Johnny Podres has succeeded by keeping it simple

Curt Schilling was putting on a Phillies uniform for the first time on April 2, 1992, when someone who walked like Groucho Marx and looked like Buster Keaton approached. The sad-eyed man, a Winston stuck in his mouth, pulled a hand from his back pocket and extended it to the pitcher.

"Johnny Podres, pitching coach," he said. "Wanna throw?"

Recognizing the name, not knowing quite know how to react to this brusque introduction, Schilling still followed Podres willingly. It wouldn't be the last time.

"I was coming from a bad situation in Houston," Schilling recalled. "The stadium was empty that day, and it was raining as we walked down to the bullpen. He asked to see my fastball, so I showed him a two-seamer, which is what I threw then."

"What the hell was that?" Podres barked.

"A fastball," Schilling said.

"That ain't no . . . fastball. That's a . . . sinker," replied the pitching coach, spitting out the final word.

Podres lunged for the ball, grabbed it across four seams, displayed the grip to Schilling, and handed the ball back. What followed was a fastball - and a career - that rose.

"Now that," said Podres, pacing, puffing, pleased, "is a . . . big- league fastball."

In five minutes, the gruff-spoken guru had wiped away seven years of problems.

It's not easy becoming a legend again at age 62 - "The Genius" is what Larry Bowa, the Phillies' third-base coach, calls Podres when he wants to irritate him - especially when you work hard at diverting attention from yourself. Yet it is happening to Podres, and it threatens, 40 years after he beat the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series for the Dodgers, to expand his reputation beyond Brooklyn.

"I don't like to talk about what I do," Podres said. "All I do is my job, what I'm supposed to do. The guys pitching are the ones getting people out. They're throwing the ball. Hell, when they're going good like this, I don't even talk to them. Might mess them up if I do.

"I don't get complicated," he said. "I just tell them. Make your (hip) turn. Stay down. Keep your shoulder in. Extend. And throw the . . . ball."

Handed an injury-depleted staff, one maligned this spring as a bunch of Bad Wings and Prayers, Podres inexplicably has turned the Phillies pitchers, statistically at least, into baseball's best.

The rotation includes a rookie who led the International League in losses last year (Tyler Green), a rookie who never had risen above double A (Michael Mimbs), and a 26-year-old ex-hockey player who had 11 big-league wins and finished the '94 season in Scranton (Paul Quantrill). The group now possesses a combined record of 27-10 - Green (7-4), Mimbs (6-1) and Quantrill (7-2) are a remarkable 20-7.

In the bullpen, Podres has a first-year closer who leads the league in saves (Heathcliff Slocumb) and a rookie setup man who hasn't been scored on for a month (Ricky Bottalico).

"Just look at the numbers," bench coach John Vukovich said. "There are countless pitchers who had zero success before getting here. And very few have had success after leaving here.

"Schilling hadn't done anything before he got here. Tommy Greene, the same. Terry Mulholland hadn't had success, and Pods helped him win 16 games. Danny Jackson was trying to find himself when he got here. Quantrill. Tyler Green. Mimbs. You can go on and on. It's just amazing."

And the reason, insists every one of those pitchers, is the nervous man without an ego who speaks in short, loud bursts, never about himself, and who, according to Schilling, his chief apostle, "says and does some of the stupidest things I've ever seen," who loves to tell Sandy Koufax stories, and who can't win a bet at the racetrack.

Somewhere in baseball you might find someone to criticize Podres and his laid-back methods. But not on the Phillies.

"I know it sounds sentimental and goofy," Schilling said, "but I owe this man everything. The only man who had more of an impact on me was my father. . . .

"When I got here, I was a guy who probably was going to be the 10th man in someone's bullpen. . . . Two years later, I had two 200-plus-inning seasons and won 30 games as a starter. All because of Pods."

Podres is old-school on a coaching staff dominated by the type - hard-nosed anomalies juxtaposed with a growing legion of techno-jocks. He does not submit every pitch to computer analysis or sermonize on the merits of proper pitching physics.

"What do I know about computers?" Podres said. "I never even touched one. Besides, computers don't play baseball. People do. This game's hard enough to play without guys having to worry about that kind of stuff."

Instead, he emphasizes the obvious, counsels power over finesse, suggests a small repertoire of pitches, and - most important, say his pitchers - stresses the positive.

"Johnny is not one of those guys who feels he has to redesign the game," said Phils general manager Lee Thomas, who hired Podres away from his beloved Dodgers after the 1990 season. "He keeps things positive. I'm not saying Johnny won't air a guy out if he feels he needs it, because he will. But he keeps it positive - very positive."

Green, suddenly fulfilling his No. 1-pick potential, might be Podres' most remarkable conversion. All the coach did was, after several failed attempts, finally persuade the rookie righthander to relax a little with his knuckle- curve, to throw it less frequently and with a little less velocity.

"I would throw one good one, then want to throw the next one harder," Green said. "I wanted to dominate hitters with it, strike them all out. Pods told me that's like wasting those pitches. He said, 'Take a little off one and get a ground ball with it and you'll be better off."

When he was drafted by the Phillies in 1991, Green constantly was reminded that the next spring, Podres, master of the change-up, would be working with him.

