Doug Melvin appeared so, so drained. His eyes were bloodshot,
his voice tired, and the man who’d spent some of last week in New York
looked like he’d walked back.
It was Monday afternoon, and the Milwaukee Brewers general
manager was in the upper reaches of Miller Park. There, among the
luxury suites, a veritable pressapalooza was huddled around him,
microphones and voice recorders thrust toward the man’s chest and
signature mustache.
We were all there to converse about Ken Macha. Less than 24
hours earlier, the grandfatherly skipper completed his second season at
the Milwaukee helm. He won’t get a shot at being third-time lucky.
Because instead of sitting in an office drawing up offseason plans,
Macha was in a rented SUV and driving to his hometown of Pittsburgh.
News had leaked out Sunday afternoon that the Brewers wouldn’t
retain Macha. Monday morning, Melvin made it official in a face-to-face
meeting at Miller Park, then helped gentleman Macha pack some things
into that SUV for the homeward trip.
“We parted ways as friends,” Melvin said. “I told him I apologize for not providing as talented a team as we had in 08.”
Yes, those were halcyon days in 2008, when folks crowded
around Melvin not to badger him, but to offer congratulations. Two
years ago, he was the architect of a National League wild card team,
this city’s brightest baseball moment since 1982.
But that 1982 club will always overshadow the Brewers until
Milwaukee celebrates a World Series crown. So maybe it’s no coincidence
that an oversized picture of the ’82 club hung just a few feet from
Melvin on Monday, elevated ever so slightly higher than the man himself.
Because few fans will be truly satisfied until one of his Brewers clubs
eclipses the Brewers club, Harvey’s Wallbangers.
Surely this isn’t lost on Melvin, a man so filled with
baseball smarts that he reels off stats like preachers recite
Commandments. And perhaps it’s part of the reason he looked so
lamentable Monday.
But there were other reasons. Melvin is so obviously a man who
cares about what he does and the people with whom he works. He is
fiercely loyal, up to and beyond the point when circumstances exceed
loyalty’s limit. When’s the last time a GM loaded the car of a
just-released manager?
Yes, Melvin’s emotions are authentic, and he genuinely
dislikes letting people go, and he has a difficult time hiding it, and
he couldn’t hide it now.
Another season was gone. Another manager was gone, the third
in two years. Yet here are the Brewers, no closer to relegating the
supremacy of 1982.
“In the end,” Melvin said of Macha’s exit, “this is a game in which we’re all judged on performance.”
And now the judicial system falls heavily upon Melvin himself.
For all the good he has done with the Brewers – and even his
detractors must admit he’s done plenty – the clock is surely ticking.
Brewers owner Mark Attanasio has been stalwart in his commitment to Melvin, focusing more on Melvin’s body of work than his recent failures. But just as Melvin’s loyalty has limits, so will Attanasio’s.
Melvin took a once-putrid team and put it in the playoffs, and
fans would like nothing more than to see him succeed again. But he
clearly hasn’t generated a pitching staff worthy of contention, and in
baseball’s post-steroid era, it’s a weakness that cannot be offset by
even the best offenses. Now, in addition to rectifying that, he must
find the right guy to manage the club (along with the sensibilities of Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun).
It’s far easier said than done, yet Melvin has no choice but to do it. He’s out of mulligans, and he knows it.
“I don’t want to do this every two or three years,” he said
while explaining his disdain for replacing managers. “Probably won’t
get a chance to do it every two or three years.”
The second sentence almost sounded as if he were saying it to
himself, but these days, Brewers fans are saying it with him. If the
next managerial replacement comes in two years, it will surely be part
of a package deal.
It is, after all, a game judged on performance.
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