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Broken: The Manager

By Roel Torres

July 18, 2008

I’m guessing most people think I shouldn’t feel bad for him. But I do. Tim Johnson was a baseball lifer. He played minor league ball. He played major league ball. He scouted. He was a minor league manager. He was a major league bench coach. Then, when he finally realized a dream and became a surprisingly successful major league manager, he was fired after a single season. Because he lied. Well, okay, lots of managers lie. Baseball people lie all the time. The difference was, Tim Johnson lied about things that you are not allowed to lie about. And in the blink of an eye, he was exiled to the Mexican Baseball League, a pariah in the sport he loved so very much…

Who gets forgiven? Who gets to redeem themselves? Who gets the chance to walk away from the wreckage of their mistakes? Former Dodgers closer Steve Howe was suspended from baseball for drug abuse. Seven times. After his sixth suspension, they didn’t kick him out the door and ship him out to the Mexican League. No. After his sixth suspension, they gave him a contract, a glove, and welcomed him back to the majors with open arms. He had a problem. A disease. He was struggling with his inner demons. People understood.
Tim Johnson? Different story. Tim Johnson wasn’t lucky enough to get a seventh chance.

Uncle Mike
            When I was a kid, I would make stuff up. Constantly. I remember the time in third grade that my mom came home from her first parent-teacher conference since moving to the States. The kids in my class had been asking me if I was related to the Red Sox pitcher, Mike Torrez. I didn’t really know who he was. I was new to the country and we didn’t follow baseball in the Philippines. I told them, “Yes.” It was crazy. Our names weren’t even spelled the same way. Torrez, Torres. I said “Yes”, then forgot about it. I had no idea my teacher, Mrs, Hardy, had even heard about it. But of course she had. And she asked my mom about it. Which of course caught my mom flustered and unprepared. She was prepared for a conversation about how her son was adjusting to the American elementary school system. She did not expect to be answering questions about imaginary relatives pitching in the Majors.
            When my mom got home, she confronted me about it. She wasn’t mad at me. Not really. I’m sure she was embarrassed, probably a little surprised. But I was nine years old. What did she expect? That’s what nine year-olds do. They make stuff up. Right?
            My mom asked me not to spread lies to my classmates. More specifically, she asked me to stop telling people we were related to Mike Torrez.
            Okay. No problem. He was a relatively mediocre starting pitcher anyway.
            Looking back, it would be easy to justify my tendency to stretch the truth as a sign of creativity, the mark of a vivid imagination. And I think there’s something to that. But deep down, I know the real reason I used to lie so often.
            I wanted to be liked. I wanted to impress people. I wanted people to think I was cool.
            I was an overweight nine year-old son of an illegal alien, I didn’t speak English as my first language, and I had immigrated to the United States nine months ago. That was reality. But lying could change that. Lying could alter the facts. Lying could make me better than I was.

(How much damage do you think has been done by insecure young men trying to impress someone? How much havoc has been caused by misfits and outsiders trying to find a way to make people think they were cool? And conversely, how much peace of mind do you achieve that moment when you realize that it doesn’t matter whether people are impressed or not? That it doesn’t matter if anyone thinks you’re cool? Wouldn’t it be great if we could quantify all of that somehow? Measurements like “Throughout history, insecure young men have wasted so much energy trying to impress people that, if harnessed, it could power a million suns…”)

The Job
Major league managers lie all the time. I think we all know this and accept it. If your centerfielder shows up hung-over and smelling like sex because he spent the night club-hopping and getting hammered while chasing skirts, you’re allowed to tell the press you’re giving him a day off because it’s a long season and you’re trying to preserve his health. And if your shortstop and your starting pitcher hate each other with a burning animosity, you’re allowed to lie through your teeth and tell the media that everyone gets along in the clubhouse. Sure.
Whenever the government embarks on a large-scale public works project, they calculate the number of deaths that will come as a direct result of building the final product. They’re inevitable. They’re called “Acceptable losses” and everyone recognizes that they come with the territory. By the same measure, we have “Acceptable lies.” White lies. Harmless ones. We’re all adults here. We get it. We know the rules of the game. It’s only when someone oversteps the unspoken, invisible boundary lines that we end up staring at the ground uncomfortably, shuffling our feet, trying to figure out how to extricate ourselves from the suddenly awkward situation.