The pitcher felt that he'd better master every nuance of the pitch. All winter long, back home in Colorado, Green threw change-up after change-up and prepared for lengthy conversations with the Phillies pitching coach in February.

"It's the first day of spring training, and I was really looking forward to his reaction," Green recalled. "So I'm on the mound and Pods is watching me. I threw my change-up, and it was a good one. But it might have been a quarter-inch outside.

"And Podres said, 'Just throw it down the middle.' That was it," Green said. "I threw another one right down the middle, and you hear Pods going, 'Atta baby. Just sit right there.' "

End of lesson.

"You hear other pitching coaches talking about when to break your hands, how much turn to make, how much leg lift," Vukovich said. "Pods doesn't talk those things. He talks things that aren't confusing, that make sense and that allow guys to see a result quicker.

"I don't know who knows the most about pitching, but I don't think anybody gets it across better than he does.

"When Lee Thomas was thinking about hiring him," Vukovich went on, "he asked me to make some calls. I called Zim (Don Zimmer), who had him as his pitching coach in Boston, and he said: 'If you want a paper man, he's the worst. In spring training, he's not going to coordinate anything. He's not going to keep charts. He's not a clock man. But if you want a teacher, he's the best.' "

Podres proselytizes in private, in places that feel familiar to pitchers. In the bullpen between starts or during batting practice, when he and the previous night's starter sit behind a screen at second base and discuss pitching as they collect balls in a bucket for the batting-practice pitcher.

"There are two basic areas where he gets into their heads," Vukovich said. "On their day to throw on the side and, after they've pitched, at the bucket.

"They'll sit there and talk about the previous night. He'll tell him what a great pitch he threw to this guy or that guy. He'll get into pitch selection. 'Why'd you throw that 2-2 breaking ball in the seventh with a five- run lead and two outs?' He gets them to thinking back there."

"I've gotten to the point where I cherish those times to be alone with Pods," Schilling said. "He just builds you up and builds you up until you say, 'Wow, give me the ball. I must be the greatest pitcher in the world.' "

Podres smiles when discussing his keep-it-positive approach.

"Sometimes," he said, "when a guy is going bad, you got to bull- him. Tell him how great he is. Pick him up. You know, there's a lot of bull- in baseball."

And Podres can sell it to his pitchers. In fact, there is a lot of the actor in him. In the clubhouse, away from his duties, he assumes the persona of distracted, absent-minded, burned-out baseball vet.

Walking through the locker room, he might stop suddenly, a puzzled look on his face, and blurt some loud, off-the-wall question at no one in particular.

"What time's the bus?" he might ask two hours before a game.

Or on a sunny day in San Diego, it could be: "Think it might rain?"

"What you see of Pods, the goofiness and all, is really him," Vukovich said. "I've always said that it would be hard to choose between Pods and Zim as to who was the biggest character I've ever met in baseball."

Podres' nonthreatening nature makes him the frequent butt of pranks. In Miami a few weeks ago, Podres, stretching his often-achy back, was asleep on the floor in front of his locker. Boom-box-throated Mariano Duncan slipped up behind him and shouted, "Johnny!"

Podres popped up like a jack-in-the-box, sleepily surveyed a roomful of wildly laughing Phillies, said, "How's it going, Dunc?" and promptly fell back to sleep.

During games, Podres sits or stands near manager Jim Fregosi, monitoring every pitch, every facial expression of the Phillie on the mound.

"He's into every pitch," Vukovich said. "He has this little pitch- counter, and Jimmy, a number of times, will ask him for the pitch count.

"Now Pods can tell some lies. If he likes the way a guy is throwing, he'll lower the count. If he doesn't like the way a guy's throwing, he'll up the count."

When a visit is required, Pods, hands in pockets, stooped over as he takes those quick strides to the mound, delivers a brief message. He usually tells struggling pitchers that they have great stuff, and that the only reason he came out was to give them a breather. If he needs to light a fire, he often uses this line: "Jimmy's getting (upset). You'd better start throwing the . . . ball over the plate or he might come out and get you."

This low-key approach works with most pitchers. There are exceptions. One was Mitch Williams.

"Pods wasn't as calm with Mitch as Jimmy was," Vukovich said. "But he was tolerant of Mitch because he knew that's what he had. He knew that Mitch got a lot of people out with pitches that weren't strikes.

"He tried to change him two different springs. He wanted him to keep his head to the plate, his head to the target. Mitch tried, but Pods knew, as soon as he had a bad outing in the spring, he'd revert back. And that's what happened. So then he just let Mitch be himself."

Win some, lose some. Except, in Podres' case, if you're talking about the racetrack - his off-field passion. He speaks often of just-missed trifectas or lucrative quinellas that some ill-timed fate ruined for him.

"If Johnny's got money on the horse you like," Fregosi, another racing lover, likes to say, "you might as well tear up your ticket."

If you're looking for a guy to handicap your pitching staff, though, Podres is your man.

"He has a knack for being able to look at pitchers and right away knowing if they have a chance to succeed and if they need a change in style," Vukovich said. "He likes guys with stuff and personality" - baseball translation: guts. "If you got stuff and you got personality, then Johnny Podres will make you one hell of a pitcher."