Terry Bevington has been absorbed all month with important acquisitions.
He finally managed to get his hands on the scarce Barbie CD-ROM his 3-year-old computer whiz, Courtney, wants for Christmas so she can mix and match clothes. Now the White Sox manager is searching for Tonka Turtle, a present Courtney thinks her 7-week-old brother, Trevor, would enjoy.
“Pretty things,” Courtney Bevington tells Santa as she sits on his lap and gives gift ideas for her mother, Cyndi.
What about for dad?
“Baseball, White Sox,” she says, notifying the North Pole that Christmas has to come early next year with a World Series victory in late October.
Sox fans surely would embrace Terry Bevington then. The immediate goal, however, is for the relationship to begin now.
The team hopes to parade out a kinder, gentler Terry Bevington this year. They want fans to see him as a likable ambassador for the team.
At times last season, Bevington came off as surly in dealing with the media. And the team believes that turns off the fans.
So Bevington is spending part of the off-season in an attempt to reshape his image.
The manager readily acknowledges parenthood has changed him for the better, despite the unsettling demands of cries in the night.
But a few sleep-deprived nights aren’t too bad for Bevington. He has been told much of his life that certain goals were beyond his reach, yet he has made his own way against all odds.
For instance, when he and Cyndi were unable to conceive children, he demonstrated his persistent and unshakable side with the adoption of Courtney and Trevor.
“I remember thinking, `Adoption, how’s that going to be? Will I bond?’ ” he said.
No problem.
“People who are adopting don’t have to worry,” he said. “I can’t imagine caring more for my own biological kids. When you read about (birth parents) wanting the kids back, that’s scary. If that happened to me, I’d probably leave the country and disappear.”
The obstacles in the adoption process did not discourage Bevington.
“People have told me all my life I couldn’t have something and would never get it,” he said. “From the time they said I was too small to play Little League, to spending a long time managing in the minors (1981-88) and wondering if I’d ever get to the majors, right up to Cyndi and me being told we couldn’t have kids, things haven’t always come easy to me.”
His struggles have been personified the last two years, when the media had written him off as a manager and skewered his personality, saying he was uncooperative and spiteful. Many didn’t expect him to return for 1996 after he replaced the fired Gene Lamont on June 2, 1995, and finished 57-56 with the Sox.
“I remember the day I got the job, one national writer saying I shouldn’t get too comfortable, because I’d be replaced in a day or two,” he recalled.
Then, once the Sox openly pursued Jim Leyland as manager after the 1996 season, and even after Leyland chose the Florida Marlins, many figured Bevington had lost too much face to return for 1997.
Well, not only is he back, he is carrying a two-year commitment from the Sox. He also is working this off-season to burnish his image. He is listening to consultants who are teaching him how to approach his media tasks intelligently, and he’s studying tapes of last season’s postgame press conferences to improve his presentation.
“People say sometimes I talk down to the media,” he said. “I don’t mean to do that, but maybe I do. I go back on the tapes and hear I sounded a little grouchy there. I didn’t think I had, but I did.
“I’m sure I’ll be a lot better with the media next year. That’s not to say everyone will be pleased. I doubt it. It’s a two-way street. I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes, but a lot more of it has been misinterpretation.”
He sounds like Albert Belle, doesn’t he? Next season’s White Sox clubhouse will have at least two prominent people trying to refurbish public images.
“Players and management haven’t exactly hit it off lately,” said Bevington, who evidently has learned about spin control. “So you can look at it like I’m more one of the players than management.”
Rob Gallas, the Sox’s senior vice president for marketing and broadcasting, credits Bevington for wanting to learn more about the media and how to approach it.
“He is evolving, just as many managers have,” Gallas said. “We are working on his presence and demeanor. Part of coaching and managing is to be a performer. Terry has shown an eagerness to learn.”
Dorothy Pirovano, who works for Public Communications Inc., a firm employed by the Sox, emphasizes the media’s impact on Bevington’s image when she counsels him.
“Terry’s first thought is the game of the day,” she said, “and the lesson he learned is the media is part of that, not a distraction. If you have part of the media mad at you, the public doesn’t see who you are and what you’re trying to do.”
Bevington crawled into the media doghouse last season on Opening Day at Comiskey Park and thinks he never escaped some people’s hit list. What he never told the media that day was that his gruffness emanated from a message from his wife. He found it on his desk after the loss: Call hospital, soon as possible.
“Courtney had been having ear infections, problems with her balance, and had fallen and banged her head bad a few days before,” Bevington said. “So I was thinking there was something wrong when I saw the message.
