ABOVE IT ALL : With Uncommon Class and Candor, Dodger General Manager Fred Claire Has Won the Respect of His Peers and Players

VERO BEACH, Fla. — Fred Claire was listening to the voice on the other end of the line, but the words were hardly registering. Dodger owner Peter O’Malley wanted Claire at his Dodger Stadium office as soon as possible. Could he be there in 30 minutes?

Claire hung up and looked at his wife.

“ ‘Oh, my God, Sheryl,” he said. “Peter’s selling the team.’ ”

It was Jan. 5, 1997.

Claire’s mind churned as he drove to Dodger Stadium. Hadn’t it been 10 years since he’d heard that solemnity in O’Malley’s voice in a telephone call?

That was April 7, 1987. The Dodgers had lost the season opener the night before in Houston and Claire had gone to bed after the game. He hadn’t watched “Nightline” on TV.

The next morning, he read that his general manager, Al Campanis, had told “Nightline” host Ted Koppel that blacks “may not have some of the “necessities” to manage major league baseball teams.

Campanis, in fact, had talked himself out of a job and out of baseball. Claire was told he would be the general manager, for the time being.

He asked if he would be able to at least finish the season.

“You’re the general manager for today,” O’Malley told him.

Claire never signed a contract, and 10 years later he has the job for yet another day.

He has no idea whether this will be his final year as Dodger general manager and executive vice president. There have been no threats, but there also have been no promises.

And this season, perhaps more than any other in his tenure, it may be imperative that the Dodgers win.

“I may have one year to do this or I may not be back,” Claire said. “I want to continue, but it could be out of my control. . . .

“But I’ll tell you this, I don’t intend to give this up. If somebody wants to take it away, they better be prepared to work their . . . off.”

*

Claire doesn’t chomp on cigars, smoke cigarettes or chew tobacco. He doesn’t tell stories about his glory days, doesn’t talk about his wheeling and dealing, doesn’t lament how the game was better years ago. He acts as a general manager, but he doesn’t act much like one.

Even his appearance is all wrong. He is 61 but could pass for a man 15 years younger. He runs three miles a day. He has a smaller waist than most of his players and all of his hair.

He has never quite fit into the fraternity of general managers and has never much cared.

Because of his background, Claire was not greeted enthusiastically by many of his peers when he inherited his job. He had once been the team’s public-relations man. Worse, he had been a sportswriter who covered the team. He had never played organized ball. In fact, he had never made it beyond the Torrance High junior varsity.

“There was a lot of ridicule and resentment when Fred took over,” one prominent National League general manager said. “I don’t think people took him seriously. There was a lot of talking behind his back, and guys wondered when the Dodgers would go out and hire a real general manager.

“I’ll tell you what, you can say all you want about the guy, but the fact is, he’s got as much respect now as any of us in this game.”

Claire has outlasted most of them. The only general manager who has remained employed by the same team is Sandy Alderson of the Oakland Athletics. In the National League West, only Bob Gebhard of the Colorado Rockies has been around longer than a year.

“That talk never bothered me because I knew I’d ultimately be judged in terms of performance,” Claire said. “There’s enough things that have happened to judge me on.”

In Claire’s tenure, the Dodgers have won a World Series, a National League pennant, two division titles, a wild-card berth and a first-place finish in the 1994 strike-shortened season.

The Dodgers have been to the playoffs twice as often as the New York Yankees during this span. They have won one more pennant than the Baltimore Orioles. And they have as many World Series championships as the Atlanta Braves.

“You always hear people talking about Campanis,” former Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi said. “But what did Campanis do that Fred didn’t do?

“They each won a World Series, didn’t they? In this business, you’re supposed to win once every 12 years, and that’s what he has done.”

The Dodgers have the third-best winning percentage in baseball since the 1992 season. They have not had a losing record for four consecutive seasons, improving their winning percentage each year. And despite a payroll that is more suited to a small-market club, the Dodgers join the Braves and Cleveland Indians as the only teams that have been in the playoffs each of the last two years.

