GaryMrMets
05-28-2004, 04:10 PM
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/sports/8780985.htm
Posted on Fri, May. 28, 2004
Rich Hofmann | BEYOND MANAGING
By Rich Hofmann
hofmanr@phillynews.com
MOST NIGHTS, we see the uniforms and little else. They wear their team colors, and they have their numbers on their backs, and they go about their business in these video-games-come-to-life. They are booed and cheered, scorned and saluted, as they work on a well-lit stage. We look at them as machines.
Night after night, game after game, we see Heroes! or Bums! or, very occasionally, something in between. Arch-stereotypes rule our perceptions of them - and, when they don't, numbers like salaries and statistics do. Consider this: We know more about the parents of a horse, Smarty Jones, than we do about theirs.
We see these players as performers, then, and little more. We see them as stars, above it all.
But people? Not so much.
And then real life intrudes.
It did for Phils manager Larry Bowa at about 10 minutes to 4 p.m. yesterday, with the arrival of news that his 20-year-old daughter Tori, an intern in the Phillies' marketing department, had been involved in a car accident outside Citizens Bank Park.
"It was tough," Bowa said, hours later, the Phillies' 6-1 loss to the Atlanta Braves reduced to a footnote. "Your daughter gets in a car accident, and the car's completely totaled. Hopefully everything turns out all right. I know the X-rays were negative. I know she's got a concussion. I think she's lucky she's alive."
The good news is that Tori Bowa was treated at Methodist Hospital and released after the BMW she was driving was totaled, as was the other vehicle involved in the accident, a Ford Explorer.
"Somebody that close to you is in an accident, you look at the car and you wonder how she walked away from it," Bowa said, acknowledging that he had trouble concentrating during the game.
Hours earlier, it had begun as a game day like any other. The manager was sitting at his desk, flipping through some kind of report, as the writers began to gather around his desk for their daily interview session.
Somebody asked what time the team got in the night before from New York, and Bowa said, "1:30." Somebody else wondered if Pat Burrell wasn't in the starting lineup because he wasn't feeling well, and Bowa said, "I didn't even know that. I told [Ricky] Ledee [Wednesday] he was playing."
On it went, with more injury questions and more injury answers, the necessary daily minutiae being gathered. And then, Tomas Perez burst into the manager's office. He was out of breath and working in his second language, and he needed to say it twice for Bowa to understand, but Perez was delivering this news: that Bowa's daughter had been in a car accident outside the stadium.
Bowa asked if she was all right. Perez answered that he thought she was. Then Bowa made a quick apology and sprinted from the office. And right then, the look on Bowa's face - the unmistakable look of a helpless, concerned parent - was unlike any that the cameras had ever caught.
Think about that for a second. He has been here for parts of four different decades, right there in your living room. In that time, we have seen Bowa laughing, smirking, smoldering and bellowing. We have seen him bitter, biting, strutting, snarling, celebrating and blasting off. The result of the game that day is writ in his mirror, every day.
That the emotion is never far from his face is one of the reasons that so many people in Philadelphia have rooted for him for so long. And, by now, you thought you had seen it all when it came to Larry Bowa.
But you hadn't. Trust me on that one.
Then, hours later, he answered a few questions about it. For instance, did he consider not working?
"I was there at the hospital until the X-rays were taken, and the doctor thought that besides whiplash and a slight concussion, that she'd probably be all right," Bowa said. "[Tori's mother] Sheena was there. I made sure she was there before I left."
And then, it was a short trip back down Broad Street from the hospital. Bowa was in the Phillies' dugout for the first pitch at 7:06, managing a baseball team. Only he understood his emotions, and how difficult it was to concentrate.
Most people in the ballpark probably never knew, which is how it always is.
http://www.philly.com/images/philly/dailynews/8784/77166929528.jpg
Larry Bowa manages his team last night after his daughter’s automobile accident.
Posted on Fri, May. 28, 2004
Rich Hofmann | BEYOND MANAGING
By Rich Hofmann
hofmanr@phillynews.com
MOST NIGHTS, we see the uniforms and little else. They wear their team colors, and they have their numbers on their backs, and they go about their business in these video-games-come-to-life. They are booed and cheered, scorned and saluted, as they work on a well-lit stage. We look at them as machines.
Night after night, game after game, we see Heroes! or Bums! or, very occasionally, something in between. Arch-stereotypes rule our perceptions of them - and, when they don't, numbers like salaries and statistics do. Consider this: We know more about the parents of a horse, Smarty Jones, than we do about theirs.
We see these players as performers, then, and little more. We see them as stars, above it all.
But people? Not so much.
And then real life intrudes.
It did for Phils manager Larry Bowa at about 10 minutes to 4 p.m. yesterday, with the arrival of news that his 20-year-old daughter Tori, an intern in the Phillies' marketing department, had been involved in a car accident outside Citizens Bank Park.
"It was tough," Bowa said, hours later, the Phillies' 6-1 loss to the Atlanta Braves reduced to a footnote. "Your daughter gets in a car accident, and the car's completely totaled. Hopefully everything turns out all right. I know the X-rays were negative. I know she's got a concussion. I think she's lucky she's alive."
The good news is that Tori Bowa was treated at Methodist Hospital and released after the BMW she was driving was totaled, as was the other vehicle involved in the accident, a Ford Explorer.
"Somebody that close to you is in an accident, you look at the car and you wonder how she walked away from it," Bowa said, acknowledging that he had trouble concentrating during the game.
Hours earlier, it had begun as a game day like any other. The manager was sitting at his desk, flipping through some kind of report, as the writers began to gather around his desk for their daily interview session.
Somebody asked what time the team got in the night before from New York, and Bowa said, "1:30." Somebody else wondered if Pat Burrell wasn't in the starting lineup because he wasn't feeling well, and Bowa said, "I didn't even know that. I told [Ricky] Ledee [Wednesday] he was playing."
On it went, with more injury questions and more injury answers, the necessary daily minutiae being gathered. And then, Tomas Perez burst into the manager's office. He was out of breath and working in his second language, and he needed to say it twice for Bowa to understand, but Perez was delivering this news: that Bowa's daughter had been in a car accident outside the stadium.
Bowa asked if she was all right. Perez answered that he thought she was. Then Bowa made a quick apology and sprinted from the office. And right then, the look on Bowa's face - the unmistakable look of a helpless, concerned parent - was unlike any that the cameras had ever caught.
Think about that for a second. He has been here for parts of four different decades, right there in your living room. In that time, we have seen Bowa laughing, smirking, smoldering and bellowing. We have seen him bitter, biting, strutting, snarling, celebrating and blasting off. The result of the game that day is writ in his mirror, every day.
That the emotion is never far from his face is one of the reasons that so many people in Philadelphia have rooted for him for so long. And, by now, you thought you had seen it all when it came to Larry Bowa.
But you hadn't. Trust me on that one.
Then, hours later, he answered a few questions about it. For instance, did he consider not working?
"I was there at the hospital until the X-rays were taken, and the doctor thought that besides whiplash and a slight concussion, that she'd probably be all right," Bowa said. "[Tori's mother] Sheena was there. I made sure she was there before I left."
And then, it was a short trip back down Broad Street from the hospital. Bowa was in the Phillies' dugout for the first pitch at 7:06, managing a baseball team. Only he understood his emotions, and how difficult it was to concentrate.
Most people in the ballpark probably never knew, which is how it always is.
http://www.philly.com/images/philly/dailynews/8784/77166929528.jpg
Larry Bowa manages his team last night after his daughter’s automobile accident.