THE BOOK ON BOWA : Rookie Padre Manager Learning the Etiquette of Arguments

SAN DIEGO —  You’re Larry Bowa, and in a game as a minor league baseball manager, you kick the first-base line into an umpire’s eyes. The chalk looks like bad makeup and feels like a bad contact lens, and umpire Jerry Layne misses a couple of days. And he isn’t even the one you were mad at.

You’re Larry Bowa, and you are thrown out twice in the span of seven innings. The third inning one night, the first inning the next night. Finally, the president of the Pacific Coast League orders you to stay home for the next three days because his umpires are losing their voices.

You’re Larry Bowa, you’re with the San Diego Padres this spring, and already big league umpires are looking at you and thinking about their last bad meal.

“Yeah,” said Bruce Froemming, in his 17th season as a National League umpire. “We had heard about him.”

In the Padres’ home opener, you are thrown out. In Game 28, tossed. In Game 42, sent to the showers.

Then it happens. You stop. Just like that. In the next 66 games, you don’t get thrown out once. Umpires are describing you as “fair.”

You suddenly choose to shut your mouth.

Are you sick?

“You make adjustments,” Bowa said. “I still want to go out there. I still want to fight for my team.”

He smiled. “But now I’ve matured. I’ve grown from my mistakes. I’ve learned.”

Now it’s like this . . .

In one game, when one of the Padres was called out for running out of the base line, Bowa was so mad he argued not with one, but with two umpires. Bad odds. But neither one threw him out.

“I thought for sure he was going to get himself run (out) on that one,” Tony Gwynn said. “But then all of a sudden, he’s coming back to the dugout, all calm and cool. We couldn’t believe it.”

Believe it. Bowa, who entered this season with a sporting nation waiting for him to kill the ump, has learned.

Not to avoid arguing. (Bowa has been changed, not rebuilt.)

Bowa has learned how to argue.

“Yes, there is a way to argue,” said John Kibler, a National League umpire since 1965. “And a way not to argue.”

Kibler took Bowa aside in spring training and told him, “This is the big leagues, you’ve worked hard to get here, don’t mess it up.”

A month into the season, another umpire, whose name Bowa would not reveal, took the Padre manager aside and told him, “Relax, you’re getting too hyper. The word is spreading.”

Bowa thanked them and said he would try. Four months later, here’s what he has learned:

When putting together a colorful string of profanity , try not to get personal.

“You can say, ‘You missed the . . . call,’ ” Froemming explained. “But you can’t say, ‘You’re a . . .’ You say that, the argument is over. You’re gone.”

Thus, there is not as much cursing during arguments as a manager’s contortions might lead you to believe. The majority of the insults come after the manager is thrown out.

“That’s a big problem,” said Whitey Herzog, St. Louis Cardinal manager. “I’ve been thrown out without cursing, and then I get so mad I really curse, and that’s what they write up in their report.”

Bowa agreed. “I do most of my cussing after I get run out. I figure, I might as well get my money’s worth.”

Bowa has been fined $100, $200 and $300 for his three ejections this season.

“Ascending order,” said Bowa with a smile.

For his first ejection, April 13 against San Francisco, he did little more than swing his fist in the air. The second time, May 5 against Pittsburgh, there were two out in the bottom of the ninth, so he had to work fast to get ejected before it ended.

On the third one, May 20 in New York, he argued through an entire seventh-inning stretch, drowning out two songs, “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” and “New York, New York.” Best $300 he ever spent.

One call at a time, please.

Bowa couldn’t understand why Dick Stello ejected him after a close call at first base. Bowa yelled, “That’s two you’ve missed.” And Stello ran him.

“No curse words or anything,” said Bowa.

Now he knows. Don’t discuss any of the umpire’s previous calls. It is considered the worst kind of profanity. They see enough of those calls in their sleep.

“I’ll discuss what just happened,” Kibler said, “but I won’t listen to anything else. The past is the past. Either you’re out here talking about the call I just made, or you’re gone.”

Be careful in the dugout . You never know who is listening.

Bowa is not paranoid, but . . .

“Beginning of the season, the dugouts were bugged,” he said. “Everything I said, the umps yelled over to me about. It was like they had hearing aids. It was like Watergate.

“I’d say, ‘Pretty good pitch,’ encouraging my pitcher, and they would yell over, ‘Bowa, that pitch was outside.’ I couldn’t even talk to my own players!”

The dugouts at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, though not really bugged, are among the closest to home plate anywhere. But Bowa became convinced of a conspiracy when one night there was trouble with his quiet pitching coach.

After a couple of close calls against his pitcher, Galen Cisco yelled to the home plate umpire: “Why don’t you put it up on a tee?”

Without looking, the ump yelled, “Galen, that’s enough out of you.”

Bowa was stunned.

“How did he know it was Galen’s voice?” Bowa asked. “Galen barely talks enough so that we know his voice!”

Kibler said there were no electronic devices in the dugout. He said umpires are more clever than that.

“Half the time, we recognize a voice. We know a lot of voices,” he said. “But also, we can give a glance over to the dugout, using our peripheral vision, through our mask, to see who is saying what. We sneak a look. The managers can never tell.”

Bowa shrugged. “To be honest with you, I think that first month, I was tested.”

Players play, coaches coach, managers argue.

It’s one of baseball’s more heroic sights. During an argument between an umpire and a player or base coach, the manager will run from the dugout, shove the player or coach aside, and belly up to the ump himself. Everybody else will walk away while the manager and umpire bob heads.

