30 years after Macho Row, former Phillies slugger Pete Incaviglia is enjoying the journey as indie-ball manager

The game was finished but the night was far from over when the Phillies players filtered into the tiny trainer’s room at Veterans Stadium. Darren Daulton iced his knees, Mitch Williams iced his arm, Lenny Dykstra sat in a chair, Pete Incaviglia lay on a table, and John Kruk and Dave Hollins each found a spot. It felt like the whole team was stuffed in there.

The 1993 Phils — “A wacky, wonderful bunch of throwbacks,” Harry Kalas called them — were a bunch of veterans nearing the end of their playing days who needed nightly tune-ups to keep their magical year churning. They were picked to finish last but stayed in first place the entire season, won the pennant, and came two wins shy of a world championship.

They spent each night of that wonderful summer easing their aching bodies with a cold beer and rehashing the game in the trainer’s room. Why’d you throw that pitch? Why’d you chase that slider? How’d you miss that cutoff throw? Did you have your best stuff?

The conversations — win or lose — went on and on. Soon it was 6 a.m. and the sun was rising in South Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: Darren Daulton’s family believes his struggles and cancer were linked to the Vet’s turf

“You know what was great?” Incaviglia said. “We were just talking baseball and we’d lose track of time.”

The Phillies didn’t just love baseball. They were obsessed with it, Incaviglia said. They loved everything about it, from putting on the uniform to traveling across the country to hanging in the clubhouse to competing every night and sipping a cold one afterward.

It is that obsession that keeps Incaviglia in the game 30 years after those nights that so often turned to mornings. Incaviglia is spending his 15th straight summer managing an independent baseball team.

The guy who bypassed the minor leagues to begin his pro career in the starting lineup on opening day now works every day with players who are on baseball’s fringe, hoping for another chance. And he does it because he’s obsessed.

“There’s a lot of guys for whatever reason who take different paths to get to the big leagues,” said Incaviglia, who is in his third season managing the Frontier League’s Tri-City ValleyCats in upstate New York. “Sometimes they’re late bloomers. Sometimes, they’re injury prone. Sometimes, they’re just completely missed and overlooked. It’s a lot of fun on this side to get players like that and manage them, and if I can do something to help their careers get to the big leagues, that’s where the reward is for me. It’s always about the players for me. That’s why I still do it.

“The biggest reward is seeing guys get out of here and get to the big leagues. Being able to watch them on TV and know you had a very small part in their lives. That’s very rewarding.”

Leigh Montville began a Sports Illustrated profile of Daulton in October 1993 by describing what it was like to approach the catcher for an interview in the clubhouse at Veterans Stadium.

“The experience is like walking up the three steps on a front stoop to talk to the leader of a neighborhood motorcycle gang,” Montville wrote. “The large men with the juvenile-delinquent hair are waiting. Their eyes appraise the newcomer and do not seem to like what they see. Who is this guy, this civilian? What is he selling? Doesn’t he see that we’re busy?”

Montville had entered Macho Row. Daulton’s locker at the back corner of the clubhouse was next to Dykstra’s.

“Pretty much everyone who walked down there got worn out,” said Incaviglia, who hit 24 homers as a 29-year-old outfielder for the 1993 National League champs. “It didn’t matter who it was. Everybody wore it. You could’ve called it the Cranky Row if you wanted to.”

The ‘93 Phils were tough, the Vet’s turf was stained with tobacco juice, and the clubhouse wasn’t the warmest place for outsiders. But they had 25 players — guys with nicknames like Dutch and The Dude and Inky and Davey and L.A. and Kruky and Dunc and Eise — who only cared about one thing.

“We had one goal and that was to win a World Series,” Incaviglia said. “That’s hard to find these days. Twenty-five unselfish guys who really just cared about winning a World Series and winning the baseball game. The way we played the game, the way we grinded every day, the way we competed. We didn’t take any pitches off. We were just a bunch of blue-collar guys who grinded every day.

