Baltimore manager Lee Mazzilli says he can’t be Joe Torre. He can’t be Don Zimmer or Jim Leyland or any other baseball man he’d played for or learned from. But of all the lessons he learned, of all the advice he got, the best was this – Be patient. It’s a lesson he’ll rely on often.
Mazzilli – a Brooklynite who was prominent on the New York baseball scene for nearly three decades – returned home last night for the first time as a visiting manager. And if the pregame felt awkward, it was nothing compared to the feeling after last night’s gut-wrenching loss.
After spotting the Yankees a five-run lead, Baltimore rallied with a pair of ninth-inning, two-run singles off Mariano Rivera. But the Orioles fell a run short in an 8-7 loss before 38,012 at the Stadium where Mazzilli spent four years as a coach. It wasn’t the homecoming for which he’d hoped.
“I’m proud of my guys, the way they battled back,” Mazzilli said. “They’ve done it a lot. And when you’re battling against a guy like Mo, you’re doing something. But there’s only so many times you can come back. Sooner or later, it’s going to [shut down].
“That’s why it’s important in the middle part of the game you’ve got to hold them down. When you’ve got to come back from five runs, it’s not an easy task. But they gave it everything they had.”
The 49-year-old Lincoln HS grad looked oddly out of place in the visiting manager’s office, as he had in the road dugout before the game when he talked about the daunting task of raising his new club to the level of his former one.
“What are you going to do? Not show up?” Mazzilli asked. “You always show respect, but you can’t fear the teams you play.”
The Orioles’ fortunes may depend largely on how they adopt the fearless attitude of this boxer’s son. They’ll also depend on how well their shaky pitching staff holds up. Sidney Ponson gave up a career-high tying dozen hits and seven earned runs in 52/3 ineffective innings last night. Baltimore saw it’s AL-worst ERA swell to 5.35.
Mazzilli spent parts of 10 seasons with the Mets and three years as a manager in the Bomber farm system before joining the big club. When asked the best advice Torre gave him in that time, he said, “Be patient. If you don’t have patience you’re not going to be [successful]. But the game has changed. Everybody wants things quickly.”