Jim Fregosi Had an Edge: He Could Teach

Jim Fregosi was much more than a baseball tactician during his spectacularly successful run as manager of the Louisville Redbirds from 1983 to 1986. He was both a father figure and a friend to his players and he was a keen-eyed talent scout for his employers, the St. Louis Cardinals. But mostly he was a teacher.

After the original Redbirds barely missed the American Association playoffs in 1982, owner A. Ray Smith and Lee Thomas, the Cardinals’ director of player development, sought out the popular Fregosi.

Fregosi, a six-time all-star over 16 big league seasons as an infielder for the California Angels, New York Mets, Texas Rangers and Pittsburgh Pirates, was between baseball jobs after he was fired as skipper of the Angels in 1981.

At age 41, he was at home in Beverly Hills, California, working with his partners in a food brokerage business. That was more lucrative than managing a Triple-a baseball team, Fregosi said, but it wasn’t as much fun.

“To me,” he said at the time, “everything comes under one heading: do you enjoy what you’re doing?  I’m fortunate to be managing because I enjoy it. I like everything about it. I’m here (at the ballpark) at 2 o’clock (for 7:30 night games) because I like it. I get a lot of pleasure out of seeing young players develop and do well.”

Smith and the Cardinals combined to make Fregosi what Smith says he believes is the best financial offer any minor league manager has ever had — a $50,000 salary, plus the use of a plush condominium and a luxury car — and Fregosi took the job. It paid off for the Redbirds in the form of a runner-up finish and two pennants, not to mention the first one million-plus season in attendance ever for a minor league team (1,052,438 in 1983).

It paid off for Fregosi, too. He honed his managerial skills, corrected a perceived weakness by learning how to deal with the media, found himself a wife in Bellarmine College graduate Joni Dunn, and got himself back to the big leagues in mid-1986 as manager of the Chicago White Sox.

Fregosi seemed to be always working, always teaching. He could be shaving after his post-game shower, but he’d also be talking baseball with the player shaving next to him. Fregosi had a way of making the butt of his jibes feel as if he or she had been let in on the joke. “He corrects you,” said catcher Tommy Nieto, “but he makes it fun.”

In 1983, Fregosi seemed to have a special project going with every one of his players. He worked at convincing Ricky Horton that Horton’s fastball was an effective pitch. He tried to get infielder Billy Lyons to hit the ball to the opposite field. He worked daily with catcher Nieto on how to call pitches.

He tried to get shortstop Jose Gonzales (later Uribe) to lay off pitchers out of the strike zone. With hard-throwing reliever Todd Worrell, the subject was maturity and toughness.

Worrell, a first-round draft choice, was a gentle kid, not long out of Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola College). Fregosi made Worrell the road roommate of Dyar Miller, a 37-year-old veteran pitcher. That way, Fregosi reasoned, Worrell could learn a lot about pitching and about baseball life in general.

Not long after the first road trip, Worrell approached Fregosi and said maybe his rooming with Miller wasn’t such a good idea. Fregosi said Worrell complained that Miller had come in at 3 o’clock in the morning and awakened him. Fregosi said he listened patiently and answered, “Todd, do you know where your roommate was last night?  Hell, son, he was with me!”

Worrell got the point. “Jim does a great job of getting to know the players off the field as well as on the field,” he said. “When he needs to make a point to you, he knows how to do it because he knows you.”

Worrell toughened up mentally and went on to a successful big league career after Fregosi and Thomas made a joint decision to switch the lanky Californian from starter to reliever.

When Fregosi showed up in Louisville, it was so soon after his playing days that his star status was fresh on the minds of young players. At first, they listened because of his reputation. Then, they said, they listened because what he said could help them.

Pitcher Ralph Citarella said Fregosi was an effective teacher “because he never put a player down, never hurt anyone’s confidence.”

Andy Van Slyke played 54 games for Fregosi before going to St. Louis to begin a notable big league career, and Fregosi gave Van Slyke a break. He gave the young player two days off to go home and marry the former Laurie Griffiths. The night Van Slyke returned, he made four errors at third base. 

