Throughout his 71 years, Jim Fregosi was known to be unsure of only one thing.
“I can’t figure out who the second best athlete from Serra High was,” he would say. “Either Barry Bonds or Tom Brady.”
Fregosi was No. 1, of course.
He could have played college football and basketball and, for a time, played in the same backcourt with Hot Rod Hundley in a men’s league.
Instead, he jumped into baseball with both feet, plus heart and soul, and he never left it, right up until the day he suffered a stroke on a Caribbean cruise. He died early Friday morning.
There might be a record number of major league clubs who consider a commemorative uniform patch for Fregosi this year.
The Angels, certainly. The Braves, for whom he was their senior adviser, all-purpose scout, and loudest opinionator. The Phillies, whom Fregosi managed to the sixth game of the 1993 World Series, a crew that took on his XXL personality and added it to the bubbling stew it already had.
Any room with John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra, Darren Daulton, Mitch Williams, Larry Andersen, Dave Hollins and Curt Schilling needed a warden more than a manager. Instead, Fregosi sat there right with them at the card table, with cigarette in one hand and needle in the other, until someone said, “Play ball,” and it was time for the leader to lead.
But everyone in every room knew when Fregosi was there. He was the son of a South San Francisco bakery owner, and a great comic actor. His booming voice annexed every conversation, sometimes intimidating those he didn’t know, laughing with acceptance when someone fired back.
In Philadelphia they played “My Way” between innings when they showed a Fregosi montage on the video board, and every lyric fit him like a shortstop’s glove.
Fregosi was a big guy with swept-back hair, with a bridge player’s attention to detail. His eyes missed nothing. He lost more than he won in his four managing stops, but his people-instincts were always true.
There was a ex-pitcher and current Hall of Fame aspirant who had played for Fregosi and wanted him to manage his new club.
Fregosi heard about it, smiled and said, “You know why I’m a great manager? Because that guy actually thinks I like him.”
“He was the best manager I ever played for,” Bobby Grich said Friday. “He turned the Angels’ franchise around.”
Although Fregosi made six All-Star teams and was probably baseball’s best shortstop in the late ’60s, his first managing performance was more impressive.
He was a 36-year-old utility man in Pittsburgh who had never managed anything when Gene Autry hired him in mid-1978.
The Angels, avid samplers of the free-agent buffet, were sputtering. They went 62-54 the rest of that season, then won the AL West in 1979. Fregosi thus became the first Angels’ star and the first Angels’ manager to visit the postseason.
“He was one of the guys,” Grich said. “He would laugh with us before and after the games. We all knew him and respected him as a player. I grew up on Long Beach and when the Angels came to Anaheim, I watched every move he made. He was the player I wanted to be.”
Grich also winced through that ’78 season with a herniated disc. Fregosi ripped him afterward, calling him a “major disappointment.”
Grich was offended. Fregosi didn’t particularly care. Grich hit 30 home runs and 101 RBI, both career highs, in ’79.
“In a perverse way, maybe he deserved some credit for that,” Grich said.
“He was a man’s man,” said Dave Frost, who went 16-10 in ’79. “He played hard, lived hard. He figured out how to be friendly but not really your buddy, how to be the boss as well.”
Fregosi was fired in Toronto after winning seasons in ’99 and ’00. He never quit wanting to manage, but came to enjoy the scouting life, with his endless contacts and a constant audience.
Known eternally as the man for whom the Mets traded Nolan Ryan, Fregosi said it just proved how invaluable he was to the Angels.
He was back at the Big A for the 2002 World Series, and said he was impressed by David Eckstein. “Second best shortstop they’ve ever had here,” he said.
But the essential Fregosi story came in 1977, past his prime in Texas.
Randy Galloway of the Dallas Morning News had written that Fregosi bobbled “a routine ground ball” and caused the Rangers to lose.
Next day, Fregosi bellowed, “Galloway, come here!” and put on his fierce face.
“You must not know anything about baseball,” he rasped. “Don’t you know that no ball that’s ever been hit to me is routine?”
Nothing ever was.
Contact the writer: mwhicker@ocregister.com