            We expect major league managers to motivate their team. I don’t know why, exactly. You would think that athletes playing at the highest level of the game for the highest compensation and the greatest stakes would do just fine motivating themselves. The players motivated themselves in Little League, in high school, in college, in the Cape League, in the minors, in the Arizona Fall League, in the Dominican Winter League, and finally the majors. And these players need someone to fire them up? Can’t we assume their natural competitive tendencies will serve them just fine? And even if they aren’t all fired up, does it really matter? Isn’t a supremely talented slugger who’s just going about his business going to dominate due to his superior natural talent when compared to an undersized utility infielder who’s always scrappy and fiery and hustles down to first on a routine ground ball? It sure seems like it to me. It sure seems like talent wins. I don’t put a lot of stock in motivational speeches, inner fire, and scrappiness. Your mileage may vary.
            Still, there are societal expectations on a Major League manager. It’s not enough for him to maximize his bullpen resources, or to exploit the opposition’s extreme platoon splits. He’s supposed to motivate the troops. I mean, have you ever seen a mainstream sports movie where the head coach doesn’t give a big game speech to fire up the team? Hell, in some movies like Any Given Sunday, the entire point of the movie seems to be about the big speech. Motivating the guys. It’s what leaders do. That’s Hollywood for you.
            Tim Johnson tried to motivate his team. As manager of the 1998 Toronto Blue Jays, he had a tall task ahead of him. He played in the same division as historic super powers Boston and New York. The team had only won 72 games the previous year, good for fifth place in the division. It was his first season ever as a Major League manager. He needed to find a way to turn things around. He needed to find a way to help his guys believe. He needed an edge.
            So he lied. Some lies, not so egregious. He told his players he was a star basketball player who turned down a scholarship to UCLA. That seemed reasonable. After all, Tim Johnson was a good enough athlete to be the starting shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1973. It wasn’t too big a stretch for him to claim he could make the cut for a Div. I college basketball program. No worries. No harm done.
            Tim Johnson also claimed that he killed people in the Vietnam War. Which he did not. He never served in combat in Vietnam. But he told his players that he did. And when the truth came out as he was about to begin his second season at the helm for Toronto, he was fired in the middle of spring training.

Judgment
I’ve told many lies in my life. Lies to people I barely knew. Lies to the people closest to me. Lies about how much money I’ve made. Lies about the girls I’ve slept with. Lies about how happy I am with my life. I even lie to myself sometimes, and if I do it well enough, I can almost re-shape my past, re-arrange my memories into a manner more convenient for me. The power of self-delusion. It’s almost infinite.

            I’m not here to tell you that lying is fine. And I’m not here to tell you that I had excellent reasons to justify my own lies. No. No, I’m not. But I am here to tell you that no matter how wild and implausible and prolific my lies were, no matter how habitual or damaging – I was always given a chance to make up for them. Always given a chance to make the truth more substantial than the lies. Always given a chance to make good. And for every exaggeration I told to make me look like a caring and compassionate person, I had countless opportunities to step up to the plate and actually prove it. And I’m appreciative for that.
            In the end, I feel like we should judge a person not by their words, but by their deeds. Don’t pay attention to what a man says, but what he does. Does he claim to be a good man, or does he actually do good things? The difference is everything.
            Tim Johnson took over a fifth-place club in the American League East and helped them improve by sixteen wins in a season. He has a .543 lifetime winning percentage as a manager in the Majors. That’s better than Terry Francona, Jim Leyland, or Tony LaRussa. His players competed hard and his team won games. Tim Johnson proved he could manage in the big leagues, and succeed.
            But he lied. He lied about killing people. In Vietnam. And in a league that accepts drunken drivers, ‘Roid users, and cocaine addicts back into the fold, he crossed that unspoken, invisible boundary line which makes us stare at the ground uncomfortably, shuffling our feet, trying to figure out how to extricate ourselves from the suddenly awkward situation. It makes us feel dirty. So someone has to pay. For how long? That remains to be seen.

