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Hillman has big ideas for turning around the Royals
Story By JOE POSNANSKI PHOTOS BY JOHN SLEEZER The Kansas City Star“I’ve got some different ideas about what the pitcher should do,” he says. “I really want some of our players’ opinion on this. I want to think outside the box.”
How far outside the box can you go on the topic of where a pitcher goes on a foul ball? Is he going to the concession stand? To the Marine Corps recruiting office? It doesn’t matter because before you can ask, Hillman is off to the next thing, to hitting; he saw something yesterday during workouts that got him thinking all night, something that he wants to mention to Mike Barnett, the hitting coach, not a big thing, just a little something that woke him up at 3 a.m.
“It’s really not a big thing,” he says again.
But it got you up at 3 a.m.
“Lots of stuff gets me up at 3 a.m.,” he says.
And he’s off to the next thing, on-base percentage, and the thing after that, bunt coverage, and the thing after that, the single cutoff vs. the double cutoff, and the thing after that … Trey Hillman is here to turn around the Kansas City Royals. He’s come a long way to do this job. He’s been to Japan and back. He’s toiled in the minor leagues, as a player and manager. He’s driven the plains of Oklahoma and Texas searching for players with talent. He’s waited a long time to get here. Too long.
“That guy is a (bleeping) bottle of pep,” Royals senior pitching advisor Bill Fischer said. “If you had to ride across the country with him, you’d jump out of the car.”
02|20|08
Hillman sees the chairs, and he gets an idea. You have to understand that Trey Hillman has only one expectation: He expects his players to respect the game. He can take a lot, he will take a lot, he will stand with a player through any hailstorm and through savage slumps — as long as that young man respects the game. But if Hillman sees disrespect, well, that’s when he checks out.
Respect is the feeling at the core of Trey Hillman. He has the baseball love of a player who wasn’t quite good enough. His father, Royce, sold tickets at Texas Rangers games, and he helped get Trey a job working in the visiting clubhouse. Hillman thought he would play in the big leagues then, and he watched those major-league players closely, studied them, and he saw the way the good teams — the Royals stood out for him — were also the class teams, they treated the clubhouse boys respectfully, they talked about the game, they joked around a lot but they were also serious and professional about the game.
“I want this to be a fun atmosphere,” Hillman says. “I want everyone to feel like me; I want them to feel like they can’t wait to get to the ballpark. And I don’t want anyone to feel like they’re bigger than anyone else. Everybody is going to help us win — everybody — from the general manager to the guys washing the towels in the clubhouse, to the scouts driving a couple hundred extra miles to see some player he heard about. We can’t win if every one of those people doesn’t believe he’s a part of this thing.”
Here’s how strongly Hillman believes this: When he first arrived in Japan as manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters, he personally cleaned up the clubhouse. It was quite a scandal in Japan — managers in Japan are supposed to be larger than life. Hillman never accepted that.
Back to the chairs. Hillman sees the hundred or so plastic picnic chairs — they’re set up for a ceremony. This is the day that the Royals will dedicate three practice fields to the three men whose uniform numbers are retired: George Brett, Frank White and the late Dick Howser. This should be a learning opportunity. Hillman tells his players to sit down and pay attention. There’s an edge in his voice when he sees a few scattered empty seats in the front two rows.
“There are seats up front,” he barks. “Fill the seats, men.”
They fill the seats and listen to George Brett talk about how much the game meant to him, how he never wanted anyone to take the jersey off his back. They listen to Frank White say that he’s grown tired of hearing people talk about the old Royals days — “It’s your time,” he says. “Make your mark.”
All the while, Hillman looks around to see if the players are paying attention — if they’re hearing what these Royals greats are saying. And then it happens: When the ceremony ends, nobody’s around to pick up the chairs. This is just what Hillman wants.
“Men,” he says, “pick up your own chairs and put them away.”
He watches them closely — it’s a Hillman test. He wants to see if any players are rolling their eyes, if any are grumbling, if any feel too important to pick up his own chair. This is a Trey Hillman moment, a small opportunity to remind everyone involved that the Royals are going to be a working-class team, a lunch-bucket kind of a team, a nobody’s-too-big-to-bunt-or-move-over-the-runner kind of team. The players pick up their chairs, and Hillman smiles. This is exactly the kind of team he wants.
