Atlantic City Press - March 13, 1980
Green Won’t Toy With Carlton
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — "First, there is no Carlton situation,” said Philadelphia Phillies' manager Dallas Green.
Green talked frankly about his relationship with, and thoughts about Steve Carlton, the lefthand pitcher who is tied for fifth among active major league pitchers in career victories (225).
The natural question is what kind of problem can you have with a winner of that stature. And the natural answer is none. But much has been made bv some of the media over Carlton’s different philosophy in preparing himself physically for his job.
Maybe the attempt to create a controversy over Carlton's approach is because the 35-year-oId pitcher refuses to talk with the media. Why? You'd have to ask Carlton, and he won't say.
The center of the artificial storm is Carlton's aversion to the standard running conditioning practiced by most pitchers. If you want to get corny, the question of "why won't Stevie run” apparently has become more important than "how many games will Stevie win.”
It's ridiculous, and nobody agrees more than Green, whose responsibility it is to get a pitching staff ready for the 162-game National League season.
"I think a lot of people are more hung up on this running bit than I am,” Green began in a discussion before his daily team meeting. "I have come to know Steve Carlton a little better as a result of some one-on-one conversations… I know he is vehemently opposed to the running idea of getting into condition for baseball.”
Green, a former major league pitcher and a manager at the minor league level, admits that he is “old school” enough to want to have a running program for his people.
“At the same time I think I'm progressive enough and open minded enough to take the good parts of any program and incorporate it into a program that I think is best for the Phillies," Green said.
"Steve and I have had a conversation in spring training I think he understands the position I'm in as a new manager who has to run a program for 40 people. At the same time, I respect what he has done in making himself what I think is now the best lefthand pitcher in the business.”
Green says Carlton has achieved stardom with the help of the pitcher's conditioning ideas.
“He’s done it through self discipline, physical and mental. It is not a program that probably any other pitcher could go through physically. And I challenge anybody that thinks Carlton is not in shape or does not do his work. I tried Carlton's program during the winter… And I'll tell you, it’s is grueling.”
Green douses more water on what he considers a media-created cause celebre when the manager suggests looking at the statistics, which show that in the last 10 years Carlton never pitched less than 247 innings in a season, posted a 178-98 record and an ERA of 3.08.
"So something works for Steve Carlton,” Green noted. "It can’t work for the other pitchers I've got on my staff… I know that 90 percent of our guys couldn’t go through (the conditioning program) Steve goes through and still pitch… ”
Green said he told Carlton that he wants the pitcher to go through the manager’s program. that the club policy won’t be dictated by the press or the fans/
"We’re going to run our program,” Green emphasized. “And if he goes through the rest of our program I'm convinced he’ll get enough running and he'll get enough work on fundamentals that he’ll even be a better pitcher… and as I said before I think he's one of the best lefthanders I’ve ever seen in the game.”
Green made one more point, and that was that Carlton comes early to the ball park every day during training and does run within the flexibility program the pitcher has adapted.
“There is only so much you can push a guy or ask a guy to do,” Green observed.
For Phillies’ Schmidt, Often It’s All Or Nothing
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) – Someone asked the Philadelphia Phillies’ Mike Schmidt how he can lead the National League in game winning hits, smash 45 home runs, drive in 114 runs walk 120 times and hit just .253.
“I've just never had a natural baseball swing that lends itself to consistent line hitting day-in and day-out,” Schmidt replied. “I’m not the type of guy who has been known to get a hit every game, to break any hitting streak."
The 30-year-old Schmidt is known as a streak hitter. He can go three weeks and it appears no pitcher ever will get him out. Then he turns cold, and it looks as if he'll never get another hit.
Schmidt, who also won a Gold Glove for his defensive play at third base, said his batting style does not lend itself to hitting for high average.
“I give up a lot of time on pitches that if I just took a nice. smooth swing I’d probably hit for a high average. When I see a pitch that’s in a zone, a lot of times I’ll' try and crank up on it, do too much with it… In trying to produce too much power I pop the ball up, or foul it back, or swing and miss it,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt noted that he doesn't get a lot of cheap hits, broken bat types, flares to right field. He said his batting average goes down as a result of not getting this type of hit, but his power production is higher.
The 203-pound Schmidt claims that every year that he plays the game he has less of a desire to hit .350.
"Every year I realize more and more that that really is not me,” Schmidt said. “I think I’m more of a .270 or .280 hitter if I have a lucky year, maybe .290 I just walk too much, get pitched around too much, see too many breaking balls to be a .320, .330 hitter.”
Schmidt said if he hits for a high average, it's something that's just going to happen, but that he never is going to start a season off again saving his goal is to hit .350.
"I think I can be of greater help to the team hitting around .270, .280, if I'm going to walk 120 times, ‘ Schmidt said. "I was on base (in 1979) as much as Keith Hernandez last year and I hit .253, so what’s the difference?”
Hernandez of the St Louis Cardinals won the National League batting title, and shared his league’s MVP award with Pittsburgh’s Willie Stargell.
Schmidt adds, however, that he has as much capability as anyone who plays the game to hit for a high average. He says he just places his style of hitting first, a power style he hasn't actually developed, just naturally acquired.
"I have a couple of things I do naturally that puts the ball in the air instead of on the ground. Pete Rose is more often on the ground and less in the air, so he hits for a higher average and I hit for a lower one,” Schmidt said as he dressed for a spring training workout.
"If someone paid me not to hit home runs, I bet you I’d hit .300,” Schmidt said. “If 'someone said, ‘I don't care if you never hit another home run,’ I'd be willing to say I’d choke up on the bat and hit .300.”
Klein And Yawkey Get in Hall of Fame
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – Charles "Chuck" Klein, a slugging outfielder, and Tom Yawkey, whose millions of dollars converted the Boston Red Sox into an American League pennant contender, were named posthumously yesterday to baseball's Hall of Fame.
The Veterans Committee provides a second chance for those personalities who are not honored by the writers.
Players become eligible for the Hall of Fame five years after retirement and remain eligible for selection by the writers for 20 years afterward.
Wednesday’s vote was a tremendous disappointment for Johnny Mize, four-time home run king in the National League, who had been ignored by the writers.
Mize compiled a .312 average and hit 359 home runs in his major league career. He was the third finisher in the voting which is restricted to the picking of two men.
Klein was one of the game's most powerful hitters from 1928 through 1944. In his first six seasons, he averaged between .337 and .386, hitting between 28 and 43 home runs ana driving in 121 to 170 runs.
Klein spent his 17-year-career in the National League with the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Yawkey, as a youth, inherited the Detroit baseball franchise but was never allowed to run it. After graduating from Yale, where he was a third-string tackle in football, he went into the family lumber and mining business, becoming a millionaire.
In February, 1933, four days after his 30th birthday, he bought the Red Sox, including all debts, for $1 million. Then he preceded to spend millions in rebuilding Fenway Park and acquiring talent to move the club out of the cellar, where it had finished nine consecutive years.