As for me, I’ve already forgiven Tim Johnson. I have. I figure it’s the least I could do, considering the way the world has forgiven me.

If you have any thoughts you want to share, I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted at

roeltorres@post.harvard.edu. Thank you.

COMMENTS (19 Comments, most recent shown first)

RoelTorres
Hi cardshof@hotmail.com

It feels like this response was meant to be attached to the end of my "Baseball is designed to break your heart" essay, instead of at the end of the Tim Johnson piece. Either way, it's one of the coolest replies anyone has writte. Thanks.

I was also a huge fan of those Cardinals teams. John Tudor was a magician, getting batters out despite throwing slower than batting practice. I wish I could get radar gun readings on his fastball. Do you think he threw slower than Jamie Moyer? It would be close.

Thanks for sharing your memories of the 87 Cards. I enjoyed hearing about it. And you make an excellent point in closing -- baseball is also very good for healing the heart. That's true, and I'm glad you pointed it out.
9:49 AM Sep 14th

cardshof
In 1987, I was out of work, lazy, and bored. So, being a rabid Cardinals fan, I decided to keep score of every one of their games. No one expected the Cards to do anything that year; the magic of '85 had turned to ash in the flames of a conflagration lit by Don Denkinger, fanned by Joaquin Andujar, and spread throughout an injury-riddled 1986 season. Still, I was young and optimistic, and had come across the Project Scoresheet sheet- far better than the old way! So, away we went, huddled next to a GE Superradio, hanging on Jack Buck and Mike Shannon's every word. From the sublime (Tom Herr's opening day slam to beat the hated Mets) to the tragic (Barry Lyons fell into the dugout and broke John Tudor's leg), each play is documented, each pitch recorded (except when Shannon insisted on talking to some guest for 5 minutes and then saying "Ford flys to right on a 3-2 pitch". And yes, there was magic, as a patchwork team lead the league in runs much of the year and somehow found their way to the pennant: and then broke my heart at the end. But I learned: even very good teams lose 60 or so games, often in frustrating fashion, and you have to set up again the next day, even if you couldn't sleep the night before. Baseball IS designed to break your heart, but there are few things better to heal it again.
6:59 PM Sep 10th

RoelTorres
Hi starkers,

Thanks so much for your thoughts. I did my best to indicate that I didn't approve of what Johnson did. Clearly, it's wrong to tell people that you served in Vietnam if you did not do so. But I also feel like it shouldn't end the man's professional life. Tim Johnson was at the top of his profession and now he's been sent to the outer margins of the game. I feel like he should be given a chance to redeem himself. I feel everyone deserves that chance.
3:27 PM Sep 2nd

Starkers
Well-balanced argument. You made your case for forgiving Johnson without condoning his act. You forgave the sinner, not the sin.

I say -- and this will not sit well with people who think drug abusers have a "disease", and maybe they know more than I do -- if Steve Howe got seven chances, Tim Johnson ought to get seventy times seven chances.
1:07 AM Sep 2nd

RoelTorres
Hi Bucky,

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

I agree that there is a very unpleasant quality to the nature of Tim Johnson's lies. I try to point that out in the essay several times, mentioning that these are not white lies, and that "Tim Johnson lied about things that you are not allowed to lie about" (in my opening paragraph.) I do not want to be dismissive about it. I acknowledge the severity of his offense. But I would also like to keep a matter of perspective about it.

Again, I'm not surprised by your reaction to Tim Johnson's situation. Actually, I expected many response along those lines -- which is why my opening sentence is " I’m guessing most people think I shouldn’t feel bad for him."