“Nobody,” Hillman says, “is bigger than anyone else on this team.”
In other words, it was lucky that no one showed up to collect those chairs.
Except it wasn’t lucky at all: Before the ceremony, Hillman had asked those guys who put out the chairs to “please disappear” after the ceremony.
prised some people.
Maybe it should not have surprised anyone.
“It’s really not out of the box if you think about it,” Moore says. “Here’s a guy who was a manager in the minor leagues. He’s worked in a major-league front office. He went to Japan and won in a very different culture. It would be hard to find anyone more prepared and more qualified to be a major-league manager.”
Does he remind you of anyone?
Moore smiles. “He’s got some Bobby Cox in him,” Moore says.
And now, he looks out on the field and sees Hillman lecturing his players.
“Look at this,” he says to Royals special assistant Louie Medina, and he points out on the field. Moore does not know exactly why Hillman is dressing down those players. He assumes it is about some awful base running early in the spring-training game. But at this moment, he doesn’t really care what it’s about. Over the next couple of days, players and fans will question whether Hillman should have publicly berated his players. Moore will never have those second thoughts.
“Look at this guy,” Moore says. “He has a chance to be really special.”
02|22|08
Players are fielding bunts in the rain, and Trey Hillman is kneeling behind the pitcher, watching it all happen, and he’s getting angrier by the raindrop. The drill isn’t going well. Hillman believes in his gut that this Royals team will have to bunt better than other teams and field the bunt better than other teams. And right now, he’s not seeing it.
For instance: Angel Berroa bunts, and catcher John Buck shouts, “Three!” The pitcher throws the ball to third base way too late to get the runner. It’s a high school error.
Hillman seethes.
“We’re going to have to do that drill again,” he says later in the day. “And again.”
Every manager talks about baseball fundamentals, but they are the lifeblood of Trey Hillman’s feelings about baseball. He may or may not be engaged by a conversation about Ryan Howard’s home-run power or which pitcher has the best stuff in the American League. But if you start talking about how a team should play the double steal with two outs, he will talk to you for hours about that.
“Look, I like the three-run home run as much as anyone,” he says. “But I’m looking at our team, and let’s be realistic here: How many three-run home runs do you think we’re going to hit? We will hit some, sure, we’ve got quite a few guys on this team with the potential to do it. But are we going to hit as many home runs as the Tigers or the Indians or the Red Sox or the Yankees?
“We have to be better at some things than they are. That’s how you win. It’s really not all that complicated. You have to be better in some way than the other team. You have to find a way to score more runs than they do. For us, I want us to be better than any team in baseball at getting the bunt down, moving runners over, playing situational defense. The more pressure we can put on another team, the better chance we have.”
02|20|08
Trey Hillman is reliving his mistake. The day before, he had shouted at some players for going the wrong way, and then he sent them to the wrong field. It was a momentary lapse, a harmless mistake, and everyone has had a good laugh about it. But Hillman is still kind of mad at himself about it. “I’m an idiot,” he says. “I had to tell all those guys, ‘Don’t listen to me, OK?’ ”
He’s joking. And he’s also not joking. He can’t really let go.
“I just need to get out of the way,” he says a few minutes later. He’s joking again. And not. Everyone has marveled at how at ease Hillman has looked. After all, while Hillman has done many things in baseball, he has never managed in the major leagues. He has never coached in the major leagues. He has never played in the major leagues.
“I’m in awe of the game,” he says. “But I’m not in awe, if you know what I mean. I’ve prepared for a long time to be in this position.”
But looks can be deceiving. Hillman tells a story. When he first became a minor-league manager — that was for the Oneonta Yankees — he was a monster. He tore into his players, drove them hard, and they won for him. They finished in first place. The problem was Hillman was not really getting through. And Hillman did not like what he had become. So he changed.
A few years later, he went to manage in Japan. He tried to make things easier for the players — he cleaned up their locker room as mentioned, he shortened their workouts, he tried to joke with them and take some pressure off them. The team played better. The problem was Hillman was not really getting through. The Japanese players wanted a manager who would work them, challenge them, inspire them. So he changed, and he mixed in a little extra toughness, and they won the Japan Series.
