Ex-big league skipper guides semipros in Kansas

By Jack Etkin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 16, 2008 at 11:39 p.m.

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Photo by Photo Courtesy Of Liberal Bee Jays

Mike Hargrove, above right, signing autographs in Guymon, Okla. "It's really satisfying to see the look of, it's not pleasure, but the light kind of comes on for them (his young Liberal Bee Jays players). They're enthusiastic about it. It's like, 'Oh, gee, this makes a difference,' " he says.

Photo by David Maxwell / Afp/Getty Images/2000

Hargrove, then managing the Baltimore Orioles, is interviewed in the dugout during a game against his former team, the Cleveland Indians, at Jacobs Field. Hargrove also managed the Seattle Mariners after his stint in Baltimore but resigned last season before landing in Kansas.

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Mike Hargrove has yet to hear one of his players call him "Grover," Hargrove's well-known nickname when he played and managed in the major leagues.

To the Liberal Bee Jays, it's mostly "yes, sir" and "no, sir," with an occasional "coach" sprinkled in, which is borderline permissible because these are college players drawing on the familiar when it comes to addressing the man in charge.

"That's the only reason it's tolerable, believe me," Hargrove said. "It is a little bit like somebody scratching their nails on the blackboard. I used to have a sign in my office in Cleveland because a lot of the radio and TV people used to call me 'coach.' So I had a sign made up: 'My name ain't Coach.' "

Cleveland was where Hargrove began his major league managing career in July 1991 and where the Indians, who begin a three-game series tonight at Coors Field, ended 40 desolate years and ceased being a laughingstock.

They won five American League Central titles and twice reached the World Series under Hargrove, who also managed Baltimore and Seattle.

He surprisingly resigned from the Mariners last season July 1, claiming the daily dedication he asked of his players was something he no longer could match, and he has returned to his baseball roots and the Jayhawk League to manage the semipro Bee Jays.

This is a trip back in time for Hargrove. He briefly played for the Bee Jays in 1972 before signing with the Texas Rangers. They drafted him in the 25th round out of Northwestern Oklahoma State and sent him to Geneva, N.Y., to begin his professional career. Two years later, he was the American League Rookie of the Year.

Hargrove, 58, and his wife, Sharon - they met in junior high and were married when he was 20 and she was 19 - are from Perryton, Texas, 40 miles to the south, where both still have family.

Proximity explains why they are in Liberal, along with their long-discussed desire to give back to people in places that had been influential.

"I figure there's two ways to give back - money and time," Hargrove said. "And time is a lot cheaper than money."

Part of giving back for Hargrove, a former first baseman with a lifetime .290 average and .396 on-base percentage, has been helping several of his players make small adjustments in their hitting approach during early batting practice.

"It's really satisfying to see the look of, it's not pleasure, but the light kind of comes on for them," Hargrove said. "They're enthusiastic about it. It's like, 'Oh, gee, this makes a difference.'

"And that's real satisfying. I don't care what level you're on - if you're working with people with any talent at all and you can help them and you see that look come across their face . . ."

Hargrove is sitting in the Bee Jays dugout at Brent Gould Field on the campus of Seward County Community College. Finding Hargrove, who managed all or parts of 16 seasons in the majors after 12 as a player, in this hot, windswept outpost is like happening upon Claude Monet painting houses.

Hargrove said he's still getting paid by the Mariners and isn't receiving any money to manage the Bee Jays. Nonetheless, San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy was incredulous when told last week Hargrove is managing collegiate players in the Jayhawk League.

Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper, who played with Hargrove in Cleveland, saw it differently.

" 'Grover's a good guy," Kuiper said. "And if good things come out of this for him, I think it's fantastic because, clearly, a lot of good things are coming out of this for the kids that he's managing."

One of them is Eric Johnston, a left-handed-hitting outfielder from the University of Texas-San Antonio whom Hargrove said has "a really short, quick stroke" but was hurting his chances to hit by doing everything at the last second.

"It's pretty amazing to know that I'm going to have a former big-league manager and I'm going to gain some really, really good experience from a guy that knows a lot about baseball," Johnston said. "Hopefully, I can learn a lot and he can help me because he was a great hitter. So, hopefully, he can rub off on me a little bit and let me know what I need to work on, and, hopefully, make me a better player."

Johnston is one of the rare Bee Jays with knowledge of Hargrove as anything other than a major league manager. That said, Johnston and his Bee Jays teammates were amused to learn Hargrove was nicknamed "The Human Rain Delay" for the deliberate mannerisms he repeated before each pitch.

For his part, Hargrove has tried to shift the focus from himself. He was welcomed back during pregame ceremonies on opening night and told the Liberal fans, "This is not about me. This is about these players."

Hargrove and his wife are living in the basement of a home owned by Bob Carlile, 71, a Liberal businessman, the Bee Jays general manager and an old friend who, last summer, planted the seed with Hargrove about managing the Bee Jays when the Hargroves came through Liberal on their way back to their Cleveland-area home.

