Cox Offers Bobby Socks and Some Brave Talk

The more clothes Bobby Cox removed from his suitcase, the more there were in it.

The Braves’ manager had the suitcase open on a couch in his office. From the bag he lifted suits and shirts, ties, sneakers and swim trunks.

“Never used to have anything,” the happy baseball lifer says. “Now I’ve got too much of everything.”

Back in Atlanta after a trip with his team, Cox waves a hand toward the suitcase and says, “Look there.”

Over the suitcase rim looms a rolling mountain range. On closer inspection, the mountains turn out to be socks. Brown socks and black socks, a gathering of socks so great there comes a tone of discoverer’s wonder to Cox’s voice as he says, “Some of those socks are from last year.”

When witnesses believe nothing more can be excavated from the bag, Cox enters its dark maw and emerges with a cigar. Then, another. And a third. Until, finally, he holds a dozen cigars. And not just cigars. CIGARS! Raised upright on a prairie, these cigars could carry telephone wire from Missouri to Missoula.

A man in his element, Bobby Cox uses a small blowtorch to light a cigar and rocks back in his office chair.

Three hours to game time. Another night at the ballpark. Nowhere else on Earth Bobby Cox would rather be.

“I still get a big kick every time I open the office,” says the man who is good enough at what he does to someday be a Hall of Famer. “Every night, I can’t wait for the game to start.”

Slightly more than 200 games as a .225-hitting Yankees infielder is the synopsis of Cox’s big-league playing career. In 1970, he limped away on bad knees that were leftovers from his high school football career and a decade of bouncing on bush-league buses, from Oregon to Virginia.

“By then, I had too many kids and not enough money,” he says. So at 29, he decided to finish college and coach football. But baseball wouldn’t be done with him. Yankees general manager Lee MacPhail persuaded Cox to manage at the Class A level.

“I hadn’t thought of managing, but I loved it,” Cox says. “That first year, I practically killed myself. I had 38 players and no coaches. Just me. I worked them out at 10 and 3 before we played that night. I threw an hour of BP at 10, another hour at 3 and I hit all the fungoes.

“I was going to do something no manager had ever done. All my players would get to the big leagues.”

Here a smile flashes through the cigar smoke.

“Maybe three or four made it.”

Now 56, Cox plans to manage through 2001. After that, he’ll play golf and renew acquaintances with his children.

“But you can only do so much of that,” he says. “I’d work for the Braves for nothing. I’ll be too young to get away from it. Hey, baseball’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun. Managers, writers, coaches--these guys 70 years old stay young at heart by being around baseball.”

So we’re talking baseball. Cox says it’s fun to be in the meetings where scouts, coaches and players go over reports on the next opponent. Maybe he’ll add an idea that makes “one-tenth of 1% of a difference in winning or losing.”

He says the Braves play an overshifted infield against Barry Bonds because in the manager’s seven years Bonds has never hit a ground ball toward shortstop: “Two weeks ago, against the Cubs, he hit one toward short. But never against us.”

When he managed the Blue Jays, Cox told his third baseman to ignore conventional wisdom and play deep against Rickey Henderson, daring the sprinter to bunt: “He hasn’t bunted yet.”

Cox admires gamers, thinking specifically of his shortstop, Jeff Blauser, a star again after two seasons of injury and confusion.

“You like the guys who’re trying and trying, but it’s better if they’re trying and getting the job done,” Cox says. “We’ve won with Jeff Blauser at shortstop for seven consecutive years. Last year, we had Marquis Grissom leading off. Jeff took a lot of pitches so Marquis could run. That took away some aggressiveness with the bat. It set him back. . . . Right now, he’s not only hitting, but he’s playing shortstop like Phil Rizzuto.”

What Cox won’t tell you is what he thinks of himself. When a radio interviewer says, “Bobby, your record doesn’t seem to get the recognition it deserves,” Cox answers, “That’s OK. I don’t need to be glorified, and I don’t want to be. I just try to do the best job I can, day in and day out. Just win.”

Here, another smile. “But I do think I’m on the right track with this managing job.”

Tommy Lasorda, soon to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, praises Cox for “his patience, baseball knowledge and understanding of people. The real bottom line is he gets the most out of his players. And these days that’s not easy.”

Cox’s accomplishments with the Braves, first as general manager and now as manager, are unprecedented in recent baseball. It’s only a small stretch to say Cox has done what only Connie Mack did before him: build a team, then manage it to a World Series.

Hired as G.M. in 1986, Cox created an organization that signed a dozen can’t-miss prospects. Encouraged by President Stan Kasten to manage those prospects, Cox returned to the dugout in June 1990 and took over a last-place team. The next season, the Braves were in the World Series.

It didn’t take long for such success to become a habit. Of this decade’s pennant winners--Oakland, Minnesota, Toronto, Cleveland, the Yankees, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Cincinnati--only two have won more than once: Toronto twice, the Braves four times (with one World Series title).

Now Cox sits in an office at Turner Field, a new ballpark built in part because he helped make the Braves worthy of such a palace. Behind the skipper are two bottles of champagne, left over from a celebration or two.

It’s another night at the ballyard.

“Our hearts beat with one pulse,” he says of a team eager to be in another World Series. “There’s only one thing for us. That’s win.”

That last word he says with a great smile.