Tony Muser is a very simple man. I mean that as both a compliment and as an insult.
We've all heard the insults, at least most of them, so let's talk about the compliments first.
Being simple is often a very good thing. For instance, Tony says what he means. There's rarely some hidden agenda that must be weeded out. He believes his team needs to be tougher, mentally and physically, hence the ridiculous tequila commentary earlier this year. He also believes that being aggressive at the plate is the surest way to success for a hitter, consequently he talks a lot about "getting into hitter's counts" instead of getting on base.
Muser really, truly believes these things are principles of baseball. We can wonder all we want about why Muser believes these things, but we should never doubt that he holds these thoughts as truths. I think he is a truly honest man and that's almost always a good and admirable thing.
This same simple quality makes it very, very easy to decipher Muser's motives. Tony batted Rey Sanchez second in the lineup because he really did believe that Sanchez was a good number-two hitter. He's not, of course. Sanchez isn't even a good number-nine hitter, but that doesn't mean Muser didn't truly believe it himself. A pitcher gutting out a complete game, pitch count be damned, is a sure way to get on Muser's good side. How long Chad Durbin or Chris George will stay there once their arms fall off is open for debate, but Tony believes complete games are a good thing regardless.
Now, I could go into a litany of examples of how this same simplicity has butchered Tony Muser's future as a major league manager, but what's the point? We already know that he'll never work as a manager for any team besides the Kansas City Royals. Once David Glass or Allard Baird or their respective successors finally wise up, Muser will revert back to being a hitting coach or a third base coach. He will certainly never fill out another major league lineup card.
No, I'd rather spend my time investigating the whys. Why is Tony Muser so simple? Why is he so blind to modern baseball practice and strategy? Why does he play favorites with some undeserving players and banish others to his doghouse? Why all the tough talk about tequila and "live grenades" and "combat"? And, most importantly, why do the answers to these questions all add up to a very bad major league baseball manager?
Let's deal with the obvious first. Tony Muser was raised Catholic, and attended Catholic schools for at least part of his youth. Trust me, from personal experience I can testify that the Catholic Church in general, and nuns in particular, are very big on painting the world in two colors – black and white. From all accounts, Tony Muser is a good Catholic.
His next step after Catholic school was perhaps even more important in solidifying his outlook on the world. Tony Muser joined the Marines. As any old Marine, including my father-in-law, will eagerly tell you, there are only three ways to do anything in life – the right way, the wrong way, and the Marine Corps way. That's a really catchy saying, but the reality is that "right" and "Marine Corps" are actually one and the same, leaving recruits with only two options. They can do what they're told, or they can suffer the consequences.
Few people could emerge from these two ancient, strict organizations without a world outlook that was conveniently limited to two poles. Black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, and so on. Tony Muser is no different. To expect him to open up to innovative ideas or strategies is unfair. He is not equipped to think that way. The nuns and drill instructors simply never let him.
With that kind of experience as a child and young man, only earth-shattering, myth-busting experiences as a player could have changed Muser's outlook on baseball, if not on life. Unfortunately, for the Royals, that never happened. Tony Muser's career as a player did nothing but reinforce this belief system.
Muser broke into the big leagues with the Red Sox, always a slugging club short on pitching and defense. Since Muser's skill set as a player didn't fit that team, it's not surprising that he quickly moved on, playing on two games for the Olde Town Team. Thus he was denied the opportunity to see a team achieve some measure of success despite poor defense and mediocre pitching.
He moved on to the White Sox next, where he stayed the longest. For the most part nothing changed. The teams over-achieved but were never really contenders to win anything. Since the club was generally stronger offensively than it was in pitching, Muser had little opportunity to play regularly. He mostly rode the bench, serving almost exclusively as a defensive replacement and pinch-hitter. The one year he hit well enough to serve as a semi-regular, 1973, the team posted the worst record of any of his four full seasons there. The seeds were firmly planted – hitting well didn't guarantee winning. In fact, the better he hit, the worse the team did.