(And I do want to mention that Gord Ash, Toronto's GM at the time,pretty explicitly declared that it was the primary reason for his dismissal. Which I thought was justifiable.)

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and stay safe in your travels.

10:07 PM Aug 6th

Bucky
My prespective on this is different. I've spent most of the last few years teaching classes to members of the military at bases in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and at sea. Soldiers and other military members understand that such service is not for everyone. But I've heard over and over again that they hate when somebody pretends to be one of them without having earned it--the thought is that if you want to talk about your bravery in battle, you better have put in some skin time and some blood. If you didn't hump a pack or spend months at sea or fight the heat and the isolation and the loneliness and the bat-shit scariness of having a truck bomb go off near you, then you are crossing a big line to say you have done all that.
I've had just a taste of what those guys go through (including the truck bomb). I know that it annoys me no end to hear people talk about how "we" ought to invade somebody when they mean "somebody else" ought to do it.
Was that why Johnson was fired? Maybe not. And his lies don't mean that I think he is beyond forgiveness. But I think he is in a different class from your uncle, from you, and from me in the serious level of his lies.
3:57 PM Aug 6th

RoelTorres
Just want to re-visit a comment by cderosa in light of the Manny Ramirez trade. Manny's behavior seems to be another example that the managers don't play the deciding role in a player's motivation. If a player doesn't want to play hard, there is very little in the power of a manager that can properly motivate them.

In the end, it's not up to the manager to motivate someone -- it comes down to whether an athlete wants to perform or not.
12:35 PM Aug 4th

RoelTorres
Hi Gary,

Thanks for the kind words. While I agree with a lot of what you say, I do think that there is more than one way to earn credibility. You can earn credibility by being unfailingly honest. And you can also gain credibility by leading a team to success.

I live in New England Patriots territory, and whenever Pats players are asked why they listen to Bill Belichick, they say -- when we do the things he asks, we win games. He knows the game.

Yes, people will always be skeptical of Tim Johnson's anecdotes. But if he can help you hit a slider, throw a cutter, or get you to the playoffs, does that really matter in the big picture?

Thanks again.
11:09 PM Jul 23rd

BigDaddyG
Enjoyed the column very much. I like your using a moment from baseball history to illuminate a greater point. As a Blue Jays fan, I put the Tim Johnson firing in the category of "I don't care, but you still have to fire him." The main issue is he got caught. I don't the issue is that it's a big lie, but rather that it is an odd lie, so it's hard to forget. And because no one can forget the lie, he'll forever have a credibility problem. I think that lack of credibility makes it very hard to manage people. As mid-level manager myself, I consider my credibility with my underlings my lifeblood. No matter how much I try to reason through things, there are times where I have to ask people to do things just because "I say so," and at those times, you have to bank on your credibility to motivate. Unfortunately, Tim Johnson has none, and he's never getting it back.
9:08 PM Jul 23rd

RoelTorres
cderosa,

Thanks for your thoughts. I recognize that I am not necessarily in the majority opinion on the importance of motivation for top athletes. As I mentioned in the article, "your mileage may vary."

And it's true that lying about military service is considered taboo, and much harder to come back from. In the essay, I referred to it as "crossing the unspoken, invisible boundary line." You are not allowed to lie about killing people in Vietnam. It's just unacceptable. But I don't think it should be a life sentence.

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments. I appreciate it.
9:42 PM Jul 21st

cderosa
Roel, couldn't disagree more about the motivational role of coaching at the highest level, but I appreciate the compassionate insight about why we tell our needy lies and why we're better off giving each other chances than just shutting each other down. How many romantic comedies would have ended badly if a guy couldn't finally be let off the hook for a lie he'd told at the beginning of the film? Johnson's athletic lie I bet was a totally common exaggeration in the era before anybody could easily check that stuff out. The military one, though, is tougher to come back from. Trespassing upon the divide between combatants and non-combatants is taboo in most cultures.
6:41 PM Jul 21st

RoelTorres
Martin,

This is a well reasoned response and I agree with much of what you say.

