Joan Frey would rather trade financial security than live with a crotchety old man, drinking a beer and wondering what-might-have-been.
James Gottffried Frey was inducted into the Price Hill Oldtimers Hall of Fame along with Herman Flea Clifton, Dick Drott, Larry Kleem and his oldest friend from Cincinnati's Western Hills High School.
After hitting .302 in 13 minor league seasons that included an International League batting title in 1960, Frey faced life after baseball.
Frey had a real estate license and was going to earn a living with it but the Baltimore Orioles had other ideas for him. They offered him a job as a scout in Ohio, to be a minor league batting instructor and manage its rookie team in the minor leagues.
Frey didn't like the idea. He told them he was going into the real estate business, thinking he could make a lot of money in real estate.
Joan, his wife, whom he had dated in high school, intervened.
"When we were growing up together all you ever talked about is that you wanted to be a coach," Joan told him. "You have a chance to coach. I don't want you sitting on the couch drunk when you're 60 years old, telling me you wished you'd have tried it. Give a few years and if you don't make it you have plenty of time to sell real estate."
Frey couldn't argue. "I'll give it five years," he told her.
The resident of suburban White Oak, near Cincinnati, went off to spring training earning a modest $6,000. His neighbors made twice that sum, easily in the mid 60's.
The diminutive Frey signed a contract with the Boston Braves out of Western Hills High School. He along with Don Zimmer were members of the 1947 Ohio State High School Champions and the pair won an American Legion National Championship under legendary amateur manager, Joe Hawk.
He began his playing career in 1950, leading the Paducah Chiefs with a .325 batting average that year. On July 4, 1956, Frey was traded by the Milwaukee Braves to the Brooklyn Dodgers for Ray Shearer. In 1957, he hit .336 with 11 triples and 74 RBI for the Tulsa Oilers en route to being named the Texas League MVP. He ended his 14-year playing career in 1963. Frey won batting titles in 1957 (.336 in Texas League) and 1960 (.317 in International League).
He went to spring training with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1958 and hit .420. Manager Fred Hutchinson chose Frey over Curt Flood, who hit around .220 that spring but injured his left shoulder. Frey couldn't throw the ball back to the infield for two years, when he was 29-years old.
At Joan's urging, Frey managed at Bluefield in the Appalachian League in 1964 and 1965, then scouted for the Baltimore Orioles' organization until he became a member of Earl Weaver's staff with the Orioles from 1970-1979.
"We had a 17-day road trip with the Orioles," Frey said. "My meal money from that trip was more money than I made my first year in the minor leagues. I made $200 a month and we got two dollars in meal money, one if we were going home."
The Orioles defeated the Reds in the World Series in 1970.
"I thought I won the lottery," Frey said. "I was making $12,000 as a coach and the World Series check was $17,000. I thought we had all the money in the world. I thought we might be able to go out to dinner or something."
Frey also was a substitute teacher at Colerain High School where his son Jimmy was a wide receiver on the football team.
Frey spent 10 seasons as batting coach for Frank and Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, Davey Johnson and Don Baylor. The latter two also went on to manage in the major leagues.
After the 1979 season, Frey decided he had enough. On the last day of the 1979 World Series in Pittsburgh, Frey decided to resign.
"Physically, I was tired. I had bad knees, bad shoulder, bad everything," Frey said.
The next day the Kansas City Royals' general manager Joe Burke called.
"He said how would you like to manage for the Royals," Frey said. "I told him I wasn't interested. I thought they were offering me a minor league job. I told them that I wasn't going back to the minor leagues. He said no, the major league team. I said, 'I'll take it." We didn't talk about money or anything. I told him that I would take his offer, I don't want to tell what it was but it wasn't much. I told him to remember the conversation because when we win, the next time."
In 1980, Frey became manager of the Kansas City Royals and led the team to their first World Series appearance that first year, ultimately losing in 6 games to the Philadelphia Phillies.
Frey got a big raise. "It was the first time I made some money," Frey said.
However, the club struggled in 1981, going 30-40 under Frey, and he was replaced by Dick Howser. At the time, he was criticized for his lack of strategic acumen, which was exemplified by his work in the 1981 All-Star Game: he used all his substitutes early in the game, and was forced to let P Dave Stieb bat in the 9th inning with the game on the line when he had run out of potential pinch-hitters.
