Sweeny: Dallas Green Was A Passionate Manager Who Wasn't Afraid To Scrap Alongside Players
By Sweeny Murti
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Dallas Green was large, and he was loud. People called him a "baseball man." If you ever met him, you really didn't have to hear anything else to know what that meant.
Green died Wednesday at age 82.
When I was 10 years old, I thought he was the greatest manager in history. He had just led my childhood team, the Phillies, to their first world championship in the 98-year history of the franchise. A curse-breaker before there ever was one.
When I was 19, I saw a game at Yankee Stadium for the first time — July 4, 1989. Dallas was the Yankees manager — 81 games into a 121-game run before he was fired by "Manager George" Steinbrenner.
I was 25 when I began covering weekend Mets and Yankees games for WFAN, and Dallas was the Mets' manager then. I got a death stare from him one day in the office after a game when the person next to me spilled water on his desk and Dallas thought I did it. Somehow, I lived to tell the tale.
Standing 6 feet, 5 inches tall and a carrying a voice that could shake walls at even a whisper, he was certainly intimidating.
My lasting memory of Green is from May 11, 1996.
The Mets were playing the Cubs at Shea Stadium, and the game featured a classic brawl. Mets pitcher Pete Harnisch and Cubs catcher Scott Servais were in the middle of it, with plenty of fists being thrown all around. The fight stopped and started a couple times, and there were multiple ejections, including John Franco, who joined the fracas from the bullpen. This was amusing only because a couple hours earlier the Mets celebrated John Franco Day to honor his reaching 300 career saves.
After order was restored, the Mets would go on to win the game 7-6 on a Rico Brogna walk-off home run. As I gathered interviews after the game, the main topic was obviously the huge brawl.
I remember speaking to all the principles — Harnisch, Servais, Mets catcher Todd Hundley, Green and Cubs manager Jim Riggleman. I covered the Mets clubhouse first, and then the Cubs.
For some reason that I can't quite remember now, I went back to the Mets clubhouse a second time — I think there was a player I needed and didn't get, Brogna perhaps. The clubhouse was nearly empty — a handful of players and no reporters left — and I was worried that I had missed an important interview.
As I stood in the middle of the room wondering what to do, I heard a couple of the players crowing about their exploits during the fight. Hundley, I remember in particular, was laughing and carrying on about some of the shots he got in. The Mets, because they won the game, too, were obviously in a good mood.
Then I heard someone yell from the back, "I had Bullett in a headlock," referring to a Cubs reserve outfielder, Scott Bullett. "Did you see that? I head Bullett in a headlock!"
I turned around, and 61-year-old Dallas Green was grinning ear-to-ear, re-creating the scene with his left hand clasped around his right forearm to demonstrate to players more than half his age what he was doing during the epic melee.
I was the only reporter in view. Nobody seemed to care. I laughed at the scene, and after a short while, I turned around and walked out of the clubhouse. I don't remember if I ever got what I went back inside for in the first place, but I did get that memory, and it's stayed with me more than 20 years later.
I wish I had the chance to talk more baseball with Dallas. But he left his mark, no doubt.
Rest in peace, Dallas Green.
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