VIERA, Fla. — Davey Johnson is nothing if not confident.
“I think I’m a damn good manager,” he said, leaning back in his office chair at Space Coast Stadium following a Washington Nationals spring training workout.
That might be understating it. Johnson is a great manager, but his greatness has been so fragmented and spread around in New York, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Los Angeles that it got lost along the way.
It has been drowned out by the success of his peers, who didn’t have so much baggage attached to their resumes.
Bobby Cox made 14 straight playoff appearances as the Atlanta Braves’ manager and won 2,504 games over his illustrious career. Tony La Russa had long tenures at his last two stops — Oakland and St. Louis — and won World Series titles at both before retiring after winning last year’s championship.
Joe Torre is defined by his four World Series championships with the New York Yankees, yet he had a career losing record before he was hired in 1996.
Johnson, 69, lost his first game as a manager in the majors for the New York Mets in 1984 but hasn’t had a career losing record since. He has a career winning percentage of .561, better than La Russa, Cox and Torre. And in 14 years of managing, Johnson had just one full season in which he had a losing record before he took over when Jim Riggleman quit last season — nearly 11 years removed from the last time Johnson had been in a major league dugout.
He became the best forgotten manager of his time.
Does he care what people think of him as a manager? Does he think about his place in the game?
“This is my last stop,” he said. “I enjoyed the challenges at each stop I had. I’m not real happy that I got fired four times. But I am not a person who lives in the past. I hope I’ve learned from the past.
“I never think a whole lot of time about my experience in New York, although everybody is dragging it out of me. Or Cincinnati or Baltimore or Los Angeles. But all those experiences I enjoyed the challenges and tried to get the most out of players, and by and large I am comfortable I did that.
“That they didn’t last longer, I’m not proud of that. But I got other opportunities to manage.”
Not all of them were in the majors. Those opportunities Johnson spoke of included the American team in the World Cup and the World Baseball Classic and college summer leagues. He stayed close to the game.
Now he is back in with a young Nationals team that could be on the verge of contending — and maybe on the verge of reminding everyone how great a manager Davey Johnson is.
“My concern now is not how I’m thought of,” he said. “I could care less. I am more concerned about how those players in our clubhouse perceive me and how I get the most out of them.”
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].