“I think he’s the most underrated general manager in baseball,” Cincinnati General Manager Jim Bowden said. “He does the best job of anybody in baseball in international scouting. They’ve had the rookie of the year five years in a row. And they’ve done it with budgetary constraints.

“Look, Fred isn’t there to win a popularity contest. He’s there to win the Dodgers a World Series. The man is not only a winner, but a class act.”

Claire inherited a team that had won only 73 games in each of the previous two seasons before his first full season in 1988. Players such as Mike Ramsey, Jeff Hamilton and Franklin Stubbs were in their starting lineup. In a year, Claire picked up Kirk Gibson, Tim Belcher, John Shelby, Mickey Hatcher, Jay Howell, Alfredo Griffin and Mike Davis--and the Dodgers won the World Series.

They have yet to win another, much less a playoff game since 1988, but Claire’s stock has risen dramatically among his peers.

Joe McIlvaine, New York Mets’ vice president and general manager, has grown to respect Claire. And McIlvaine is the guy who publicly ridiculed Claire in the winter of 1987, saying his indecisiveness was holding up the winter meetings.

“He’s more decisive now than ever before,” McIlvaine said. “He’s never afraid to pull the trigger. And maybe most of all, he’s a straight shooter. You’ve got general managers who use stall tactics. But with Fred, he lets you know everything up front.”

Said Jack McKeon, former San Diego Padre general manager, “Believe me, it didn’t take long for him to gain respect. And look at what he’s done now with that team. Some clubs just win one year at a time. They make the playoffs once, and that’s it for 10 years.

“But Fred has built a team that can for win for a long, long time.

“And you know what? The man has done it with class.”

Claire still has his detractors. Some love to chide him for the Delino DeShields-Pedro Martinez deal. And he has been ridiculed for some of his free-agent signings, most noticeably Darryl Strawberry. He has been criticized for not signing high-profile free agents.

But no one has suggested that Claire does not have class.

He was in the Padres’ clubhouse with congratulations minutes after they had beaten the Dodgers for the West Division title in the season finale last year.

Curt Flood never played a day for the Dodgers, and not one active major league player was in attendance at his funeral in January, but Claire and O’Malley were there.

And no matter how bad a losing streak, a season, a trade, Claire has always accepted responsibility.

“Everybody knows that things didn’t work out for me in L.A. and I feel as bad about that as anyone,” said DeShields, now a St. Louis Cardinal second baseman. “There were some rough times there, some real tough times.

“But . . . I’ll never forget what Fred Claire did for me. He was always there for me. When I had problems, he listened. Really, he did everything he could for me to try to work things out.

“He treated me with respect the entire time.”

It is Claire, as much as anyone, who is responsible for Todd Worrell’s recent success. He signed Worrell to a three-year, $9.2-million contract, then was ridiculed when Worrell injured his right elbow in only his second game as a Dodger. Worrell saved only five games in the 1993 season, only 11 the next season and was booed with each performance.

“As bad as it got, he continued to believe in me and kept reassuring me that I was capable of doing the job,” Worrell said. “He always offered words of encouragement. I can’t tell you how important that was to me.”

Worrell, his elbow problems behind him, has saved 76 games over the last two years.

Claire, who may be the most accessible general manager in the game, never failing to return a phone call, rarely is disturbed by criticism. It’s not as if he misses anything--he reads nearly a dozen newspapers a day--but he understands and even respects constructive criticism.

“I’m not obsessed with any of that, but I try to read everything,” he said. “I try to listen to sports-[talk] shows. I think it’s important to know what people are saying.

“Of course, there are those times I’ll read the letters-to-the-editor page, and I’ll tell Sheryl, ‘You better not pick up the paper today.’ ”

But Claire is no shrinking violet when he believes something unfair has been written or broadcast.

He was outraged two years ago when it was reported that Dodger reliever Ed Vosberg had been put on waivers. The report was true, but Claire pledged that if he found the employee who had leaked the information before the Dodgers had a chance to tell Vosberg, that employee would be fired.

