The Bird Tapes Interview: Johnny Oates

He had a good thing going as the Orioles' manager in the 1990s but was fired anyway because, as he tells it in an interview recorded in 2000, owner Peter Angelos simply didn't like him.

In the first years that Peter Angelos owned the Orioles, he burned through a series of managers like a wildfire in the woods, moving from Johnny Oates to Phil Regan to Davey Johnson to Ray Miller to Mike Hargrove — all between 1994 and 2000.

But did Angelos even need to make one change, let alone enough that nearly a full hand of fingers was needed to count them?

It’s a reasonable question because Oates, who had the job when Angelos became the owner, was a winning manager uniquely suited to holding the job in Baltimore.

He was steeped in the Oriole Way, having been drafted by the club in 1967 and mentored in the minors by Cal Ripken Sr. and other organizational icons. Later, Oates produced a winning record in six of the eight full seasons he managed in the major leagues, winning three division titles along the way.

That’s a solid record. Oates made a lot of sense as a candidate for a long run as the Orioles’ manager. But Angelos fired him after three-plus seasons on the job.

Shortly thereafter, the Sporting News named him Manager of the Year in the American League.

“Peter just didn’t care for me,” Oates told me, referencing Angelos, in an interview for my book on Orioles history.

At the outset of our conversation, recorded in 2000 and available below to paid Bird Tapes subscribers, Oates chronicled his journey through the club’s minor league system alongside Terry Crowley, Rich Coggins, Bobby Grich and Don Baylor — a generation of prospects that eventually produced a ton in Baltimore. Oates’ chance in Baltimore ended due to a lack of offense (he hit only 14 home runs over 11 seasons in the majors as a backup catcher for the Orioles and four other teams) but when he became a manager after he retired, he showed an aptitude for the job. The Orioles brought him back into the organization in 1988 as the manager of their Triple A affiliate in Rochester. Three years later, he became the manager in Baltimore at age 45 when Frank Robinson was fired 37 games into the 1991 season. The Orioles had won just 13 of those 37 games.

A legendary generation of managers preceded Oates in the game. Earl Weaver, Billy Martin and Dick Williams were combative little generals, headstrong, opinionated, unafraid of imposing hard-edged discipline. Martin literally fought with several of his players over the years. The Orioles of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s respected Weaver’s tactical brilliance but could barely stand him.

Oates came along when free agency was fundamentally changing the player-manager vibe. Players were making a lot more money and no longer wanted to be lectured. A sensitive streak had become almost a necessity if you wanted to be a major league manager. Oates, a thoughtful and deeply religious Virginia Tech grad from outside Richmond, communicated well with the new generation. Orioles GM Roland Hemond said another team might well have poached him if the Orioles hadn’t promoted him.

He inherited a challenging set of circumstances in Baltimore in 1991. Since their World Series victory in 1983, the Orioles had become also-rans, posting just a .460 winning percentage over seven-plus seasons. They’d lost 108 games in 1988 and finished 1991 with 95 losses. When Camden Yards opened in 1992, the Orioles desperately wanted to field a better team to match their dazzling, new home.

In his first full year as a major league manager, Oates helped facilitate a turnaround. He talked an old teammate, Rick Sutcliffe, into coming to Baltimore and anchoring the pitching staff. He turned loose Brady Anderson, who’d been a fourth outfielder, and Anderson soared as a leadoff hitter and everyday center fielder. A year after losing 95 games, the Orioles won 89 in 1992. A year later, they won 85. They didn’t make the playoffs, but they were headed in the right direection.

The next year, with Angelos now in control of the team, the Orioles had a 63-49 record and were in the hunt for a wild card playoff berth when a labor stoppage ended the season. The .460 team Oates had inherited had played .543 ball under him in the two-plus seasons since Camden Yards opened.

That’s pretty good. But Oates was fired anyway after the season and replaced by Regan in 1995.

“I was not Peter’s type person,” Oates told me.

Our interview took place in the visitors’ clubhouse at Camden Yards. Oates was in town as the manager of the Texas Rangers, a job he’d held for six years, almost from the day the Orioles fired him. In Texas, Oates had continued to demonstrate that he could put a winner on the field. The Rangers had won three division titles with him as their manager, appearing in the postseason for the first time.

Getting fired by his beloved Orioles was “the best thing that ever happened to me,” Oates said, explaining that he’d felt so much stress managing in Baltimore, especially under Angelos, that he’d forsaken his priorities in life.

“I’d become obsessed with being a big league manager, to the point of losing my wife and children,” Oates said. “Thankfully, I got them back and I’ve (still) got baseball (as the manager in Texas) but it doesn’t have a grip on me like it did and I thank Peter Angelos for that.”

In the interview — again, available below to paid Bird Tapes subscribers — Oates didn’t hesitate to chronicle just how difficult it was to work for Angelos. He almost quit after the 1992 season when he was forced to fire Ripken Sr., who’d been his third base coach. It hurt his feelings terribly when Angelos told a Washington Post reporter in 1993 that Oates wasn’t a great leader of men. And it hurt even more, he said, when Angelos sent him a note of apology with his name misspelled — Johnnie Oats.

In Oates’ version of the story, he felt so unsupported by Angelos that he asked for a meeting shortly before the work stoppage that ended the 1994 season and told the owner either to back him publicly or fire him. According to Oates, Angelos said he wasn’t going to fire Oates. But when it did happen, Hemond was the one who called and delivered the news, according to Oates.

Oates, who sadly died in 2004 from an aggressive form of brain cancer, admitted that the hurt he’d felt over being fired six years earlier had been eased “to an extent” by the fact that Angelos had churned through a series of other managers since Oates’ departure. Only one, Davey Johnson, had posted a winning record.

“I just hope (the others) got something positive out of (being fired), like I did,” Oates said.

Unmistakably, he was a man scorned, able to move on but unable to forget.