The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSSUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020 0 N 37

When the Dodgers won the National
League pennant last week, Dave Rob-
erts, the Los Angeles manager, was un-
usually emotional as he spoke at a
lectern about how this would prove to be
the Dodgers’ year.
Roberts is normally seen as an unflap-
pable, self-possessed figure standing in
the dugout, calmly writing snippets of
tactical information and other manageri-
al data into a small blue notebook.
Some of those attributes are innate,
but Roberts credits an early mentor
named Jeff Manto for teaching him the
value of a measured and composed ap-
proach to baseball through a specific
technique that still serves him, as he
seeks to block out the tumult while at-
tempting to guide the Dodgers to their
first World Series title in 32 years.
“You want to make sure it doesn’t
speed up on you,” Roberts said on Friday
before his Dodgers faced the Tampa Bay
Rays in Game 3 of the World Series.
Baseball may appear ponderously
slow to some. But for a manager, time can
move rapidly during games, as crucial
decisions roll by in speedy succession,
especially late in games when vital ele-
ments stack up: the status of each of the
manager’s own players and the other
team’s players; the state of the game;
how someone looked in a previous at-
bat; weather conditions; field condi-
tions; piles of statistical information that
need to be sorted, prioritized and applied
at the right moments. And all of it meas-
ured against gut instinct.
Roberts, who has led the Dodgers to
three World Series since he was hired in
2016, had much less to worry about when
he was a 26-year-old minor leaguer sim-

ply hoping to break into the majors.

In 1998, he had just been traded by the

Detroit Tigers to the Cleveland Indians

and sent to the Class AAA Buffalo

Bisons. It was there that he met Manto, a

veteran minor-league third baseman for

several organizations.

Manto was 33 at the time and had

played over 1,100 games in a 15-year ca-

reer, mostly in the minor leagues and Ja-

pan. But he also shuttled back and forth

to major league clubs in places like

Cleveland, Baltimore, Boston, Seattle

and the Bronx. He was as respected and

knowledgeable as he was persistent. He

is one of only three Bisons players to

have his uniform number retired.

Roberts describes Manto as a Crash

Davis type, referring to the main charac-

ter in the movie “Bull Durham” — a sage

veteran of the minor league circuit with

much to teach. Roberts, known for his cu-

riosity, soaked up a good deal of it.

“When he came to our ball club, he was

high, high energy,” Manto said of Roberts

last week in a telephone interview. “But

the main thing was that he wanted infor-

mation. He was always asking quality

questions to the veteran guys about how

to do everything. It made an impression

on you.”

The feeling was mutual, because Rob-

erts recalled how Manto, who now runs a

player development academy in Penn-

sylvania, explained to him one of the

keys to success in professional baseball,

a method to prevent the game from spin-

ning out of control.

“It was one of the tricks I learned over

the years,” Manto said. “When things

started speeding up and something was

going too fast — maybe even off the field,

like a family situation — I would do ev-

erything slower.

“I drove the speed limit to get me back

to point, I’d eat slower. Whatever that

means, it meant a lot to me.”

It also meant something to Roberts,

who still recalled the advice 22 years lat-

er. On game days, Roberts would drink

his coffee slowly, move around his house

slowly, get to the park early and get

dressed slowly. And when it came time to

hit, he would walk slowly to the batter’s

box.

This is perhaps a bit unexpected for a

player whose singular moment of fame

— stealing second base in Game 4 of the

2004 American League Championship

Series to ignite the Red Sox’s historic

comeback against the Yankees — was all

about speed. But mentally, the approach

needs to be relaxed enough to make the

game appearslow.

“When Dave stole that base, I knew

there was some element of it that he had

learned by asking a question,” Manto

said. “There is no doubt. Maybe it was his

lead, how to read the pitcher, checking

the catcher. Maybe all of it. But that is

what made him unique.”

Manto described Roberts as ex-

tremely respectful, not only to him, but

also to the game and to the process of be-

ing a player and a teammate. Once, in

1999 in Buffalo, Roberts was responsible

for the shoebox that contained the fine

payments for the players’ kangaroo

court. But he lost it, and the money in-

side. Some of the players told Manto,

who was the judge that week, and he

waited to see how Roberts would re-

spond.

“He came up to me a couple days later

and just told me the truth,” Manto said.

“He said he left it on the bus. In Dou-

ble-A, you use the same bus all the time.

But in Triple-A, one bus leaves and an-

other one picks you up. He was really

apologetic, and I just told him to pay it

back. But it showed how seriously he

took it, because it was about being a part

of a team.”