Midway through the 1975 season, Muser was traded to the Orioles, where his defensive abilities fit perfectly. There was no real need to hit well, that team managed to win frequently - even more frequently than their Pythagorean projection would indicate – by playing stellar defense and regularly putting together an outstanding pitching staff. Muser was essentially the Orioles' starter at first base in 1976 despite posting an almost unheard-of (for a corner infielder) OPS of .538. But the O's won eighty-eight games that year, and won another ninety-seven in 1977, when Muser's OPS "soared" to .585.
Apparently even the Orioles couldn't take that poor a performance, and Muser found himself in Milwaukee the next season. Since the Brewers were long on hitting and very, very short in the areas that fit Muser's game, he rarely played. After just fifteen games, Muser's playing days were over.
So what did he learn? Simple - hitting was over-rated. In fact, real success, both personally and for the team, was only achieved through good pitching and stellar defense. On-base percentage was meaningless. Muser, incapable of drawing a walk himself, played behind a series of first basemen -–Cecil Cooper, Lee May, et al – who were notoriously aggressive hitters. If they were good enough to start and even star in the big leagues, talking a walk from time to time couldn't be all that important.
Perhaps just as important was the fact that his managers were all men who "enjoyed" mediocre careers as players. Muser didn't play for Frank Robinson or Eddie Mathews, men with impeccable offensive resumes who knew that pitching and defense weren't the be-all, end-all of winning. Instead he played for Earl Weaver and Chuck Tanner, primarily. These were men with offensive skills no better than Muser's. These were just the sort of men who would preach the gospel of doing "the little things". Hustle, play good defense, take the extra base, and so on. Since the player who observed these "truths" was the same man who had learned from the sisters and gunnies that the world was entirely black or white, these observations became part of Muser's gospel too.
In Muser's world, as with nearly all other Catholics turned jarheads, the gospel never changes. For him, the things he learned so many years ago must still be true today. In fact, Muser has taken these thoughts to even greater extremes. Pitching complete games makes sense, for instance, because you're supposed to finish what you start, plain and simple, just like the nuns and the drill instructors taught him. A double is better than a home run because it forces the pitcher to throw from the stretch, another of those little things. When your team is down a run late in the game and you get a runner on, the next man must sacrifice, period. No matter that offensive output exploded in the late 1990s and the average ninth hitter can now score that runner with a double, making the sacrifice bunt an artifact as quaint as those puffy gloves from the turn of the century. If a bunt is good enough for Earl Weaver – who would have made a fine Marine – then it's good enough for Tony Muser.
Perhaps my favorite Muserism is his insistence that all of his players excel defensively. Good defense is ingrained in his soul. Why? Well, obviously his own reputation as a defensive specialist has something to do with it. But I personally think this is Muser's version of the Marine Corps stance of "every man a rifleman". The Marines train every single recruit, whether they will serve in the infantry, artillery, the kitchen or as a lawyer, to use a rifle. For the Marines, this has proved a wise philosophy. Firing a rifle is a basic skill they want everyone to master.
To Muser, defensive capability substitutes for marksmanship. He stresses defense to the point of nearly benching his best player, Mike Sweeney, in 1999, before his bat forced Muser to leave him on the field. He believes it so deeply that he cost Mark Quinn the 2000 AL Rookie of the Year Award, in all probability, by sending him to Omaha to work on his defense mid-year. It's the reason why players like Rey Sanchez and Joe Randa become his favorites, no matter how badly they hit. It's the reason why David McCarty has a job. If you look at their career hitting numbers side-by-side, they are eerily similar. McCarty has a little more pop, but once you adjust for the two eras they played in, essentially these guys could be the same player. Great with the glove, or at least reputed to be, but woefully inadequate with the stick.
And that's really Tony Muser's managerial outlook in a nutshell. Defense good, offense bad. Aggressiveness good, patience bad. If it was good enough for Earl Weaver in 1976, then it's good enough for Tony Muser twenty-five years later. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
This is the reason why Muser has lost more games than any Royals manager in history. It's the reason why he has the lowest winning percentage of any active manager. It's the reason why the Royals are so terrible, and will continue to be terrible as long as Tony Muser is the manager.
Plain and simple.
» Paul White lived outside Kansas City and loves the Royals almost as much as he loves the Red Sox. You can see more of his writing at www.lostinleftfield.com.
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Copyright © 2001 by Paul White. Posted September 4, 2001.
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