Confidant man

BALTIMORE — At some point during a game, Lee Mazzilli will ask the man he beat out to become manager of the Baltimore Orioles for advice.

That’s Sam Perlozzo’s job — to help his former rival.

Perlozzo is Mazzilli’s bench coach, which requires him to be closer to the manager than any other coach. He is the manager’s confidant.

The position requires a good measure of trust between two men — a potentially difficult situation, given the fact that one man beat the other out for a job.

So far it has not been a problem, according to both men, who have known each other since Perlozzo was a coach and Mazzilli a player for the New York Mets in 1987 and 1988.

“We are both grown men about the situation,” Perlozzo said. “Things always happen for a reason, and right now it is Lee’s ball club. I am going to help him as much as I can. I want him to take us to the World Series.

“It was difficult for me early on, but I know Lee. He uses me a lot, so I am able to contribute. Life goes on. We all have a job to do, and I want to be able to do my job to the best of my ability.”

Most managers are able to hire their own coaches, particularly their bench coach, but not Mazzilli. The terms of his deal with the Orioles required him to take the entire coaching staff of previous manager Mike Hargrove, who had Perlozzo, 53, as his bench coach for three seasons. Perlozzo also was a coach for Baltimore managers Ray Miller and Davey Johnson, who hired the Cumberland, Md., native in 1996.

“Sammy and I go back a long way, to the Mets,” the 49-year-old Mazzilli said. “We have a good relationship.

“Your bench coach is a guy that you use for your eyes and ears, for the things that you might not see and other things that may come up in the course of a game. He brings it to your attention. We bounce ideas off each other, and it works very well. It hasn’t been a problem at all for me. Sammy would have been part of my staff, anyway.”

The title of “bench coach” only has existed the past 20 years or so, although managers had coaching confidants long before that. The man who probably brought the title to the forefront was Don Zimmer, who has been a major league manager or coach the past 33 years, including eight as New York Yankees manager Joe Torre’s bench coach before he left at the end of last season after a falling out with owner George Steinbrenner. Zimmer since has taken a job as a baseball advisor with manager Lou Piniella and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (turning down the same job with Mazzilli, a fellow former Yankees coach).

The image of Zimmer sitting side-by-side with Torre was seen on national television every fall during the playoffs and World Series, and that image raised the profile of the position of bench coach.

“There have been guys sitting on the bench for a hundred years,” the 73-year-old Zimmer said. “They were there near the manager, talking with the manager, but they never put a title on it. Today they put a title for the guy who sits on the bench. They call him the bench coach.

“I had a great rapport with Joe. He was a good listener. You weren’t scared to say something to Joe during a tight ball game. If I would say to Joe, ’This is a good time to hit and run,’ it’s his team. He is the one that has to answer to the media when the game is over. I would have a suggestion, and I would pass it on to my manager, and he would do whatever he wants to do. I might have suggested that if this guy gets on, it might have been a good time for a pinch hitter. [The manager] may have something else on his mind. You just say things to alert him and suggest things and let them do what they want to do. That is what I did with Joe for eight years.

“No question, you have to build up a trust between the bench coach and the manager. You can’t be a bench coach and have something running through your mind that might help the team or the manager and not say it. If you are afraid to do that, you should get another job.”

Perlozzo hasn’t been afraid, but he has been cautious as he tries to figure out Mazzilli’s style of managing.

“We haven’t gotten to the point yet where I know what he is thinking and he knows what I am thinking,” he said. “He has asked me a lot of things during the course of a ball game. Sometime I hedge a little bit, and he will say, ’We talked about that.’ I said, ’Quite honestly, Lee, I’m still trying to figure out who the heck you are and your style and the way you want things done. I don’t want to lead you in a direction that I’m not sure is your direction. So I am trying to find out about you. I’m going to throw some things out there eventually that I know will be within your style.’ But it’s getting closer every day.”

Zimmer knows both men, and he is convinced the two will make a successful team.

“It will work,” he said. “It helped a lot that Maz and Sam knew each other from their days with the Mets. It wasn’t a case of two guys who interviewed for the same job who didn’t know each other or didn’t already have a relationship. Plus, I know Sam, and he’s a good man. He’s a good baseball man.”

Don’t expect to see a replay of Torre and Zimmer, though.

“They didn’t move in the dugout,” Perlozzo said. “Those two guys, I don’t think they ever moved the entire game.

“Lee moves around a little bit. Grover never moved anywhere. I sat next to Grover, had my seat, and we never moved. I knew he was going to be there, and I knew I had to be right there, and the pitching coach was on the other side. The constant in the dugout was [pitching coach Mark] Wiley, Grover and myself, all sitting together. Lee gets up and moves around. Whenever he gets in a situation where he wants to talk about it, he says, ’Sam,’ and I go over.”

And he gives the man who got the job he wanted his best advice on how to keep that job — how to win.