Simmons’ time as GM not a fond memory
PITTSBURGH – History will always look kindly on Ted Simmons as a player. The switch-hitting catcher spent 21 seasons in the major leagues from 1968-88, hitting .285 with 2,482 hits, 248 home runs and eight All-Star Game selections.
History will not look kindly on Simmons when it comes to his 16-month stint as the Pirates general manager in 1992-93.
The Pirates won the National East in Simmons’ first season. In the second, they started a string of what has become 17 consecutive losing seasons, the longest such streak in major North American professional sports history.
It was on Simmons’ watch that the core of three straight division title teams was decimated. He allowed MVP Barry Bonds and Cy Young Award winner Doug Drabek to leave as free agents and traded 20-game winner John Smiley and Gold Glove second baseman Jose Lind.
“It wasn’t fun,” Simmons, now San Diego’s bench coach, recalled during the Padres’ three-game series with the Pirates that ends this afternoon at PNC Park.
Simmons had no choice. He was serving as the St. Louis Cardinals farm director when then-Pirates president Mark Sauer tabbed him to replaced Larry Doughty and instructed him to cut the payroll.
“It was something we had to do as a franchise,” Simmons said. “We were losing money, lots of money. We couldn’t afford to have one of the highest payrolls in baseball. We would have gone bankrupt. The Pirates would have had to leave Pittsburgh. I’m not trying to be dramatic. That was the situation, straight up.”
Simmons considered trading Bonds and Drabek prior to the 1992 season in order to acquire young players to rebuild around. Ultimately, ownership decided to keep the pair and make one more run at the World Series after losing in the NLCS in 1990 and 1991.
The Pirates lost again in the 1992 NLCS, though, suffering one of the most excruciating defeats in baseball history as the Braves scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to pull out a 3-2 victory in the decisive Game 7 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The loss haunts Pirates’ fans to this day and many have to look away from the screen whenever the clip of Francisco Cabrera driving in Sid Bream with the winning run is replayed on television.
As Andy Van Slyke, the Pirates’ Gold Glove-winning center fielder on those championship clubs, put it, “Watching that play is like watching your best friend die.”
Simmons, though, has no regrets about playing the role of hatchet man. However, the stress of the job led to him suffering a heart attack in June 1993, which caused him to “resign,” though, in actuality, he was pushed out the door by Sauer.
“The job nearly killed me but I did what I had to do,” Simmons said. “I honestly believe the Pirates would have moved otherwise and that would have been sad. If the Pirates had left Pittsburgh for, say Tampa Bay, the history of this franchise with great names like Wagner and Kiner and Clemente and Stargell would not have been preserved in Florida. The Pirates would have been a lost piece of baseball history.”
That would have been sad, even sadder than the type of history the Pirates have made since Simmons left town.
Herald-Standard sports correspondent John Perrotto is editor-in-chief of BaseballProspectus.com.