Syd Thrift, RIP

As I've written earlier, one of the more ambitious pieces I wrote for ESPN.com was a profile of Leo Mazzone. One of the many baseball men I had the pleasure of speak to was Syd Thrift, who, I discovered from my research, had released Mazzone as a pitcher early in 1976 and then offered him a job managing Corpus Christi in the Class A Lone Star League. It was Mazzone's first job as a manager or coach (he did pitch five games for Corpus Christi in 1976, but only because thought it would help the team win the championship, which it did).

My interview with Thrift, in June 2005, was one I wished had gone on for hours. He'd spent more than a half-century in baseball, and if hadn't done it all, he'd come pretty damn close.

Thrift died Monday night. He was 77.

Because much of my interview ended up on the cutting room floor, including some interesting bits, in honor of Syd, I thought I'd post a lengthier excerpt. I hope you'll find it interesting.

Jeff Merron: I'm doing a story on Leo Mazzoni.

Syd Thrift:  [laughs]

JM:  What's so funny?

THRIFT:  I think it's funny because Leo is a very interesting man. But, the reason I laughed is, how'd you get my name involved with Leo?

JM:  Because I know that you are the guy who let him go in '76.

THRIFT:  Well, that's part of the story.

JM:  What's the rest of the story?  That's what I'm interested in.

THRIFT:  The true story is that when I was with Oakland and I looked his records up and I saw what he had done.  I saw him in spring training.  I had a team in Corpus Christi that was looking for a manager, but only I knew that and the people in Corpus Christi. 

So, I thought Leo would be a good manager, so I called him into my office and told him that I had watched him pitch and I knew about his past and he was a good AAA pitcher, but I saw no future for him in the major leagues, and I was going to release him.

He blew a gasket and he called me all kinds of unusual names and he went home.  I said when you calm down, come back, I want to talk to you about something else, and he came back the next day to apologize.  He said he went home and his wife told him, says well, you know, I've been thinking the same thing for several years.  He told you the truth. [laughs]

So, I told him I had a job for him as manager in Corpus Christi, and he took the job.  He won the championship and as Paul Harvey says, now you know the rest of the story.

JM: Well, what made you think he would be a good manager?

THRIFT:  Well, I knew that very well he had great baseball, what I called aptitude. He knew he had that extra sense about how to pitch and how to play.  He was a very astute judge of what was going on in the present, you know. And so I'm looking at all the players in different ways and I saw that he had those qualities, and I thought, well, you know, he has a future as a manager, as a coach, and so I guessed right.

JM:  What makes Leo such a good coach?

THRIFT:  Well, I think the first thing that makes anyone above the norm is the fact that he's a good listener, number one. Number two, he was a good student. I think to be a good teacher you have to be a good student first and a good person who listens and he had a great teacher in Johnny Sain, and he paid attention and he saw what made sense and he adopted those philosophies that made sense.

I have a radio show, and he was on several Sundays ago, and I'm telling you, it was the best interview I have ever heard. And I have had managers, many managers, many coaches.  It was a clinic of his whole procedure, methods of teaching and why. How he has his pitchers performing and his specific plan, the pre-game preparation, game preparation and game execution, so that is what makes him special.  He didn't follow what everybody else was doing.  He created his own niche.

JM:  When you gave him the manager's job, offered it to him, what was your position again at that point?

THRIFT: I worked for Charlie Finley. I was everything.  I was scouting director, farm director.  There was only three or four people in the office and Charlie only was in Oakland, I think, three or four days the entire year of 1976, so we did everything on the telephone. So I did all the duties of a general manager but I didn't' have that title.

Because he was. If you look in the yearbooks, [you'll see] Charlie he was  president and general manager.

But it was a great opportunity for me because I got to learn a lot of things I would have never learned otherwise, you know.

I was in charge of spring training in Mesa, Arizona. I was working for Finley. Director of everything and master of nothing.

JM:  I spoke to Kent Mercker and Greg Maddux earlier. They both seemed to say that they thought Mazzone's “genius” was that he simply that he was behind you. That he had confidence, that he said go out there and pitch.

I asked both Greg and Kent this question, why doesn't every pitching coach just do that then?

THRIFT: A lot of the pitching coaches try to get everybody to pitch the way they pitch.  That's the mistake they make.

JM:  But they know Leo doesn't do that, right, I mean Leo doesn't keep anything secret?

THRIFT:  No, no, no he's wide open.

JM:  So, if let's say I were trying to become a pitching coach, I...

THRIFT:  You'd go learn from him, wouldn't you?

JM:  What's your favorite thing about Leo?

THRIFT:  My favorite thing about Leo is that he's a teacher. You know a teacher is sometimes a person who can take information and give it to another party.  Sometimes though without even realizing what's happening, you know? It just happens.  And I think the main thing is, the reason he has great results is the players and the pitchers trust him.  They trust him and they respect him.

JM:  Could you tell me a little bit about how your relationship with him has developed through the years since that time?

THRIFT:  Well, my Leo has been fantastic.  I can't say how much I really, really, really care for Leo as a human being, as a player and a teacher and who he really is. He's a very special friend to me.