“Instead of telling the media I had a family emergency, I just said, `Is there anything else? Because I really have to go.’ People thought I was bothered by the game. Win or lose, very rarely am I upset. If we play like crap, which doesn’t happen often, I’m upset.
“But Opening Day started me off on a bad note. One of the things about managing is you want to try to keep the players guessing. It probably carries to the media, too, and that’s probably not good. In baseball, you don’t want to give out too much information.
“But for the players, that’s good. It’s good to keep people on edge, thinking maybe they have to go a little harder. You don’t want players to have a good read on you.”
Pitcher Kevin Tapani, who recently signed with the Cubs after spending 1996 with the Sox, likes Bevington as a person. He faults him, however, for slipping into a managing trap when he overused relievers early in the season. That forced him to overuse starters later in the season, when the relievers were exhausted.
“He was going to the bullpen early in the season, bringing in his setup men in the sixth inning,” Tapani said. “Then when their arms were hanging or whatever, he began having the starters face extra hitters. Then some of them started showing wear and tear. Wilson Alvarez wasn’t as sharp at the end. I think Terry learned something about how to handle a pitching staff.”
Tapani adds that Bevington tried to rally the team by telling players to band together against all the media distractions, such as attacks on him and Comiskey Park’s flagging attendance.
“He was a players’ manager and I got along with him fine.” Tapani said. “He’d tell us all that mattered was what we thought in the clubhouse. There was some frustration. He’d talk to the players but let you know there was a definite line and he was running the show.”
Bevington downplays the fact he would have been out of a job if Leyland had wanted to come to the Sox. But he acknowledges those were difficult times for Cyndi.
“I told her, `Cyndi, if I don’t have a job here, I’ll get one with another team, I know that.’ I’m not a butt-kisser. I’m a team person, an organization person. Believe me when I tell you, I would have been able to go somewhere else.”
Bevington clams up, however, when pressed about whether he had made contacts elsewhere to manage or coach before Leyland turned down the Sox.
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you,” he replied.
Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf is reminded of his former employee, Tony La Russa, now managing St. Louis, when he hears Bevington criticized for being hot-tempered.
“That’s all I heard about Tony when he first got here,” Reinsdorf said, “that he’s hot-tempered, doesn’t know what he’s doing and you have to get rid of him. People don’t realize what an excellent baseball mind Bevington has. That reminds me of La Russa.
“Terry admitted to me once he probably would have done the same thing, going after Leyland like we did. OK, so we didn’t get Leyland, the first- or second-best manager in baseball. When you can’t get Ruth, you take Gehrig. Terry was as good as anyone available to us after Leyland, and may one day be as good as Leyland or La Russa.”
It’s easy to get the feeling Bevington has heard quite enough, thank you, about Leyland and La Russa.
“How did Leyland get a name?” he asked when talk turns to his anonymous image, burdened by negative vibes. “Nobody wanted him at first. Nobody wanted La Russa at first. They ran him out of Chicago.
“Being good with the media will keep a manager around an extra year or two. If you’re not good with the media and you don’t win, it might cost you a year or two. But I don’t want to keep my job because I’m great with the media.
“I think I have the respect of people in baseball. No one has ever come out and said we’re not hiring him because he can’t handle this or that. It all has been about hiring a bigger name than me, which is fine. I handled it very well. It’s not always easy for me, but it works out.”
If General Manager Ron Schueler can solidify the pitching, Bevington knows what will be expected.
“To say `we’re there,’ we have to add some pitching,” he said. “We are in extremely good shape. It doesn’t matter how we’re viewed by other people, only by ourselves.
“How a team feels about itself means a lot. I think by the time we come out of spring training, we’ll feel (a World Series) is going to be a great possibility for us.”
The hardest part for Bevington will be leaving Courtney and Trevor and going on the road. Whereas once he and Cyndi lavished their love on a Yorkshire terrier named Rewind, now 8 and less jealous than when Courtney first came home, the 40-year-old Bevington expresses awe at the feelings of a parent.
“Anybody that has a kid, it has to change you in a lot of ways,” he said. “It’s a lot harder to go on road trips now. Courtney can see me on TV and I call her.
“I tell her, `Courtney, I have to go make the money so we can go to the toy store,’ and things like that. Sometimes she even tells me now, `Daddy, go make the money.’ I never realized until now what my parents went through.”
Bevington is absorbing new data at a fast clip. Soon he will have to put into practice what he has been preaching.
“If somebody wants to ask a question 12 times, I’ll answer it 12 times,” he insisted. “But I’m sure there’s going to be something someone doesn’t like. It’s a two-way street.”
