Jerry Manuel remains one of the most interesting men in baseball.
The last time Manuel buttoned up a team jersey was in March 2023, as manager Mark DeRosa’s bench coach for Team USA during the World Baseball Classic.
Come September, Manuel has another ballpark date that will require him to be back in uniform. The recently announced three-inning New York Mets Alumni Classic Game set for Sept. 13 is bringing back to Citi Field in Flushing, Queens, 40-plus former players and managers. Manuel is one of the four former club skippers scheduled to participate in the event.
This fall’s return to the Mets’ home stadium is Manuel’s first since October 2010, when after three seasons leading the club, management chose not to renew his contract. During a conversation with The Epoch Times, Manuel sounds both happy and a bit unsettled on returning to the site of his last managerial job.
“It’s exciting. I’m looking forward to it,” says Manuel, who was the Mets’ bench coach in June 2008 while the club was on a West Coast swing and replaced popular manager Willie Randolph. “Getting to see a lot of people that I haven’t been around in a while will be rewarding. What I remember most about my years there [Queens] was that I was in front of audiences that really understood baseball, as compared to other places I’ve been in the big leagues.”
With all the MLB stops prior to first joining the Mets coaching staff in 2005, and his other work in the game, there’s a part of Manuel’s baseball heart that remains in New York City. Being with the World Series Champions Florida Marlins in 1997, as manager Jim Leyland’s bench coach, doesn’t come up in Manuel’s reminiscing.
Getting selected as the top draft pick by the Detroit Tigers in 1972, too, is forgotten. The years of coaching for the defunct Montreal Expos is skipped over. Manuel appears to be in the here-and-now kind of person.
Between his upcoming ‘Back to the Future’ date in Queens, Manuel is eager to speak about his involvement with MLB Develops.
Youth baseball is what motivates Manuel’s baseball juices today. Seeing himself as a coach/mentor to those signed up with MLB’s Dream Series is what has the former bench boss circling his calendar for January. This is when Manuel is joined by elite athletes, mainly pitchers and catchers, in Vero Beach, Florida, during the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend.
Working with mainly African American players, Manuel hopes to inspire their baseball skills and offer a more in-depth understanding of the holiday. As of 2024, six percent of MLB players were black.
“The Dream Series is an opportunity at the beginning of the year to get together with the kids and talk about the new baseball season. I’m proud to be part of this project since its infancy. This is a breakthrough series that leads to the Hank Aaron Invitational, and others sponsored by MLB. Working with the kids keeps me young,” said Manuel, who will be joined by former managers Terry Collins, Bobby Valentine, and Randolph for the Mets Alumni Classic.
Manuel, who commutes from his home in Sacramento, California, for MLB assignments, managed future Hall of Famers Harold Baines and Frank Thomas during his six seasons in the White Sox dugout. He has watched the very best on the field and in the batter’s box. Carlos Beltran is one of the four outfielders scheduled for Valentine’s and Randolph’s alumni roster. The former nine-time all-star in recent years has been strongly considered for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Beltran, when learning of his participation in the Mets Alumni Game, is a subject Manuel is quick to jump on.
“He’s a Hall of Famer,” Manuel declares. “When the Mets signed him, I made it a point to build a relationship with Carlos. I remember him as one of the best players in the game. Plus, Carlos is a tremendous person behind the player.”
Of the 96 MLB Games Manuel played for Detroit, Montreal, and San Diego Padres, the season of 1976 comes up in his going down memory lane of his lengthy baseball life. One name is special, perhaps even ahead of those who highlighted White Sox and Mets games during Manuel’s managing days.
For 54 games during the summer of 1976, Manuel and Mark “the Bird” Fidrych were teammates. Fidrych, who would go on to be the American League Rookie of the Year that season, is best remembered not for the 19 victories of his MLB freshman season, but for talking to the ball before throwing it to batters.
“That was a tremendous summer,” Manuel, 71, recalls. “He [Fidrych] was so nervous while on the pitching mound. When he starting talking to the ball, and walking in circles, the fans, everyone in the ballpark got caught up in it. That’s what ultimately made Mark comfortable in-between pitches. To get to see him grow up and treat everyone the same, just as he did in the minors, was so special. I miss Mark.”
From the time he hung up his spikes in 1986 as a player to working the World Baseball Classic in Miami’s LoanDepot Park’s dugout, for Manuel, returning to Queens for the Mets’ Alumni Classic appears to be a needed career closure.
Seeing Randolph again, returning to the scene of his last managerial post, and reacquainting himself with people who still remain important to him but are so very far away, Manuel’s homecoming to Citi Field could end up being the topic of the day on Sept. 13.