Roberts made an impression on many

people back then, including Mark Sha-

piro, now the president of the Toronto

Blue Jays. In 1998 Shapiro was Cleve-

land’s assistant general manager, and

even though the two spent only a couple

of years in the same organization, they

remain friendly. Shapiro calls Roberts

one of five or six people in his career with

whom he shares a special connection.

Three years after Roberts left Cleve-

land, he ended up in Boston on a team

that would make history in October 2004.

Shapiro told Roberts at the time that his

brother David, who worked for a non-

profit, lived in a modest home in Boston

and that he should visit for dinner.

“And he went,” Shapiro said. “Here he

is, a big major league player for the Bos-

ton Red Sox, and he goes to my brother’s

little house in Jamaica Plain and plays

with my brother’s little kids.”

Shapiro said he wished he could claim

he always knew Roberts would make a

successful manager, but he admits he

never really through of it, mostly be-

cause he was focused on him as a player

and later as a friend. Now, even when

Roberts gets criticized for a decision that

backfires, he realizes it makes perfect

sense.

“He’s so well-grounded and authen-

tic,” Shapiro said. “That is what enables

him to deal with things, the criticism that

comes with the job. He definitely learned

a lot along the way, but a lot of it is just

who he is.”

Years later, Roberts is the mentor to a

group of players who appreciate his

calm, steady approach. Mookie Betts,

the Dodgers star right fielder, said play-

ers respond well to Roberts’s demeanor,

and noted how it helped when they fell

behind in the N.L.C.S.

“Even when we were down 3-1 against

Atlanta, he still believed, he still was the

same guy,” Betts said. “He had no panic

in him.”

Dodgers’ Manager Heeds His Mentor: When Things Speed Up, Slow Down

By DAVID WALDSTEIN

Dave Roberts, who has taken the

Dodgers to three World Series, is “so

well-grounded and authentic,” Mark

Shapiro, a longtime friend, said.

ROBERT HANASHIRO/USA TODAY SPORTS, VIA REUTERS

turn. (They resumed play in exchange
for commitments from the league to
work toward increased voting opportu-
nities and to press for social change.)
Now comes the hard part.
The leagues succeeded because they
are enormously wealthy. They had
enough money not just to administer
comprehensive testing but also to pivot
quickly and do things that would have
seemed unimaginable in the past, like re-
locating the Toronto Blue Jays to Buffalo
and closing off hundreds of basketball
and hockey players in bubblelike zones
in two Canadian cities and at Disney
World in Florida for two months.
Now the leagues have to figure out
how to do it again as infection numbers
have reached a record daily high in the
United States, making it unclear how to
protect players and personnel without
spending exorbitantly again.
Baseball recently released its 2021
schedule with an April 1 opening day, but
Commissioner Rob Manfred last week
essentially said the schedule was little
more than a series of dates on a calendar.
“The reality is all planning for 2021 for
us, and for every other business in Amer-
ica, has to have an asterisk next to it in
terms of what the course of the virus is
going to be,” Manfred said on ESPN Ra-
dio.
Resorting to bubbles seems unrealis-
tic for an entire season. And going with-
out ticket sales and all the money from
overpriced hot dogs, beer, T-shirts and
parking has produced plenty of deep red
balance sheets.
The N.H.L., which should now be in the
third week of the 2020-21 season, is tar-
geting a Jan. 1 start date but has yet to
post a schedule, as the U.S.-Canadian
border remains closed. On Thursday, the
league announced it was postponing its
All-Star Game and the Winter Classic, an
outdoor game scheduled for New Year’s
Day.
The Lakers won the N.B.A. champi-
onship on Oct. 11, ending a season just
weeks before the next one would nor-
mally start. League officials have yet to
say when play will start again.
“We will react to the state-of-the-art
science,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark
Cuban said. “I can’t say when, but I can
say that whatever we do we will do with
safety being our top priority.”
Casey Wasserman, the owner of a
sports marketing and talent firm who
has close relationships with the leaders
of several leagues, said he was confident
the N.H.L. and the N.B.A. would aim to
start their seasons by early winter, per-
haps with slightly shorter schedules of
roughly 70 games, and to complete their
playoffs in June, as usual, so they can re-
turn to normal schedules for the 2021-22
season.
Major League Soccer is considering
starting sometime in April rather than in
early March. The W.N.B.A. played 22
regular-season games this year instead
of 34, as in 2019, but it ended at roughly
the same time, putting less pressure on
scheduling for next year.
Where allowed, teams will admit spec-
tators in limited numbers, as some N.F.L.
teams have done. The Los Angeles
Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays are play-
ing the World Series at a neutral stadium
in Arlington, Texas, that is about 25 per-
cent full.
Still, as they so often do, sports are
serving as a reflection of society. No one
can say when most people will stop fear-
ing large crowds, and the steps toward
normalcy have had setbacks riddled
with positive coronavirus tests.
Even with payment from media con-
tracts, teams and leagues still stand to
lose billions without the so-called bums

in seats. Spectator spending brings in

roughly 25 percent of the N.F.L.’s $15 bil-

lion in revenue, about one-third of base-

ball’s revenue and roughly 40 percent of

the N.B.A.’s. For other sports, such as

hockey, soccer and tennis, the share is

substantially higher.

