Remembering Dallas Green

Dallas Green, who ranks with Mike Schmidt, Richie Ashburn and Steve Carlton as towering figures in Phillies history, died Wednesday at 82.
When the story broke, I quickly scrambled to find the one photo I recalled taking of him. Standing at attention in a club box while serving as a "senior advisror," he's all business while eyeing the action at Citizens Bank Park.
That's how Phillies fans will remember him: the no-nonsense guy whose strong disclipine helped turn a previously underachieving Phillies club into the franchise's first ever Worlds Champs in 1980.

It was a club he not only managed, but helped to build. The journeyman pitcher who spent most of his career as a Phillie became the club's farm system director under GM Paul Owens in the early 1970s. During those years, players such as Schmidt, Greg Luzinski, Larry Bowa, Bob Boone and Larry Christensen were drafted and developed. Joined by Steve Carlton and other trade aquisitions such as Tug McGraw and Garry Maddox, the Phils had a talented core.
Three straight division titles went unfulfilled, as the club was tripped up in NLCS each time, first by the Reds and then, the Dodgers.

Green's tough love snapped the team to attention -- and while several established stars were unhappy with the new sheriff, no one could deny the results.

First, they got by the Astros, in a classic five-game playoff. It took six games to hold off the Royals before the Phils had their title -- ending 97 years of "phutility."

Just a year later, he was off to Chicago as the Cubs GM. And again, he helped build a division winner -- aided by a trade sending then-rookie Ryne Sandberg along with Larry Bowa to Wrigley for the veteran Ivan De Jesus. Later, he managed but the Yankees and Mets, with unsatisfying results.

But he was a Phillie at heart, and when GM Ed Wade asked him to come back to the organization in 1998, Dallas said yes. Scouting for the organization he grew up rooting and then playing for brought him full circle.

His life wasn't all balls and strikes -- the Green family was in the news in the winter of 2011, when his nine-year-old granndaughter Christina was one of the victims gunned down by the madman who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. From that point on, Dallas, who considered his baseball work to be therapy, became an advocate for rational gun control.

A 20 game winner in his playing days -- of course, he joked that it took him five years to reach that total -- Dallas Green only managed the Phils for two years and two months. Enough time to make history that's fondly remembered nearly four decades later.