Managers come and go, but Cats’ winning tradition stays

Somehow, the adage about "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" just doesn’t seem to apply to the Fort Worth Cats.

Keep your fingers crossed, but the Cats might well be on their way to a fourth consecutive league championship.

What makes that especially unique is that they will have done it with three different managers.

Find that one in the record books.

Doesn’t seem to matter who’s running the ship, the Cats just keep winning. They clinched the American Association South’s first-half title last week, guaranteeing them a spot in the league playoffs.

Crusty Wayne Terwilliger won the revived Cats’ first championship in 2005, then turned the reins over to his pitching coach, Stan Hough, and moved over to the first-base coaching box, where Twig still holds court.

Hough won championships in 2006 and 2007, then lost his job to Chad Tredaway. And all Tredaway, a four-time league manager of the year, has done is run away with the league’s first-half South Division title.

How do they keep doing it?

My best guess is that it’s the Kincaid’s Hamburgers concession, but perhaps it goes deeper than that.

The most logical answer is that somehow they get the best players, and if that sounds too simple, maybe it is.

"We’re fortunate that we’re in a big town, a city with its own character and a great baseball town that’s in love with the Fort Worth Cats," team owner Carl Bell said. "Players want to play in Fort Worth, and that’s a part of it.

"It’s having the right chemistry and leadership and trying to do the right things. At the end of the day, it’s that old adage about winning being contagious. We’ve built a spirit of winning, of wanting to excel."

Bell is right. It’s a combination of things, with Fort Worth at the center of it all. It is the Kincaid’s burgers, another Fort Worth institution, but it’s also the history and heritage that the Cats have built upon, something other teams in the league just don’t have.

It’s the Cats’ ties with Bobby Bragan and the old Dodgers, many of whom come back time and time again for special team promotions.

"It’ a great environment to play in," said Tredaway, who also doubles as the team’s player personnel director. "Players enjoy coming to the ballpark and want to play here. It has energy."

Opposing players come through LaGrave Field and see the Hall of Fame signs listing all the greats who played at (old) LaGrave Field at the same site. They see the dugout suites that have been created from the original dugouts built in 1926. They watch the league’s best mascot, Dodger, frolic with a crowd that’s always into the game.

They see Terwilliger, the 83-year-old who once roomed with Babe Ruth. They see Bragan, or Duke Snider, or Maury Wills, or some other former Dodgers great, and they think about what it would like to be part of an organization like the Cats.

"Guys who come through and play here, they know what’s going on," Tredaway said. "We want to take care of these guys and at the same time, we want them to take care of us and represent us."

Whatever the Cats are doing, they should try to bottle it and put it on the market. I know a team just to the east of Fort Worth that would pay a pretty penny for the same kind of sustained year-in, year-out success.

Marty Scott sighting

Former Rangers minor league director Marty Scott, who would later become the Cats’ interim manager and then club president in 2002-03, emerged from the Mets’ recent shake-up as that organization’s new Triple A manager in New Orleans.

When the Mets fired Willie Randolph and named Jerry Manuel as interim manager, they also promoted Zephyrs manager Ken Oberkfell to the big leagues as the team’s new third-base coach.

That opened the door for the Mets to bring Scott in as New Orleans’ new skipper. Marty spent a decade as the Rangers’ director of player development and seven years as a manager in the independent leagues, most of those in St. Paul, where he had the Saints in the playoffs five times.

Scott was also manager of Team USA in 2003 and manager of the Mets’ Gulf Coast League rookie team when they named him to replace Oberkfell in New Orleans.

Tootin’ the horn

Somebody out there thought this Rangers team might score a few runs this season.

Here’s an excerpt from a spring training column that ran in this newspaper back on Feb. 20:

"Mark my words, this team will be better offensively than you think. Different from Rangers’ teams of the past, yes. But I’m convinced it will score runs. Somewhere between 850 and 900 is my prediction.

"And that, friends, will put the Rangers close to the top three in the American League."

So what are the Rangers doing? They began the weekend leading the majors with 437 runs and are on pace to score 885 for the season.

Modesty prevents me from identifying the "genius" who could see this coming way back in February.

Orphan recovering

C.D. Sealy, 86, quarterback of the 1940 state semifinalist Masonic Home Mighty Mites and one of the featured characters in Jim Dent’s book Twelve Mighty Orphans, is recovering from cancer surgery at Harris Methodist Hospital.

Sealy, whose ’40 Mites lost to Amarillo in the state semis 14-7, had colon cancer surgery June 16, and the prognosis is good for a full recovery.

"Wheatie is one of the greatest men I’ve ever met, and one of the most colorful characters of all the great Mighty Mites teams," said Dent, who has moved back to Texas and was in Fort Worth last week for a final book signing before the paperback edition is released. "He is also a very tough bird. I just bet that he recovers and that he will be around to see the movie."

'Gone fishing’

Just a quick tip of the camo cap to longtime friend and colleague Bob Hood, until last week the only remaining survivor in the S-T sports department with more years here than yours truly.

Hood practically grew up at this newspaper, signing on as an 18-year-old sportswriter 46 years ago. And he’d thrown a daily paper route for the seven years before that.

In 1968, Hood moved to the outdoors beat, and he’s spent the last four decades regaling his readers with some of the finest hunting and fishing tales to be had anywhere.

Times changed, owners came and went, but Hood was a constant until a permanent "Gone Fishing" sign went up at his post last week.

Bet on this: He’ll still catch all the big ones, too.

That’s OK. He’s earned that right.

Lesson learned

Don’t know if you caught the obit on Hazel Harvey Peace two weeks ago, but it wouldn’t be complete without pointing out that she was Robert Hughes’ boss, the vice principal, when he first started teaching and coaching at I.M. Terrell all those many years ago.

Our Trae Thompson was working on Hughes’ retirement piece not so long ago, and phoned Ms. Peace to talk about her former coach.

Thompson was wrapping up the interview and, like any good reporter, said he just needed to double-check a few details, like the spelling of her name, where she lived and her age.

That was one step too far.

Ms. Peace’s stern look, one just like she’d probably bestowed on many of her students over the years, pierced right through the phone line.

"Didn’t your parents teach you better?" she asked. "You ought to have better manners and show respect."

Trae profusely apologized on the spot, and Ms. Peace forgave him his misstep.

Needless to say, the story ran without her age being mentioned.