With Sharon on an Alaskan cruise, Hargrove was by himself the night before the Bee Jays' season began. He was watching Deadliest Catch on television but kept losing interest in it.

"I thought, 'What in the world? This is a good program,' " Hargrove said. "It was about 10:30, and I hadn't eaten dinner and I thought I should be hungry. All of a sudden, I realized it wasn't nerves, it was anticipation. The adrenaline was flowing, and that was a cool thing."

So was Hargrove's reaction recently when Richey Irvin batted with two out and the bases loaded in a close game. He fell behind 0-2, worked the count to 2-2 and doubled home three runs.

"Just the way that kid battled back and then got the hit, I'm sounding melodramatic, I guess, but I really just absolutely got goose bumps watching that happen," Hargrove said.

Hargrove said he missed managing "a lot more than I thought I would" and would like at least one more opportunity to manage in the majors. He would relish a return to the World Series, where his Indians lost in six games to Atlanta in 1995 and in seven games to Florida in 1997.

If a managing job doesn't materialize next season, Hargrove said it's likely he'll return to a major league organization as a special assistant.

'Love for the game'

For now, Hargrove's sights are set on the National Baseball Congress tournament Aug. 1-15 in Wichita, Kan. Typically, the top two finishers in the Jayhawk League qualify.

Liberal has reached the NBC finals 11 times - second only to a team from Fairbanks, Alaska - and has won the championship four times, including in 2000, when Bee Jays made their most recent appearance.

The NBC tournament is a dot on the horizon now. Hargrove has a more pressing need. He's waiting for the arrival of more pitchers to fill out his undermanned staff.

After blowing late leads Saturday and Sunday at Hays (Kan.), the Bee Jays are 3-5 overall and 1-4 in the Jayhawk League, not what their manager envisioned as the months rolled by and he came to some conclusions after his abrupt end to last season.

"I realized that I missed the game," Hargrove said. "I realized I still wanted to do this. I hate the word 'passion.' I really cringe every time I hear that word.

"I think passion's one of those words that everybody thinks everybody wants to hear. If you use the word 'passion' in your talk about your job, everybody kind of feels that's the validating point that you do care about what you're doing and you're enthusiastic about what you're doing. I hadn't lost my enthusiasm for the job. I hadn't lost my love for the game. I really hadn't lost my passion for what I was doing."

Odd departure

Mike Hargrove resigned as manager of the Seattle Mariners on July 1 last season, having made his intentions known to his superiors about 10 days earlier. He left after the Mariners, four games behind, won their eighth straight game to improve to 45-33.

The timing was unusual, to say the least, and talk within the industry was Hargrove had problems with Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, who could deal directly with chairman and Chief Executive Officer Howard Lincoln.

He's a retired Nintendo of America executive who owns a small share of the team and represents Hiroshi Yamauchi, the retired chief of Nintendo of America who owns a majority interest in the Mariners.

"It's nothing sinister, I can tell you that," Hargrove said, referring to his reasons for leaving. "It wasn't a problem with Ichiro. It wasn't anything like that, that everyone would love for it to be so they could talk about it. It was just a lot of little things over the course of time and not just over the course of that year."

Hargrove offers little in the way of specifics. His wife, Sharon, said Hargrove never had quit anything and agonized over leaving.

He remembered playing for Billy Martin, who managed Texas when Hargrove was a young major leaguer and seeing Martin "go from being absolutely, totally into the game and on top of things" to "where his focus was almost diffused at times" and Martin was his usual sharp self the final five innings after being less so the first four.

"I saw how that affected some games, and I didn't want that to happen," said Hargrove, who added he wondered whether the Mariners might narrowly lose out in the wild-card or division race because "I had trouble being on top of things and had to work at doing that. I didn't want to be the cause of hurting people that I cared for, as I do the players and the front office, and be the reason that all that hard work went right down the tubes. I couldn't stand the thought of living with that."

Roll call

The Liberal Bee Jays have a rich tradition among semipro collegiate teams. They began play in 1955 in the Ban Johnson League - hence the nickname - and were a charter member of the Jayhawk League in 1976. The league consists of seven teams, the others being Derby, El Dorado, Hays and Dodge City in Kansas; and Nevada and Joplin in Missouri.

More than 140 former Bee Jays went on to play in the majors and three managed there - Hargrove, Phil Garner and Nick Leyva.

Former Rockies Curtis Leskanic, Bruce Ruffin and Freddie Benavides played for Liberal, and other current and former major leaguers who played there include Ron Guidry, Doug Drabek, Rick Honeycutt, Steve Kemp, Vance Law, Ken Berry, David Segui, John Valentin, Greg Swindell, Mike Moore, Jack Morris, Tom Pagnozzi, Ian Kinsler, Rich Harden, Hunter Pence, Scott Hairston, Troy Percival and Kelly Shoppach.