The Cincinnati Kid

Tampa--before a sunburnt clump of ball fans, Mr. George Lee Anderson of Bridgewater, S. Dak., Thousand Oaks, Calif., and Cincinnati was running a workout at Redsland under a gloriously cerulean sky. Simultaneously, Anderson studied his athletes, alerted fans to fouls, signed autographs, smiled at children and interviewed himself. The night before I'd mentioned that I wanted to ask about managing the Reds. "Sparky" Anderson, a professional, anticipated my questions so well that he stayed two notebook pages ahead of me most of the day.

"This year I'm smart; in a few seasons I'll be dumb," said Anderson, who is wiry, white-haired and weathered at 43. "But how smart do I have to be anyway? It's a simple game.

"On television, the ballplayers say they adjust their batting to the wind and they figure the wind by checking the ball-park flag. Hell, half these guys don't know what a flag is. Right, Pete?"

Peter Edward Rose, a superbly intelligent batsman, winked and said. "Right. Spark."

"The announcers make it sound so intellectual, I wonder if I'm qualified to coach," said Anderson, grinning. He is the most successful manager extant. "They ask Danny Driessen what he was expecting the pitcher to throw.

"Danny isn't sure what town we're playing in. He just came up looking for a baseball to hit. We don't win on brains. We win with our bats. We win with what we're holding in our hands. The Cincinnati Reds are Joe Louis, not Billy Conn."

At the burnt-out end of a largely mediocre baseball career twelve years ago, Anderson was working as an auto salesman in Van Nuys. The hustling discomfited him, and when he was invited to manage Rock Hill in the Western Carolinas League, "he accepted," says his wife Carol, "before we'd even looked up Rock Hill on the map."

Rock Hill finished last in the first half of the split season, and Anderson imagined a lifetime among tire kickers on Ventura Boulevard. ("Would you believe that people actually do that? Would you believe they buy new cars because of the way a tire feels against a shoe.") Anderson drove Rock Hill to a pennant in the second half of the summer of'65. With one exception--the 1971 Reds--no team managed by.Sparky Anderson has since finished lower than second place.

His managing is practical, disarming, intense and flexible. "For the Reds," Anderson said, "this is the time to get arms and legs in shape. This club doesn't have to win exhibition games. This is a world-championship club. We know we can win exhibition games." On an open diamond between two Tampa highways, Pete Rose, Bob Bailey and three others batted again and again. Anderson moved pitchers in and out as he would move them in a game. Seven fielders and a catcher played permanent defense.

"This way," Anderson said, "Pete, Bailey and the others get as much hitting in a morning as they would in a week of exhibitions."

Bailey hit. Rose hit. Pat Zachry pitched. Dale Murray pitched. "We don't horse around," Anderson said. "My stars practice hard, so everybody practices hard. That makes an environment, and environment itself creates environment. Hitler turned little children into killers. If you can do it like that, you can do it the other way. I mean not destructive but constructive."

Wandering off to conduct his radio program for a Cincinnati station, Anderson fired questions at himself.

"Have I changed? Listen, I came out of South Dakota and grew up in California, where nine people lived in a two-bedroom house, and I haven't changed at all. Values. Family. Hard work.

"Am I tough? On the field it's a war. My mother, I love her, but she don't pitch for me in the World Series.

"Do I blow up? Not much. They wouldn't take it seriously. I pick a spot.

Then I see the players saying, 'Wait. The old buzzard's really mad.'

"Do I sulk? Not if I can help it. If we'd lost the last World Series, I wouldn't have been too upset to congratulate the other manager."

Sparky inhaled. Turning pages rapidly, I had at last caught up with him.

"You mean Billy Martin didn't congratulate you at Yankee Stadium?" I asked.

"That's what I mean," Anderson said. "Enjoyment. This is the major leagues.

A guy that never smiles, he can't like himself. When I'm dumb again, they can't take from me the fun I've had, the years that I've been smart. You want to gab some more?"

The weathered face parted in an open smile and the white-haired, wrinkled man of 43 was alive with the baseball joys of boyhood.

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