Also, for any number of reasons — in-

cluding too much competition, an oxy-

gen-sucking presidential election and a

distaste for watching games in empty

stadiums — millions of fans have largely

rejected the version of pro sports that the

pandemic has wrought.

Television ratings plummeted for

nearly every league — 61 percent for the

Stanley Cup playoffs compared with

2019, 49 percent for the N.B.A. finals, and

more than 40 percent for the United

States Open tennis and golf tournaments

and for baseball’s playoffs.

Ratings for the N.F.L., which did not

have to alter its traditional schedule,

have fallen the least, by 13 percent.

Throughout all the ups and downs,

constant testing has been vital. Every

league entered a contract with a private

lab to perform multiple tests each week

and produce rapid results, usually within

24 hours. N.F.L. players are tested and

screened for symptoms every day.

Already the league has conducted

more than 450,000 tests, and the handful

of positive cases have come not from the

gridiron but from off-the-field activities

like dining, according to the league and

the players union. In Major League Soc-

cer, tests occur every other day and the

day before each match.

“The only way any of this happens is

with vigorous testing and the protocols

working in tandem,” said George Atal-

lah, a spokesman for the N.F.L. Players

Association. “Testing alone is not

enough. It puts everyone in the right

frame of mind, but also gives a false

sense of security. It’s not a ticket to ig-

nore the protocols and do whatever you

want.”

Agreements on testing, safety proto-

cols and pay were crucial to persuading

players to return for the 2020 seasons,

but only the N.F.L. has figured out how to

manage its finances beyond this year.

In July, the N.F.L. and the players asso-

ciation agreed to share the financial pain.

The limit on each team’s player salaries,

known as the “salary cap,” is currently

$198.2 million. It will probably drop next

year, but it cannot go lower than $175 mil-

lion, with further adjustments possible in

future seasons depending on how

quickly life and pro football return to nor-

mal.

Other leagues still must find a way to

get their players to share the burden of

lost revenue without alienating stars like

LeBron James, who is supposed to make

nearly $40 million next season. Baseball,

which nearly called off its season in July

as owners and players bickered for

weeks over pay, may face another bitter

labor fight during the winter.

In many ways, the fallout for the indus-

try is just beginning.

In a note to investors, Chad Lewis, a

senior director at Fitch, the ratings

agency, wrote that “leagues, teams and

facilities took action by expanding bor-

rowing facilities, drawing down on lines

of credit, managing expenses and delay-

ing capital projects.”

Leagues are considering loosening

regulations to allow private equity funds

and other, publicly traded financial in-

struments to invest in teams. Last fall,

the Wilpon family, the longtime owners

of the New York Mets, pulled out of a $2.6

billion deal to sell their team to the hedge

fund magnate Steve Cohen, only to agree

last month to sell to him for just over $2.4

billion after a calamitous year on and off

the field for the club.

Steve Horowitz, a principal at Inner

Circle Sports, which specialize in sports

finance, noted that the potential prices of

franchises appear not to have dropped

substantially even though “in the pan-

demic, values of teams are down across

the board because you have lost a

tremendous amount of revenue.”

Wasserman remains optimistic.

“Everyone’s interests are really

aligned here,” Wasserman said. “Right

now everyone is just trying to grind

through the year. In total, it’s 18 months

of pain, and sports will be back.”

Sports Leagues

Made It Back.

Now Comes

The Hard Part.

From Page 1

TOM PENNINGTON/GETTY IMAGES

Sports adapted to, and in some cases ignored, the pandemic. The World Series, top, is taking place at a neutral stadium in Arlington, Texas, that is 25 percent

full. Construction continued, above left, on an arena for the Islanders in Elmont, N.Y. In a hotel in the N.B.A. bubble, above right, Covid testing was frequent.

KATHY WILLENS/ASSOCIATED PRESS ASHLEY LANDIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Protecting players costs a

fortune, while forgoing

spectators devastates

leagues’ revenue.

.