"I swear a lot, and I throw things, I bust things," Manuel said, "whether you believe that or not. I do. People don't see that. But life is good, and I think that my experience in the game, the places I've been and the things I've did, it definitely gives me an outlook and a positive attitude on life."
You can dismiss Manuel today, and say he was along for the wonderful, amazing ride this season, that any goat could have won a division with Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard and Chase Utley and the like on his lineup card every day. And you would be so, so wrong.
Pro sports do not reward slackers, or front-runners, or poseurs, and they chew up those who don't pay their dues - in the batting cage, on the chipping range, running "17" drills on the basketball court or "nutcracker" drills on the football field. And baseball is especially cruel.
That's why, along with cheering Rollins and Utley, Howard and Brett Myers, there should be cheers today for Charlie Manuel, a lifer, whose last job outside the game was four decades ago, while he played in the minors, pushing 90- and 120-pound columns of carpet up and down James Lees' carpet factory in Glasgow, Va., to stay in shape during the winter.
This is a guy who's managed with a colostomy bag under his jersey, and come back from a heart attack and bypass surgery, and cancer, to baseball, always baseball, who's applied the lessons of a life lived both here and abroad, who learned how to motivate from tough guys like Billy Martin and a fellow named Hirooka - who managed the Yakult Swallows in Japan - while also learning patience from the likes of Walter Alston and Yukio Nishimoto of the Kintetsu Buffaloes.
