It is getting on to the end of the baseball season, to autumn in the winter of Frank Robinson's career, and the manager of the Washington Nationals wants to know: Tonight, when he sits in the dugout at Shea Stadium and guides his last-place team against the playoff-bound New York Mets, is he beginning the final 10 games of his career?
"I thought at least they would say, 'Frank, let's sit down and talk,' " Robinson said this week.
Yet the men who run the Nationals — President Stan Kasten and General Manager Jim Bowden — have not discussed Robinson's future with him in detail. That, in part, leads to a growing feeling around the club that the 71-year-old Hall of Famer won't be back next season, that he will be dismissed soon after this season ends on Oct. 1 — if not told before then — and that the club's significant rebuilding process will continue under someone new.
Kasten, who took over as the club's president when Major League Baseball sold the Nationals to the family of real estate mogul Theodore Lerner, consistently has said that the decision is the general manager's. Bowden didn't return phone calls or e-mail messages yesterday, and has not publicly addressed Robinson's status over the course of the summer. The manager, in his fifth year at the helm of a franchise that is headed to its third consecutive last-place finish in the National League East, is working on a one-year, $650,000 contract.
Robinson's status is a topic in the Nationals' clubhouse more than occasionally. As one prominent player said: "We're wondering. Who coaches this team is a big deal — not just the manager, but the whole coaching staff. It's not a distraction, but we'd like to know."
For now, though, the players and coaches and Robinson himself wait. During a 30-minute interview in his tiny office on Wednesday — a framed jersey commemorating his 1,000th victory as a manager hanging only a few feet from a gnarly scrap of fly paper — Robinson said his situation had changed from the time when MLB owned the club. Then, Robinson said, he felt comfortable calling Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig in the offseason to discuss his future.
"If I wanted to come back, I had a good feeling that I would be able to," he said. "But here, with ownership here now, and a new group here, new management up there and whatever, the thing that is different from that situation is that they usually tell you before the season's over — talk to you about your future, about whether they want you to come back or not. . . .
"I think I have a feel for these things, that in time these things will be taken care of at the right time and the proper time. But what is a little different here — and I'm a little taken aback by it a little bit — is that lack of communication to me about the possibility of when they will sit down with me. That's the only thing."
Robinson is well aware that his reputation as a manager is less than sterling, though he defends both his ability and his commitment. Still, sources inside and outside the organization question, to varying degrees, his strategic acumen, his use of the pitching staff, his work ethic and his communication with his players. Daryle Ward, a role player whom the Nationals traded to Atlanta last month, told reporters after his departure, "With Frank Robinson, you never know where he's at or what he's thinking."
When 17 percent of 470 players surveyed in a Sports Illustrated poll earlier in the summer named Robinson as the majors' worst manager — a higher percentage than any other — Robinson dismissed it, saying, "I know better." But one front office member — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding Robinson's future — said the results were telling, adding, "It would have been more if his own players could have voted for him."
Robinson, though, is unapologetic, and he bristles at suggestions that he doesn't work hard. As he said, "I know that this thing is not going to go for another 10 years." But he would like a three-year deal so he could see the current rebuilding process through. He admits that the season, at times, wore on him. Not the baseball, but the off-field issues, dealing with players' personal lives and with the front office.
"I can't sit here at this time and say [retiring] didn't cross my mind a couple of times," he said. But he said that his stance all year — that he wants badly to return — hasn't changed.
"Not at all," he said. "In fact, I'm probably more committed to wanting to do it again because I still feel very good, and this ballclub has taken a different shape as the season's gone along. I like a lot of what we have here right now, and I think — with the right mix next year, if you want to cut back or go young or whatever — it could still be a good year."
Even if he's not rehired as the manager, Robinson's experience over a half-century in the game still is valued in some corners of the organization. Earlier this summer, Bowden said, "He has a knowledge of the game, an ability to dissect the game to such detail that very few people ever will be able to in this game."
That, then, would appear to leave open the possibility that Robinson could move into a front office job should he not return as manager. But Bowden already has what appears to be a full staff of assistants and department heads: Bob Boone as the director of player personnel, Tony Siegle as the assistant general manager, Mike Rizzo as vice president of baseball operations, Jose Rijo as a special assistant and Dana Brown as the amateur scouting director. Robinson said he would only want a front office job if he had "real authority, decision-making power."
And so, with the Nationals off on their final road trip of the season, Robinson waits. He said he is not nervous about the outcome — "I'm beyond that," he said — but there are deep concerns. If next week's series against Philadelphia and the Mets at RFK Stadium are to be his last in a uniform, he would like to know so he could, in an odd way, savor it.
"If it's time to go, at least I want to be able to say goodbye," he said. "I would like to be able to say, to the fans, goodbye — and thanks."
And there is the matter of his age. He doesn't see himself as a typical septuagenarian, but he worries that baseball is what keeps him young. "There's no doubt about it," he said.
"I just know if I'm not active, my health is going to go pfffff ," he said, making a downward motion with his great right hand. "My body is used to being active. And then, all of a sudden, if it's not . . . close to the pace that I'm used to going at, certain parts of your body — and I'm serious — it's going to shut down. And I'm going to start acting like somebody my age."
That, he does not want. But how will it end, and when? In a week? In a year? In two? He said he doesn't know. So he will wait for a meeting with Bowden and Kasten and perhaps even Mark Lerner, the owner's son.
"It can end gracefully, depending on how the two sides would take it," Robinson said. "I don't see any reason why it couldn't and shouldn't end gracefully."