He was furious last year when a letter to the editor appeared in The Times, falsely accusing catcher Mike Piazza of demanding to be paid for an autograph. Claire determined that the truth would out, and it did. Piazza spoke up, denying the incident, and the boy who had written the letter admitted he had made up the part about the money.

“I tell our players all the time they don’t know how lucky they have it,” said Reggie Smith, Dodger hitting instructor. “[Claire is] open, honest and forthright. He has a great personal touch as a GM with the players. They always know where they stand.”

Said Manager Bill Russell, “He listens to a lot of people, he has his own opinions, and then he makes the final decision. That’s the way it should be. And from Day 1, you knew he was going to do it his way.”

No move by Claire gained more approval among his peers than his call-up of third baseman Mike Busch in 1995.

Tim Wallach had suffered a severe knee injury and the Dodgers needed a third baseman. Busch, the starter at Albuquerque, was the logical choice.

But Busch had been a strike-replacement player that spring and strong feelings remained. Several players met with Claire to protest the move, then summoned Claire to the clubhouse to complain as a team.

Nobody wanted Busch. Except Claire.

“They had the wrong guy if they thought I was going to back down,” Claire said. “I had given my word. That was not only the right decision, but the only decision.

“Those [minor league] kids asked me in spring training that if the time came, and there was a move to be made, would that ever exclude them from being added to the major league roster? I said, ‘No.’ I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

Claire, like any general manager, realizes there have been mistakes. He believed, as did many others, that DeShields was the best young second baseman in the game when he traded promising pitcher Pedro Martinez for him.

But DeShields was never the same player in Los Angeles and Martinez is one of the best young pitchers in the league.

He now knows he should not have traded closer John Wetteland and starting pitcher Tim Belcher to the Reds for Eric Davis and Kip Gross. And Claire never would have guessed that Strawberry would be such a bust in Los Angeles.

But those days are gone, and so is that dreadful 99-loss season of 1992 that had Claire fearing for his job.

“That season was really rough,” Claire said, “I didn’t know what would happen. That was really a rough, rough year. Tommy [Lasorda] and I didn’t know if we were coming back.

“I remember even going without sleep one night in Philadelphia, putting on my running gear, and just running to the point of pure exhaustion. I walked back, just trying to regroup.

“I just hate losing. It affects the way I feel, the way I sleep, the way I run.

“It’s all of the difference in the world.”

The Dodgers have regained their status as one of the best organizations in baseball. The starting rotation, with the exception of Tom Candiotti, is home-grown. The starting lineup features all home-grown products except for Todd Zeile, Greg Gagne and Brett Butler. And the pitching staff is considered one of baseball’s best.

“Sure, everybody wants to win every year,” Claire said. “But it shouldn’t be a thing where every time we don’t win a World Series, the season is a failure.

“You can’t say last year wasn’t a good season. How do you win 90 games and not have it be a good season?

“But the opportunity is there this year.

“It’s time for this team, and this group of players, to put a mark on how they want to be remembered.”

This team, of course, just may determine how Claire is remembered.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Boons and Busts

Staff writer Bob Nightengale rates the best and worst moves by Dodger General Manager Fred Claire:

FIVE BEST

1. Signing free-agent outfielder Kirk Gibson.

2. Signing free-agent pitcher Todd Worrell.

3. Signing free-agent outfielder Brett Butler.

4. Trading reliever Rick Honeycutt to Oakland for starter Tim Belcher.

5. Trading pitchers Greg Hansell and Jose Parra and infielder Ron Coomer to Minnesota for pitchers Kevin Tapani and Mark Guthrie.

FIVE WORST

1. Trading pitcher Pedro Martinez to Montreal for second baseman Delino DeShields.

2. Trading pitchers John Wetteland and Tim Belcher to Cincinnati for outfielder Eric Davis and pitcher Kip Gross.

3. Trading pitcher Juan Guzman to Toronto for infielder Mike Sharperson.

4. Signing free-agent outfielder Darryl Strawberry.

5. Trading outfielder Henry Rodriguez and infielder Jeff Treadway to Montreal for outfielder Roberto Kelly and pitcher Joey Eischen.