I don't want to debate politics too much (it makes me personally uncomfortable) but I will say that I believe there have been numerous political officials of both parties who have told blatant lies that were far more damaging than Tim Johnson's, and were not removed from office...

It seems to me that there are many baseball employees who fail the "PR expectations" of "major business." Players who are arrested for domestic abusers, for example. And often, these players are given second, third, or fourth chances. In this case, it seems like a liar who betrayed people's trust seems to be held to a different standard to other baseball employees who create massive PR nightmares of a far more violent and vicious sort.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
11:13 AM Jul 20th

wovenstrap
This is not my entire take on the subject, but I am sure that sports reporters have better things to do than engage in muckraking about a manager's past. The ethic that says that Tim Johnson absolutely had to go is the standard you apply to a public servant in a position of civic authority. Tim Johnson wasn't in that position, and what's more, I think deep down, we don't want to treat our athletes and sports figures as if they are politicians looking to shave the truth to serve their own ends. I agree with Roel that there was some overkill there.

On the other hands, sports is a major business, so the same kind of PR expectations that exist for Tom Cruise also exist for Tiger Woods, and the same on down the list. The Beijing Olympics are a comparison -- do we boycott them because China has severe human rights transgressions or do we treat the Olympics as "just" a sporting event, not to be sullied by politics. Whatever else is true, China certainly expects political benefits from the Olympics. At best it's a grey area. Ipso facto Tim Johnson was a figure of some importance to Toronto and its citizens. His lie was not like the lie of a student who says he did his homework. At the same time it's *also* not like the lie of a public servant betraying the public trust. It's somewhere in between, and we would probably benefit by finding a way to de-incentivize lying and other forms of corruptions without constantly *blackballing* people. Tim Johnson probably can manage, and it would probably be better for the country if Eliot Spitzer were allowed to contribute his considerable political knowledge. But they can't, they're off the list.
9:28 AM Jul 20th

RoelTorres
To Clayyearsley,

Thanks so much for those kind words. As a writer, it's a very gratifying response.

I realize that I don't take a traditional approach to writing about baseball topics. Hopefully it's an approach that works for some of the readers out there. Glad it hit the right notes for you in this case.

9:55 PM Jul 19th

clayyearsley
What a great article! Throw out the baseball parts, and it's still a great article. I really didn't expect an article on this site to pack such an emotional and moral wallop. Kudos to you, Mr. Torres!
8:47 PM Jul 19th

RoelTorres
Hi Matt,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I don't consider your comments harsh at all, and I certainly welcome your constructive criticism.

I don't mean to offer up a .543 winning percentage as a simplistic representation of a manager's qualifications. I put it there to illustrate that he was not fired for the on-field performance of his team.

And in terms of his teams playing hard, I am not saying that it should be credited to Johnson's ability to motivate players. Having a team play hard can often be credited to the players themselves, and not to the manager running the team. I'm not saying that the effort of the Blue Jays was Tim Johnson's doing. I'm just saying that there were no obvious signs that it should have led to his undoing.

In the end, whether I phrased things clearly or set up false parallels that confused the issue, the real point is that Tim Johnson made some poor choices, showed some bad judgment, and made some terrible mistakes. And I think that everyone involved with the decision will concede that it was those mistakes -- and not the on-field performance of his team -- that ended his managing career. If I didn't convey that properly, the failing is mine as a writer.

Thanks for you thoughts, and I welcome your input in the future.

5:26 PM Jul 19th

MattDiFilippo
Another fine article, Roel.

This part made me pause: "He has a .543 lifetime winning percentage as a manager in the Majors. That’s better than Terry Francona, Jim Leyland, or Tony LaRussa. His players competed hard and his team won games. Tim Johnson proved he could manage in the big leagues, and succeed."

First, you said earlier in your article that you don't know why we expect managers to motivate their players. If players motivate themselves, as you believe (and this may very well be true), why is "His players competed hard" a point in Johnson's favor?