So what’s the moral of the story? Hillman will be whatever the situation demands. That’s his gift. He gives himself entirely to the moment, to the team, to the need.
“Trey Hillman doesn’t matter,” Trey Hillman says, uncomfortably speaking in the third person. “Trey Hillman is only as good as those players and this organization. Believe me, I don’t think I’m any smarter than anyone else. I’m just trying to develop relationships and help our team play its best baseball.”
Then he shrugs and, without warning, goes back to his mistake.
“You know something?” he asks. “I can’t believe I sent those guys to the wrong field. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
03|06|08
Hillman goes over to the reporters, and he knows what they’re going to ask. He has to know. He has just berated his players for 15 minutes in full view, in front of a big crowd that was filing out of the stadium. He then spent 10 minutes talking to team veteran Mark Grudzielanek, apparently about the lecture.
He knows what the reporters are going to ask … and he knows that he’s not going to tell them anything. “If I’d wanted you to know (what it was about), I’d have invited you guys over there,” he says. Someone might have said: “Well, you sort of did invite us over by having it right on the field where we all could see it.”
But the conversation goes no further. When another question comes up about it, he grumbles, “Done.” And he refuses to answer anything more about it.
His players, on the other hand, will have plenty to say about it. Some of them think this is a Mickey Mouse thing to have that conversation in front of everyone. It isn’t very professional. Commentators would have plenty to say about it, too. Some think it’s great; others think stuff like that should be handled in private. It’s a silly controversy, but hey, spring training is all about silly controversies.
The interesting question is: Did Hillman want to create a controversy? He doesn’t often make rash moves — he’s a planner. He must have wanted to make an impact by gathering all his players right after the game, with everyone watching, and telling them plainly that he will not stand for base-running blunders, will not tolerate a lack of effort, this gets to that respect-for-the-game creed that is at the heart of everything Trey Hillman believes.
And yet, as soon as the lecture ends, he clearly does not want to talk about it.
“We’re still learning about Trey,” one member of the Royals organization says. “I thought getting after the players was great. I thought he got their attention. But is it a one-time thing? Is it something he will do all the time? How will he handle bad times during the season? I don’t think we will know until we get there. In many ways, Trey is still a mystery man.”
02|20|08
Trey Hillman is talking with his family through his computer screen. Video conferencing kept him sane in Japan, and it keeps him going now. Every morning, through the power of Skype, they meet. Trey’s wife, Marie, son T.J. and daughter Brianna are dressed and ready for the 7 a.m. get-together. Brianna has her hair up. T.J.’s hair is not quite school ready.
“You need to comb your hair, son,” Trey says.
“Yes, sir,” T.J. says.
At some point, George Brett walks into the office, and Trey introduces him over the computer screen to the family (“I want to introduce you to a Hall of Famer, T.J.,” Hillman says). At another point, Trey goes around and asks each of the three to fill him in on what happened since they last talked. Hillman says he often feels guilty about what he’s missed.
The conversation stops and starts, as long-distance conversations tend to do when someone is away from the family. After 15 minutes, they hang up.
“Did you see the board I put outside?” Hillman asks. “It’s a place where everyone can put photos of their wives, their children, their girlfriends, their dogs, whatever. I saw that John Buck put up the ultrasound picture of his unborn twins.
“I want a family atmosphere here. I want people to know each others’ kids and wives. It’s a long season. We’re going to be in this thing together for a long time. I want …”
He stops there. Hillman wants a lot of things. Too many things to list. There’s no telling yet how successful Trey Hillman will be, but there’s no doubting that he will not stop. He cannot stop. He excuses himself to take his first of two or three showers for the day (he takes a second shower after the daily workout, sometimes a third after going to see the minor-leaguers play). But before he goes he says, “Hey, I have a song I want you to hear.” He goes to his computer and presses a few buttons.
“We’re going to become a better baseball team today,” he announces, and he goes to the shower leaving behind the soulful voice of Aretha Franklin singing “Respect” on a loop, again and again and again.