“If I had known that,” said Fregosi, “I’d have given him the whole week off.”

Others who played significant roles for Fregosi’s Louisville teams included Jim Adduci, Jeff Doyle, Mike Calise, Jeff Keener, Kevin Hagan, Joe Pettini, Danny Cox, Ken Dayley, Curt Ford, Dave Kable, Jerry Johnson, Kurt Kepshire, Mike Lavalliere, Tom Lawless, Greg Mathews, Dyar Miller, Jose Oquendo, Rick Ownbey, Andy Hassler, Mickey Mahler, MIke Dunne, Tom Pagnozzi, Jack Ayer, Joe Magrane, Tito Landrum, Vince Coleman, Dave Rajsich, Gary Rajsich, Eric Rasmussen, Andy Rincon, Mark Salas, Orlando Sanchez, Rafael Santana, Jimmy Sexton, John Stuper, Pat Perry, Curt Ford, Jim Lindeman, Johnny Morris and Alex Cole.

Many of them made it to the big leagues, in no small measure because of the lessons Fregosi taught them. Pettini managed the Redbirds to the 1995 American Association pennant, Louisville’s first since Fregosi departed.

Fregosi is a baseball man through and through. He signed his first professional contract in September 1959 as a 17-year-old shortstop. An intelligent man, he was educated in the baseball clubhouses of American and he speaks clearly and fluently in the clubhouse idiom.

Fregosi reached the big leagues with the then-Los Angeles Angels for the first time in 1961 at age 18, and went up to stay in 1962. His next minor league stop was Louisville, 21 years later. Along the way he was traded by the Angels to the Mets in 1972 for, among other, pitcher Nolan Ryan.

On June 1, 1978 Fregosi retired as an active player with the Pirates to become manager of the Angels. As skipper of the Angels from mid-1978 to ’81, Fregosi won California’s first American League West championship (1979), but on May 27, 1981 the Angels had a 22-25 record and Fregosi was fired.

One facet of managing Fregosi said he felt he needed to improve was his relationship with the media. “I had been a player since I was 17 years old and a big leaguer since I was 19,” he said. “I had always been the fair-haired boy, always the good player on average clubs. I had to adjust and learn. I didn’t have good relations with the press, and it was as much my fault as theirs.

“I didn’t understand what hey wanted. They would ask me what seemed to me to be stupid questions. Now I realize they knew the answers, too, but they wanted the manager’s point of view.”

In Louisville, Fregosi made it a point to be accessible to media people and cooperative with them. His offices in Comiskey Park and Veterans Stadium have, according to beat writers in Chicago and Philadelphia, generally been a happy place to be. Fregosi knows a million baseball stories, and he knows how to tell them.

Fregosi’s 1983 Redbirds won the Eastern Division by 7 1/2 games and reached the championship series by beating Oklahoma City  three games to two. Denver, however, swept the Redbirds 4-0 for the title.

To get into the playoffs in 1984, the Redbirds had to beat Wichita in a one-game playoff for fourth place. They did it, then eliminated regular-season champion Indianapolis four games to two, and won the crown by downing Denver four games to one.

In 1985, the Redbirds won the Eastern Division title by 2 1/2 games, then beat Oklahoma city in the championship series four games to one. When Fregosi took the White Sox job in 1986, they had a 32-34 record.

Fregosi succeeded Tony LaRussa as skipper of the White Sox and managed them through 1988, when he was fired. Fregosi then teamed up again with Lee Thomas, who by 1989 was general manger of the Phillies. Fregosi served as the Phillies roving minor league pitching instructor and as a special assignment scout in 1989 and 1990, and in 1991 he was back in the big time as skipper of the Phillies.

In 1993, Fregosi managed the Phillies to the National League East championship and beat the pitching-rich Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series, but lost to Toronto in the World Series.

At every opportunity, Fregosi has been quick to credit his days in Louisville with helping him get his career and his life back on track. The Redbirds could say the same about their association with him.