and complaints, all while spitting out tobacco juice which ended up all over his shirt and jacket.
I took Pope aside to make an important request: “Whatever you do, please don’t send Lou Kahn out to me in Huron. I think he’s an embarrassment to the organization, and I don’t want someone like that looking over my shoulder.”
Before I left for South Dakota, I got the nicest send-off I ever could have imagined from the Reading Phillies, who held a “Dallas Green Night” before a game at Municipal Stadium. Though I only played part of one season for the team, I built some solid friendships there. A lot of my friends from throughout the Delaware Valley made the trip out to Reading for the event.
*
In mid-June, Sylvia and I packed up our station wagon with sleeping bags and pillows and drove in shifts from our Delaware home to South Dakota. On our way across the country, we heard on the radio that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated at a California hotel. Sylvia, who was more politically active than I was, took the news hard. I viewed it with disgust. Just two months after Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, another nut with a gun had shaken the country with an act of violence.
When we got to Huron, the first people there to greet us were Lou Kahn and his wife, Esther. I made nice with Lou, but as soon as I got inside our rented home, I called Pope and screamed at him for five straight minutes. Then he screamed back at me, “He’s staying! He’s part of the organization, and he’s staying!”
As was usually the case, Pope knew what he was doing.
I didn’t let Lou get in my way as I settled in and surveyed the players I had to work with for the upcoming Northern League season. I didn’t think too much about how I would handle the team. I figured my style as manager would naturally flow from my experiences as a player. I considered myself a hard worker and a fierce competitor, and I would work to make sure the teenagers under my command showed similar commitment and fire.
From the get-go, the team played lousy, losing game after game. That drove me crazy, and I took my frustration out on my players. I started holding workouts twice a day, once in the morning and once again before an evening game.
My No. 1 rule was every manager’s No. 1 rule: get to the ballpark on time.
The day one of my pitchers showed up late for practice,
“There’s no way in hell I’m doing that,” I told him. “I feel like I’m ready to come into the front office right now.”
“Nope, Dallas, you might feel like you’re ready, but you won’t really be ready until you know what it’s like to handle 25 guys all by yourself, two or three thousand miles from the home office.”
Damn that Pope and his superior logic!
I accepted the assignment.
I was supposed to be paid $7,000 to manage the South Dakota team. That was $10,000 less than I earned in my final season in the majors. I had to mount another protest: “Christ, Pope, I have three kids and one on the way! I can’t live on that.”
Pope pulled some strings and got me a few extra thousand dollars.
At spring training in 1968, still just 33, I took my place alongside all the older coaches who had been in the Phillies organization for years. I felt accepted right away by Lucchesi, Andy Seminick, Bob Wellman, and Al Widmar. They were all solid baseball guys who made me feel part of the family.
I knew Pope intended to send one of his guys to Huron to check on things. That was fine with me—as long as that person wasn’t Lou Kahn. Lou was Pope’s right-hand man, a real old-school baseball guy whose duties included evaluating the organization’s personnel. He was also a real pain in the ass, in my opinion. Over the course of my playing career, I had crossed paths with him several times. He drank a lot and would often come to the ballpark a little shaky. He’d sit on an aluminum chair and bark orders, instructions, and complaints, all while spitting out tobacco juice which ended up all over his shirt and jacket.
I took Pope aside to make an important request: “Whatever you do, please don’t send Lou Kahn out to me in Huron. I think he’s an embarrassment to the organization, and I don’t want someone like that looking over my shoulder.”
Before I left for South Dakota, I got the nicest send-off I ever could have imagined from the Reading Phillies, who held a “Dallas Green Night” before a game at Municipal Stadium. Though I only played part of one season for the team, I built some solid friendships there. A lot of my friends from throughout the Delaware Valley made the trip out to Reading for the event.
*
In mid-June, Sylvia and I packed up our station wagon with sleeping bags and pillows and drove in shifts from our Delaware home to South Dakota. On our way across the country, we heard on the radio that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated at a California hotel. Sylvia, who was more politically active than I was, took the news hard. I viewed it with disgust. Just two months after Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, another nut with a gun had shaken the country with an act of violence.
When we got to Huron, the first people there to greet us were Lou Kahn and his wife, Esther. I made nice with Lou, but as soon as I got inside our rented home, I called Pope and screamed at him for five straight minutes. Then he screamed back at me, “He’s staying! He’s part of the organization, and he’s staying!”
As was usually the case, Pope knew what he was doing.
I didn’t let Lou get in my way as I settled in and surveyed the players I had to work with for the upcoming Northern League season. I didn’t think too much about how I would handle the team. I figured my style as manager would naturally flow from my experiences as a player. I considered myself a hard worker and a fierce competitor, and I would work to make sure the teenagers under my command showed similar commitment and fire.
From the get-go, the team played lousy, losing game after game. That drove me crazy, and I took my frustration out on my players. I started holding workouts twice a day, once in the morning and once again before an evening game.
My No. 1 rule was every manager’s No. 1 rule: get to the ballpark on time.
The day one of my pitchers showed up late for practice,
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