On a more statistical note, if Vern Rapp had been fired after the 1977 season, you or I could have written this sentence: "Vern Rapp took over a fifth-place team and improved them by 11 games. He has a career winning percentage of .512. Vern Rapp proved he could manage in the big leagues, and succeed."

I think, in my probably naive view so far removed from the situation, that there are aspects of the manager's job which very much require him to have the respect of his players, and will show themselves in the manager's record over a period of years.

Vern Rapp, like Tim Johnson after Johnson's lies were exposed, didn't have the respect of his players. Objectively, both were successful. But with Johnson, we're comparing one year of his career. Saying Johnson has a better winning percentage than Jim Leyland or Tony LaRussa is kind of like saying Herb Score had about the same career ERA as Ferguson Jenkins. There's a difference between being successful over a short time period and sustaining that success over a number of years. I think you need more than one good year to be "proven".

Of course, Johnson didn't get the opportunity to sustain his success, which is the point of your article. But I really believe if some team felt Tim Johnson would manage their club to the World Series, he would be hired in a second. That's why steroid users, wife beaters and cocaine users get chances: The teams believe they will help them win games. Correct or not, there appears to be a perception that Tim Johnson will not help your team win games.

I hope this doesn't sound harsh. I don't mean this as criticism at all.
4:54 PM Jul 19th

RoelTorres
Hi Richie,

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate hearing from you and I respect your viewpoints.

As I mentioned in my essay, I don't feel that the ability to motivate players is really all that useful. But that's my personal bias. I just think that it's an overrated aspect of a manager's skillset.

You mention that a manager is supposed to help sell tickets. I won't argue the point too much other than to say "I disagree, I think hiring a manager to help sell tickets is a misguided way to make a decision."

Almost every manager has conspicuous flaws that could be held against him if we chose to do it. Joe Girardi blew out Josh Johnson's arm. Grady Little left Pedro in to pitch. Tony LaRussa got drunk, sat behind the wheel of his vehicle, and started to drive. Girardi was given another chance by the Yankees. Little was given another chance by the Dodgers. LaRussa got to keep his job with the Cardinals. Their mistakes don't seem to be the dominant consideration in their qualifications to lead a ballclub.

There are also many jobs on a major league team that a capable individual can hold down. Bench coach, hitting coach, pitching coach, first base coach, third base coach, bullpen coach. There are other positions in a minor league farm system that could be filled.

I understand why you would not hire Tim Johnson to manage your team. I just think that having a lifetime of work overshadowed by this indiscretion, this misjudgment, is unfortunate.

Thanks again for reading my essay and taking the time to share your thoughts.
12:23 PM Jul 19th

Richie
It's not a matter of personal forgiveness, it's a question of "Would GM Richie hire Tim Johnson to manage his baseball team?" Probably not. Tim's particular lie type causes 2 problems. First, it degrades his ability to motivate ballplayers in the future. If he did so in the past via his great stories, well, obviously that's not gonna work in the future. Even if he comes up with new true ones, his old false ones are just too memorably false. Any great story he comes up with, listeners are automatically going to wonder about.

That's the minor reason I probably wouldn't hire Tim. Perhaps he's now proving in the Mexican league he can sufficiently motivate ballplayers via some other ways. But a manager is also, in good part working through the public media, supposed to help sell tickets. Because of his memorable lies, I sure don't see Tim being all that effective there. Again, you hear him say "Joe Shlabotnik has fixed his swing and is gonna help us win ballgames this year! Come watch!", and instead of thinking 'well maybe ya never know', you automatically remember Tim's past stories.

So Tim may never again become a major league manager. Yes, too bad. Nor will you, nor will I, nor will dozens of minor league managers and major and minor league coaches who would love to, but will never get that chance. Like the 98% of us who will never rise to the pinnacle of our professions, to tasks that some of us could indeed handle, but will never get the opportunity to.

Like everyone on this site other than that Bill James fellow. His success taunts us all. That's why I hate him. grrrr
11:42 AM Jul 19th

Broken: The Manager

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