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Girardi's solid education, high IQ make him unique
of TheColumnists.com
Longtime baseball
manager Charlie Dressen used to brag that he never read a book.
He would say the game was all about instinct. You had it or you
didn’t. Then he would steam up a pot of crab fingers and
entertain the press with tales of the past.
Pete Rose used to say, “I’ve written more books than
I’ve read,” as another biography or authorized auto-biography
would come off the press as he was collecting a record 4,256
hits and a later lifetime suspension for gambling on the game.
Babe Ruth had a reform school education and Lou Gehrig spent
a year at Columbia University, mostly waiting on tables at fraternity
houses and hitting baseballs into the street.
Joe DiMaggio dropped out of high school and Mickey Mantle rarely
dropped in. Willie Mays was playing baseball for pay as a 15-year-old
and Ted Williams went fishing in San Diego when it was test time.
Now the Yankees have a manager who is an inveterate chess player,
computer geek, industrial engineering graduate of prestigious
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, a three time Academic
All-American, a recognized scholar-athlete and a crew cut wearer
at age 43.
How does smarts relate to success in big time sports?
Joe Girardi, the new Yankee baseball manager, may be one of the
brightest guys to ever hold the position. He certainly has a
lot more academic credentials than a couple of Yankee baseball
managerial geniuses, Joe Torre, a 12-time post season manager
of the Yankees in 12 tries and Casey Stengel, the only skipper
in history to lead a team to five straight World Series crowns
from 1949-1953.
Baseball’s official historian, Jerome Holtzman, the erudite
Baseball Hall of Fame sportswriter from the Chicago Tribune and
Chicago Sun-Times, knew Girardi as a kid catcher with the Cubs
after he worked his way up from Peoria High School and Northwestern
to Wrigley Field.
“He was always smart,” said Holtzman. “I knew
that from the first time I met him. He just impressed me by the
way he carried himself. I knew he would manage. He reminded me
of Al Lopez, who captained every team he ever played on starting
with Brooklyn when he was 25.”
Holtzman, the author of the best sports writing book ever, "No
Cheering in the Press Box," is 81, still a student of the
game and certain Girardi’s smarts will help him succeed.
“I remember when I first met him as a kid in Chicago,”
said Holtzman. “He was a good catcher and an average hitter
but he always worked to improve himself. He spent a lot of time
at Northwestern Fieldhouse, just down from where I live, and
I would go out there and talk to him as he worked out in the
off-season.”
Holtzman said he knew after a few years with the Cubs (Girardi
also played for the Rockies, Yankees and Cardinals) that he would
one day become a baseball manager.
“We talked about that a few times and he actually said he
would much rather be the athletic director at Northwestern than
a big league manager,” said Holtzman.
Holtzman asked Girardi why he preferred the college position
to the big league position.
“I won’t have to travel,” he said.
Girardi probably was swayed by a $2 million a year contract for
three seasons and the prestige of managing the Yankees and succeeding
the high profile Torre.
Holtzman and his wife, Marilyn, are frequent visitors to a popular
restaurant in nearby Glenview called Hackney’s.
“We go in there a lot and we often run into Joe’s parents,
who live nearby. They are very lovely people and I am sure they
are very proud of his new position with the Yankees,” Holtzman
said.
Holtzman said Girardi’s Chicago nickname of “Northwestern
Joe” may not be very popular in the Bronx but that is what
everybody around the Cubs called him in his playing days, maybe
a little putdown for the anti-intellectual attitude of most pro
athletes.
Girardi’s rise to the top of the baseball game with the
managerial position of the most successful team in sports (39
pennants and 26 Series wins no matter what Boston Nation says)
will certainly be an interesting test of whether intelligence
counts.
“I think it certainly does,” said Holtzman. “This
is a very smart guy who I think will prove to be a very successful
New York manager.”
There have been college graduates who have succeeded in the game
from Christy Mathewson to Tom Seaver but as many who have not.
Ken MacKenzie, a Yale graduate, was a journeyman pitcher with
the Original Mets in 1962. He was in trouble on the mound against
the San Francisco Giants. Manager Casey Stengel walked out to
him.
“Pitch ‘em like they’re the Harvards,” said
Stengel, aware of the undergraduate rivalry years of his left
hander.
Whether Girardi’s intelligence and alleged 140 IQ will matter
as he hopes to lead the Yankees back to the Series will be carefully
watched in 2008.
It probably is a lot like chicken soup when you have a cold.
“It may not help,” your mother might say, “but
it wouldn’t hurt.”
©2007 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The illustration is a staff artist's vision of
a newspaper photo. This column first posted Nov. 5, 2007.
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