“I think the fans really appreciated the way we played the game. We ran hard to first base, we ran over catchers, we ran into walls. We battled at the plate. We understood that winning the game was more important than our own personal numbers.”

When the Phils won the pennant, Incaviglia told reporters in the clubhouse that the Phils weren’t “America’s Team” but “America’s Most Wanted Team.” They lost 92 games in 1992 and most experts pegged them to finish last in 1993. They were underdogs but no one seemed to like the brash bunch of mullets except for the 3 million fans who packed the Vet that summer as the Phils kept winning and winning.

“We didn’t really care. We weren’t out there to make friends,” Incaviglia said. “We were out there to win baseball games. I think most people from the outside looking in focused on what was going on off the field with that club more than what was going on. The people in Philly knew that when they came to the ballpark and paid their hard-earned dollars to watch us play, they got their money’s worth.

“If we had to fight to win a game, we would fight. We did whatever was necessary to win baseball games.”

» READ MORE: Drinks with Darren Daulton, car rides with Lenny Dykstra: One beat writer’s memories of 1993 Phillies

The Phils used platoons at multiple positions and nearly every hitter produced career-best numbers. The pitching staff was just as solid. The clubhouse may have felt like walking into a motorcycle gang’s clubhouse but there was something hiding under those mustaches. The ‘93 Phils played with a sense of selflessness and weren’t only brawn.

“I lockered next to him for three years,” Incaviglia said of Dykstra. “I’ve played with a lot of great players. I’ve played with Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray and Nolan Ryan, yada, yada, yada. Lenny was the smartest baseball player that I’ve ever been around. He would tell me every day what he was going to do that day. He knew the pitcher inside and out. He would go, ‘Hey man, I’m going to walk three times, score a couple runs, steal a couple bags today. This guy doesn’t throw any strikes.’ Then he would look at me and say, ‘Hey. I’m going deep today. This guy is going to try and challenge me.’ Everything he told me is exactly what he did in the game. Just unbelievable, gifted, talented, and smart. He knew every pitcher inside and out.”

“Everyone talks about all the crazy stuff off the field, but on the field, this guy was as good as anybody who ever played the game.”

Detroit’s minor league director called Incaviglia in 2002 to gauge his interest in coaching. He was 38 years old, had not been in the majors in four years, and was released by San Diego after 15 games in triple A. It was time to move on, but Incaviglia wasn’t quite sure.

And then Mitch Williams — his old buddy from the Vet training room — called. The Wild Thing was managing the independent Atlantic City Surf and asked Inky to join him as a hitting coach/designated hitter. Incaviglia hit .295 with 12 homers and .875 OPS in 57 games and fell in love with coaching. He then spent three years as Detroit’s double-A hitting coach before taking his first indie-ball managing job in 2008 with the Grand Prairie AirHogs near his Texas home.

Incaviglia has been an indie-ball manager ever since, helping shepherd players from teams like the Sugar Land Skeeters and Laredo Lemurs to the major leagues. Incaviglia has had success — he’s won three championships — but he’s not spending his summer in towns like Paterson, N.J., and Trois-Rivières, Quebec, because he’s vying for a job in the majors.

“I’m really not in it to become an affiliated manager or big-league manager,” he said. “If someone called, obviously I would listen. But it’s never been one of my goals to say, ‘Oh God, if I win championships, I’m going to get promoted to double A.’ That never entered my mind because that’s not why I’m in the game.

“It’s few and far between, but when you can call a guy into your office and say, ‘Hey, your contract has just been bought by the Philadelphia Phillies,’ the smile and the hug and all the hard work they put in, it’s so rewarding. It’s so awesome. I don’t have the words to describe it, but it’s what keeps me here. Every year, it keeps me going. If there’s just one guy that comes to me and ends up getting to the big leagues, it’s worth it. That’s why I keep doing it.”

