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Kelly: Changes aplenty in 15 years
Special to Page 2Tom Kelly has been the Minnesota Twins manager for 15 consecutive seasons, making him the longest-tenured head coach or manager in major pro sports. Kelly shared his thoughts on the changes in baseball with ESPN.com's Greg Garber:
|  | | Tom Kelly has won two World Series in his 15 seasons in Minnesota. |
To be honest with you, I don't think about the tenure thing. You know, 15 years, somebody's got to do it. I spend my time thinking about winning and losing and how to prepare the players better.
It's pretty simple. I think most of us baseball managers, we struggle with the fundamentals of the younger players. Not all of them -- don't get me wrong -- but a pretty good majority don't understand the fundamentals. We spend a lot of time trying to bunt the ball, things we would think are simple but, really, turn into an ordeal. Things we learned when we were 8 or 9 years old. That's the big disparity between now and only 10, 12 years ago. The young kids don't understand the importance of advancing the runner, things that help you win.
Nowadays, people think it's somewhat trivial. It's the way they're brought up. They say, "It's OK. Maybe I'll get it done next time." Well, it's not OK. Most of these kids have had success in high school or college or the Olympics. Maybe they did some wrong things, but it was passed over. They've been patted on the back. You know, "Don't worry about it."
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The Kelly file |
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In 1987, 37-year-old Tom Kelly became the youngest manager to lead his club to the AL Championship Series and went on to become the fifth rookie manager to capture a World Series.
Working for a team noted for its lean payroll, Kelly has nevertheless managed to win 1,055 major-league games, against 1,167 losses to go along with two world championships. |
I talked to Bobby Knight one afternoon not too long ago and asked him if he still had the same values and principles that he did when he got started in coaching. I told him at our level here, it's deteriorating. He looked at me like, "Gee, that's a pretty good question." He said when he used to have practice, the players practiced. Now, he said, sometimes they lay on the training table. That never happened before.
It's a different culture. It's a different decade of players, of people in general. They don't have the same values we did growing up. Oh, boy. You've gotta bite your tongue sometimes. And you've really gotta watch your coaches. A player will mess up, and they go right to them. You grab them and say, "Easy, easy." You can't holler as much as you used to. You've gotta pick your spots in showing you're upset.
It's more of a big brother-type conversation you need to have. When I was playing in the '60s, that's not how managers did it. That's not how parents did it. You learned growing up: If you didn't do it right, you were going to get the belt across the butt.
That's not the way it is anymore.
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