Davey Johnson is the best manager I’ve ever covered.
The new Nationals skipper knows pitching. He knows how to manage a bullpen. He knows what buttons to push in a clubhouse. And he has supreme confidence in his baseball decisions.
With his managing resume, Johnson should be cocky. He has managed four major league teams — the Mets, Reds, Orioles and Dodgers — over 14 seasons with a 1148-888 record.
Johnson’s resume includes four division titles, one pennant and one World Series title with the Mets in 1986. During his two years in Baltimore, Johnson led the Orioles to two American League Championship Series appearances, one of which came following a 1997 season in which the Orioles led the AL East wire to wire.
And then he did what Jim Riggleman did. He quit.
The circumstances were far different, but the fact is that Johnson was going into the final year of his three-year contract with the Orioles following the 1997 season and demanded an extension.
He didn’t get it, so Johnson quit with one year left on his contract.
It has almost been written into existence that Orioles owner Peter Angelos fired Johnson, but that is not the case. You could argue — and be on solid ground — that the relationship between Johnson and Angelos had deteriorated so badly that Johnson had little choice but to quit.
The circumstances of the resignation were different than Riggleman’s last week. Walking out in the middle of the season is indefensible. Johnson did so at the end of a season. And Johnson was far smarter about it, having the leverage of being named AL manager of the year.
But he left some people behind — such as Orioles general manager Pat Gillick, who stayed through the 1998 season to complete his three-year contract. Gillick told me he had flown to see Johnson at his Florida home to try to convince him to come back for his final year.
“I was upset about it from the standpoint that we had two good years and all of a sudden it was gone. Everybody has to do what they have to do, but I would have liked to have seen him try to work his way through that one year he had left on his contract,” Gillick said in an interview for my book “Home of the Game: The Story of Camden Yards.”
Let me make it clear — I don’t blame Johnson for quitting. There was a level of dysfunction in that organization that he felt he could no longer live with — at least not without more job security.
Right or wrong, Riggleman felt the same way.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
