Looking Beyond The Bottom Line

If you have a long career, then ultimately, you are your statistics. If you play 14 seasons with a .270 batting average, then you are a competent but middle-of-the-pack big league hitter. Extenuating circumstances, like a spacious home ballpark, might improve your reputation slightly. But if you bat 8,000 times, your numbers adequately define your ability.

Frank Robinson is the managerial equivalent of just such a hitter. He has managed 2,231 games, more than 14 full seasons, for four teams. His career record is 1,060-1,171. For reference, such a .475 mark would rank 21st out of 30 teams this season. No Robinson team has ever finished first, won more than 87 games or made the playoffs. In Cleveland, Baltimore, San Francisco, Montreal and Washington his results have had one common denominator: slightly under .500.

Robinson is probably a notch better than his cold-blooded win-loss record. He's had to rebuild damaged teams or work with modest budgets. Nobody's handed him a champion. So, with the benefit of the doubt, call him a .500 manager. Robinson may define the fully tested, competent but basically average major league manager.

Of course, Robinson detests such evaluations. Even for a Hall of Fame player, his pride is huge. Tell him that being called an average manager is like being called an average symphony conductor and he'd harrumph at being damned with faint praise.

But facts are facts. "Average at best" is the verdict. In coming days, the Nats have to decide about the future of this 71-year-old, average-at-best manager who also happens to be one of the most admired people in baseball in the past 50 years. Oh, and one more twist, this skipper of a 66-86 team says he doesn't want to retire and would like a three-year contract extension.

We're past the point of discussing Robinson's specific strengths and weaknesses. He has both. Last month, in a Sports Illustrated poll of players, Robinson was picked as the worst manager in baseball -- for the second time in recent years. Even if you discount the views of rich, thin-skinned modern players toward an old-school tough guy, it's clear Robinson has enough flaws that the Nationals have every right -- and responsibility -- to make a hard, honest call on whether he should return.

If they don't want him back, there's nothing in the record to say they are being unfair, especially when they are rebuilding the team with young players who probably won't arrive for several years. Whatever Robinson is, he isn't the manager of the future.

In this time of tough decisions, there's one hidden issue that no one mentions. Somebody owes Frank Robinson something. Not a managing job for three more years. But something. And something pretty big.

For three years in Montreal/Puerto Rico, then last season in Washington, Robinson was absolutely central in keeping a desperate franchise competitive at a time when it was up for sale. He took charge of a foundering team that was worth, at most, $150 million in Montreal. This May, the Nationals were sold for $450 million.

Yet, in that time, Robinson was paid about $600,000 a year, barely more than half of the average major league manager.

Robinson was hired cheaply, then never remunerated as MLB reaped a windfall. Could Bud Selig, who hired him, have found a mechanism to reward Robinson in some form? Who knows? But nobody in baseball lifted a finger in appreciation.

So, Robinson has been left with only one alternative. He's had to play hardball, something few people enjoy more than Frank. Many eyes have rolled as Robinson has asked for that three-year contract. The phrase "retire gracefully" is clearly Greek to him. Robinson knows that his only leverage is that nobody wants to fire a universally admired legend. Yet Robinson is forcing the Nats to choose.