Strangers in the dugout

 

I became aware of this card probably several months ago, filed it away as a future conquest, promptly forgot about it, then came across it again a couple of weeks ago.

 

It's now in my possession and it couldn't be more fantastic. I grew up with Luis Tiant as a key member of the Red Sox and then wrapping up his career with the Yankees and Angels (I was not old enough for the Indians and Twins version of Tiant). He is firmly entrenched with the AL East in my mind, one of my childhood favorites, and that's why it's so bizarre and so wonderful to see him in a Dodgers uniform.

 

Sure, El Tiante is part of a low-level team in the Dodgers' chain, but it doesn't make the card any less intriguing.

 

It's part of a litany of cards of players and other baseball figures in unfamiliar uniforms.

 

We've all seen the short-term stops cards for players, there's been plenty of blog posts about those. But what about coaches and managers? There's some weirdness there, too, but we don't get to see it in cardboard form all the time because of a bias against showing those guys (and now women) on trading cards.

 

The Dodgers have relied on "their own" for coaching and managing positions for decades and decades. My guess is that a lot of teams do this thanks to organizational familiarity and also pride (although I've never heard of "The Rockies Way"). Thanks to having the same two managers for more than 40 years, Dodgers fans had gotten used to stability in the coaching area. That's why it became so jarring when people associated with other organizations began to show up in Dodgers uniforms.

Who is that stranger in the dugout? Is that Turner Ward? Is that Mark McGwire? What is going on?

So I put together a list of 10 Dodgers managers/coaches who at the time of their arrival on the team were much more associated with other teams. These are all major league guys because I don't have the time to track down a bunch of minor league coaches like Tiant. But I'm sure there are plenty.

Let's count down these folks who looked plain odd teaching my Dodgers:

 

 

10. MIKE EASLER

Mike Easler was a popular player with the Pirates and Red Sox and finished his career with the Yankees. "The Hit Man" appeared briefly as the Dodgers' hitting coach in 2008 when Don Mattingly left the team for personal reasons. Mattingly came back and that was the end of an odd period of seeing Easler in Dodger blue.

9. MARK PRIOR

The well-known Cubs pitcher has been the Dodgers' pitching coach since 2020 after coming to L.A as the bullpen coach. The closest thing I have to a Dodger card of Prior is this 2004 leaders card in which Prior is adjacent to a Dodger. (In fact all three pitchers have a connection to the Dodgers, as ugly as Schmidt's stay was).

 

 

8. GLENN HOFFMAN

 

Glenn Hoffman, who is wearing a memorial patch for former coach Don McMahon, played one season with the Dodgers near the end of his career. The majority of it was spent with the Red Sox. I associated him completely with the Red Sox as I grew up with two people in the house who were Red Sox fans who couldn't stop pointing out how Hoffman couldn't hit. Hoffman began coaching in the Dodgers organization and was named interim manager of the Dodgers in 1998 when Bill Russell was fired. It was very odd. (He later coached for the Padres for a long time).

7. GEORGE HENDRICK

I grew up collecting cards of George Hendrick as a member of the Indians, Cardinals and Angels. I'm pretty sure I wished he was a Dodger at some point during his career. He didn't show up with the Dodgers until 2002 when he was hired as a hitting coach. He was there for just two seasons.

 

 

 

6. DAVEY JOHNSON

 

For as long as I knew, Dodgers managers were people who came up through the Dodgers organization. Alston, Lasorda, Russell, heck even Hoffman at least played for them. But Davey Johnson played for the Orioles and Braves. I remember pulling his card as a member of the Phillies. He managed that team I rooted against, the 1986 Mets, and managed a couple other teams, too, that were not the Dodgers. Then -- what? -- the Dodgers hired him??? It was so strange, and I was convinced the baseball gods knew it because the Dodgers gave Johnson his only losing season as a manager in 1999.

 

 

5. LARRY BOWA

Larry Bowa was the Dodgers' third-base coach from 2008-10. Bowa was one of my favorite non-Dodgers as a kid collecting in the '70s. I know for a fact that I wished that he was the Dodgers' shortstop instead of Bill Russell, who I was not high on at that time. Bowa finally arrived in Dodger blue but I didn't expect him to wear the number of my FAVORITE PLAYER.

4. MARK MCGWIRE

By 2013, I had become used to the Dodgers just hiring people without regard for the player's history or team affiliation. McGwire came with some baggage, and -- oh yeah -- also tried really hard to beat the Dodgers in 1988, yet here he was as the team's hitting coach. I'm pretty good at accepting people onto my team no matter what their situation (there are certain exceptions), but this was a little difficult. His vigorous stance in that big brawl with the Diamondbacks though helped matters.

 

 

3. JOE TORRE

 

Maybe if I knew Joe Torre only as the Yankees manager during all those World Series titles, he would be No. 1 on this list. But when I started following baseball, Torre was a player for the Mets and then I read about how he played for the Cardinals and Braves. And then he managed both of those teams. So Torre seemed more of a vagabond type to me. I still was plenty weirded out when he agreed to be the Dodgers manager. But we had some good times during his stay so I got over it.

 

 

 2. DON MATTINGLY

Joe Torre's successor, Don Mattingly, was an even stranger look. I think that's because I associated Mattingly entirely with the Yankees, he played his whole career with them, he was nothing but a Yankee in the sets I collected. Seeing him in a uniform -- any uniform -- other than the Yankees was flat-out whack. But that's all gone now, Mattingly has since coached or managed for the Dodgers, Marlins and Blue Jays.

1. JACK CLARK

The strangest person in the dugout during my years as a Dodgers fan. Jack Clark was truly the enemy during the '70s and '80s, playing for the Dodgers' chief rivals during that time, the Giants and Cardinals, and hitting one of the most egregious home runs in Dodgers history. Clark lived up to his annoying nature even with the Dodgers, claiming in one book that he would not take off his jacket while the hitting coach for L.A. in 2001-03, because it would reveal his Dodgers uniform and that would somehow offend his allegiance to the Giants and Cardinals (yet, he'd still take the Dodgers' money). That wasn't entirely true, though, because this:

He looks thrilled.

 

Thank goodness there's no Dodgers card of Jack Clark.

But they can't all be Luis Tiant.

A couple of other strange coaching sites in the dugout not mentioned above include current bullpen coach Josh Bard, another bullpen coach Chuck Crim and pitching coach Jim Colborn.

Of course, the Dodgers' current staff includes a former Giants, Padres and Red Sox player as manager, Dave Roberts. But he won the affection of Dodgers' fans during his three-year stint with L.A. in the early 2000s. 

With the size of coaching staffs these days -- they really ballooned around 10 years ago -- it's probably not easy to stick with the same organizational guys, like Jim Gilliam, Manny Mota and Joey Amalfitano, as the Dodgers did for years. Heck, the Dodgers current hitting coach, Robert Van Scoyoc, has almost no past MLB uniform association at all.