Is the manager afraid nobody else knows how to argue properly? No. Baseball protocol states that nobody else is allowed to argue.

“It’s an unwritten rule,” umpire Jim Quick said. “We don’t want to argue with anybody but the manager. He’s the boss. He’s the only one we’ll listen to.”

In his first ejection this season, Bowa was arguing because Tim Flannery was called out for sliding wide at second base. Flannery, who started the argument, was thrilled to turn around at second base and see him.

“The manager comes out, I’m backing out,” Flannery said. “I don’t do my team any good out of the game.”

Managers like these kinds of arguments. It’s the only tangible way to show the players and coaches that their manager will fight for them.

“Take that first ejection, it was premeditated,” Bowa said. “That was a judgment call at second base, there was no arguing it. But I was hoping these players would see it and say, ‘Hey, he cares.’ I think I’ve gotten my point across now.”

Mild-mannered Tony Gwynn says he tried arguing on his own behalf once in the minor leagues. He should have let the manager do it.

“Only time I’ve ever been thrown out,” Gwynn sighed. “I lead off a game in Walla Walla (Wash.) with an inside-the-park homer, and they call me out for missing first base. But I couldn’t have missed first because the Nike insignia from the bottom of my cleats was imprinted in the dust on the bag. The first baseman was wearing adidas. Couldn’t have been his cleats.”

Gwynn, who curses even less than he frowns, argued cleanly for a few minutes, began stalking toward his dugout on the other side of the field, then decided he needed to throw something. He couldn’t find a bat, there were no available helmets . . . so he reached inside his mouth. Out came his chaw of tobacco. He flung it at the umpire.

“It shred into little pieces that trailed through the air,” Gwynn said. “It was awful.”

It didn’t hit the umpire, but the umpire got the idea. Gwynn was gone.

“Sometimes,” said Gwynn with a smile. “umps won’t take too much from us players.”

Strike one, you’re out.

It’s the most common rule of all. Any manager who leaves the dugout with the intention of questioning a ball or strike call is automatically ejected from the game. Those calls are at the heart of the umpire’s judgment. Those calls are untouchables.

But even those calls can be argued.

“There is a smart way to do it,” Froemming admitted.

Ever wonder why a manager suddenly runs to the pitcher’s mound when the pitcher is still throwing well? And why, sometimes, the manager stays out there so long?

It’s because he’s waiting for the home plate umpire to walk out and break it up. Once the umpire is there, the manager will question a ball and strike call while staring into center field, talking to his pitcher or into thin air, never looking at the ump, but certain that the umpire hears him.

This is quite acceptable. However, with a new umpire, even this method can get a manager in trouble.

“I did it in Chicago, and it worked fine. The rookie umpire (Gary Darling) came out and I was staring into center field and talking about the pitches, and then I was walking off,” Bowa said. “All of a sudden, he takes off his mask and points and yells at me before I get to the dugout. So I jump back out there and say, ‘That stinks, I was doing it the right way.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you’re right, I’m sorry.’ ”

Believe it or not, sometimes the umpires and managers realize they are part of the same game.

“We’re all in this together,” said Padre third base coach Harry Dunlop. “You don’t run to home plate and show them up, they won’t run out there and show you up.”

Yet, even with all the rules, it happens. People are run out, many each year, even more times than Bowa.

“Shoot, he’s doing good,” Herzog said. “I used to get run five to seven times a year before I got some sense.”

Sometimes Bowa gets mad enough to ignore every rule. Thus, he has learned a second set of postulates, or, Reasons to Stay In the Game When All Else Fails:

Getting tossed is tough on the knees.

You think when Bowa is thrown out, he really leaves the field? No baseball manager ever leaves the field, or at least sight of the field.

“We know they’re out there somewhere,” Kibler said. “As long as we can’t see them, we don’t do anything. We have too much to worry about without looking around for managers.”

Bowa won’t give away his exact hiding place at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. But he will say it’s both a good one and a bad one.

“There’s a great place here,” he said. “You can kneel down and see the game and whisper to somebody, ‘hit and run’ or ‘bunt.’ Everybody does it. It just gets a little hard sometimes.”

He can live with it. Last year in Las Vegas he would spend entire games painfully crouched behind a dugout trash can.

Getting tossed is tough on the little girl.

Last season in Las Vegas, after a particularly wearisome tirade that resulted in ejection, Bowa met his family at the car. No sooner did they lock the doors when his 3-year-old daughter began asking him about the curse words he used. She was interested in definitions.

“My wife turns to me and says, ‘Honey, this is a small park. You could hear every word you said,’ ” Bowa recalled. “I absolutely could have died.”

Getting tossed is tough on the club.

In Las Vegas, his club lost four straight games during his two-ejections-in-two-days (plus a suspension) incident. That eliminated the Stars from the first-half race. Bowa wasn’t tossed once in the second half and, for what it’s worth, his club won that half, and the league championship.

“I’m just the way I was last year,” Bowa said. “I get thrown out early, then I calm down.”

And for now, everybody is happy.

“Larry has gone through some rough times with this young club, but he’s been more than fair,” Froemming said.

“We’ve just been talking about it,” Kibler said. “He’s now handling himself very professionally.”

Bowa smiled. “I think I’ve turned it around.”

He paused.

“Well, OK, I’m still going to make mistakes, but,” and he smiled again, “they’ll be aggressive mistakes.”