The real reason stemmed from a disagreement with management.
"We had a big fight," Frey said. "I had five players on drugs. I wanted to trade them before anyone else found out. They didn't want to hear anything or know anything. They got mad and fired me."
He was a member of the New York Mets' coaching staff in 1982 and 1983.
"I went into the general manager and told him that I was finished coaching. I was going to go home," Frey said. "He asked me what I was going to do. I told him that I didn't know. I would find something. The next day the Cubs called me and asked me to manage. Every time I try to quit they called me back. A friend told me if I get fired three more times, I'll run for president."
Frey couldn't understand it.
"I had no credentials to be a big league manager. Even my brother would ask me, 'How did you get a big league job?' He managed kids and thought he knew more than I did."
In his first season with the Cubs, he led the team to their first postseason appearance since 1945, but they blew a two-game-to-none lead in the NLCS against the San Diego Padres and failed to advance to the World Series.
"When we won the first two games against the Padres, I remember thinking we could play the Tigers and Sparky Anderson. The last time the Cubs played in the World Series, they played the Tigers and Flea Clifton was on the team. He grew up on the same street in Bridgetown that I did. Can you imagine two guys from the same small neighborhood being in the World Series with the same two teams," Frey said.
The Cubs didn't make it but at the same period in the mid 80's, four major league managers were from the Western Hills community. Frey with the Cubs, Don Zimmer with the Red Sox, Russ Nixon with the Braves and Pete Rose with the Reds were all former West Hi Mustangs.
The Cubs had never drawn more than 1.6 million fans before Frey got there.
"The CEO of the Tribune Company asked me, what we had to do to improve attendance," Frey said. "I asked him if he'd ever been to the circus. Do your kids like the clowns? He said,'yes'. Do you remember Casey Stengel? You better hope you hired another clown. Well the clown got lucky."
The Cubs' attendance jumped to over two million in both of Frey's seasons as manager.
The Cubs fired Frey and thirdbase coach Zimmer to hire John Vukovich in June of 1986. All five pitchers in the Cubs' starting rotation were on the disabled list at the same time in 1985. General manager Dallas Green expected them to bounce back. They didn't. He was still owed $250,000 on his contract.
"The CEO of the Tribune liked me," Frey said. "I had an offer to be manager or general manager of the Minnesota Twins. My wife didn't want to go because she couldn't smoke in their ballpark. I had no job, no money and my wife wants to smoke. They offered me a job to work on the radio. I told them I didn't know anything about it. They said not to worry about it. I'd be fine. If I go to Minnesota I give up the money on the contract and they were going to pay me another $150,000 on top of it. It was an easy decision."
Frey spent a year in the radio booth with Harry Carey.
"My first day someone hit one and I said it's gone. Harry grabbed my arm and said. 'It might be. It could be. It is. I knew that three minutes ago. But Harry said, 'There are millions of people that want to hear me say,' It might be. It could be. It is."
The Cubs fired Dallas Green at the end of the season and asked Frey to be the general manager.
His first move was to hire a manager.
"They wanted me to interview five guys and asked me for their names," Frey said. "I told them I wouldn't name them. That it wasn't fair to them if the press got a hold of it. They called me back in three weeks to ask how it was going. I waited another week and called Don (Zimmer) at home. He wasn't there. Where else would he be? I found him in Las Vegas. I told him to not say anything for a couple days. I got him a hotel room under another name."
Zimmer and the Cubs won the Eastern Division in 1989, losing to the San Francisco Giants in the NLCS.
The Cubs had not been to the postseason for 39 years until two childhood friends from Western Hills took them there twice in five years.
Frey was named Executive of the Year by the Sporting News in 1989. Zimmer was named Manager of the Year, as Frey had been in 1984.
Frey left baseball after 43 years in 1992, retiring to Ft. Myers, Florida.
It was fitting that the "country boy" who thought Western Hills High School was like a college campus and his friend of 70 years were honored in the same year.
"I was from Bridgetown. It is built up now but back then it was country. We had 2,000 residents if you counted the pigs and cows. Zim was from Sedamsville. We called him the river rat," Frey said.
Together they made an unbeatable team from winning American Legion national championships, an Ohio High School state championship, to playing and/or managing in major league World Series.
Their coach Joe Hawk has to be smiling.
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