Incaviglia was a star slugger at Oklahoma State — Baseball America called him the Player of the Century — and began his pro career by being traded by Montreal to Texas after the Expos were unable to sign him. News reports said Incaviglia demanded to be on the major league roster, but he said he simply just wanted to be brought to major league spring training. The Rangers allowed him to do so and he started on opening day in 1986 without spending a day in the minors.

» READ MORE: A look back at ’93 Phillies offers sobering lesson in ruthlessness of time

“I wanted to go to big-league spring training to walk amongst real big-leaguers and find out if I could play with them or what I had to do to get there,” he said. “I was never going to know that unless I played with them.”

Incaviglia didn’t get his first minor league assignment until he was 34. The Astros called him after he was released by Detroit in April 1998 and offered him a spot in triple A. There was no path to the majors, they told him, but Detroit needed an everyday outfielder in the minors. The former major-league star took the spot.

“Someone asked me how it felt to be there,” Incaviglia said. “I said ‘It feels great. It took me 14 years to get to a triple-A field, so I guess I did OK.’ I’ll be honest with you, I had the time of my life in triple A.”

He went there without a shot at the majors but ended the season on Houston’s playoff roster. Most of his indie-ball players can’t relate to Incaviglia’s entry to the majors. But they can relate to what he did with Houston, when he made the most of an opportunity to spark his career.

And now he rides the buses with them all summer. The trips are long, but the manager doesn’t mind.

“You find things to do. You go to sleep. You watch TV. You do work on the computer,” Incaviglia said. “[The bus trips] are what they are. If I make a big deal about them, then my players will make a big deal about them. If it doesn’t bother me, then usually it doesn’t bother them.”

If the Vet’s training room already felt crammed with players, imagine how much more crowded it became when the coaching staff stopped in. It seemed like everyone — even the opposing players tried hanging there, Incaviglia said — wanted to spend the night talking ball over beers.

Johnny Podres, the Phils’ pitching coach, would tell stories about his days in Brooklyn. Larry Bowa, the third-base coach, and John Vukovich, the bench coach, talked about 1980. And manager Jim Fregosi told tales about his time with the Angels.

“It was amazing,” Incaviglia said. “If you just sat there and listened. You would be amazed at the stories and the way they played the game back then and the things they did. I remember Jimmy telling about how he tried to hit the top of the baseball. I was like, ‘What a great idea. I never heard that.’ The next day, I was out there trying to hit the top of the baseball. That’s how we got better. We got better by those conversations.”

The Phillies started the season with a sweep in Houston, won eight of their first nine, and never looked back. They clinched the division in Pittsburgh that September and partied for hours. The team of castoffs was headed to the playoffs. Incaviglia waited seven seasons to play in October and he still remembers what it felt like a week later to run onto the turf at the Vet.

“It was crazy. It’s hard to describe,” he said. “When you’re running out and being introduced. It was everything you dream of and more. I tell people this all the time. People are jabbing themselves with needles trying to get euphoria and high, but there isn’t a drug that can get you as high as you felt when you ran onto the field for a postseason game. It was unbelievable.”

» READ MORE: Sielski: Darren Daulton's death a reminder of how special '93 Phillies really were

The group of players, Incaviglia said, became like a family that summer. The conversations in the training room were honest — “You better have some thick skin and you better have some, I call it sand, to play on that team,” Incaviglia said — but that’s OK because they all wanted to win. The ‘93 Phils were obsessed with baseball. That’s why they lost track of time each night. And that’s why Inky is still enjoying the journey.

“It wasn’t like we were supposed to sleep over,” he said. “But it was so late that we all just crashed there. We’d go get some lunch, take a shower, and get after it. It was a once-in-a lifetime ballclub. It’s always been about the journey. It’s not about the destination. I tell my guys now that the things you’ll remember in your career will always be about the journey. Like 1993 with the Phillies, it was always about the journey.”