Dodgers coach Bowa has a method to his madness
BASEBALL
His blunt talk and angry outbursts are legend, at times controversial. But raw emotion fueled his career as an overachieving player, and honesty is his hallmark as a coach.
The highlights on television that night, the photographs that ran in newspapers the next morning, showed a man enraged.
Eyes bugged, veins protruding from his neck, mouth twisted in mid-invective.
Larry Bowa hit Los Angeles like a blast of hot wind, exploding into an argument with umpire Ed Montague in his second home game as the Dodgers' third base coach.
His critics -- and there are a few -- quickly pointed to a history of outbursts, a former shortstop who threw dugout tantrums, a twice-fired manager with a reputation for battling umpires.
The 62-year-old has heard it before. He knows how those pictures look.
"People probably see me and think 'This guy is nuts,' " he said.
But there might be another way of looking at the man. Maybe there is another side to his story.
Start with a boy whose father played minor league ball. Every spring, he got cut from his high school team in Sacramento -- "They said I was too small" -- and went straight home to throw a ball against the garage.
"He just wanted to go out there and play any which way he could," his sister, Paula Graf, said. "It put a spark there."
The kid wasn't going to succeed with size or speed. Passion was all he could offer.
The local city college finally gave him a chance and he played well enough that Philadelphia Phillies scout Eddie Bockman drove 100 miles to watch him play a doubleheader.
But even then, Bowa's fervor cut both ways. Build up all that emotion, all that desire, there's no telling which direction it might fly.
As soon as Bockman had taken a seat in the stands, Bowa was ejected for arguing a call. In the next game, he couldn't help chirping at the umpire and got tossed again. Bockman told him he was hard to scout: "You don't stay in the game long enough."
It took a few more trips for the scout to realize what he was looking at. An arm forged strong and accurate. Feet made quick. In the fall of 1965, he offered Bowa a contract for all of $2,000.
"Didn't even take him a minute to say yes," Bockman recalled.
That break was all Bowa needed. He treated every spring like high school, scrambling to make the team. One season became two, then three.
"It didn't come natural," he said. "To me, attitude played a big part. You'd better have a chip on your shoulder when you take the field."
His unlikely career spanned 16 seasons, five All-Star teams and two Gold Gloves. His .980 fielding percentage remains a National League record for shortstops.
