Jim Salisbury | Vukovich was a man of lasting friendships

CLEARWATER, Fla. - A great man has left us, taken from his family, from baseball, and from the Philadelphia sporting community way too young at 59.

John Vukovich, a Phillies pillar for parts of four decades, died yesterday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, from the effects of a brain tumor he had quietly battled for several months.

Vukovich was a tough guy with a huge and gentle heart. He was one of those people who always thought of others first. He shunned attention. That's why he asked his friends to keep his illness private and, of course, not worry about him.

That didn't stop his friends and the people he had touched in life and in baseball from showing up unannounced at his doorstep.

One day this winter, Vukovich and his wife, Bonnie, came home from a doctor's appointment to find Irish Mike Ryan sitting on their doorstep. Vukovich and Ryan played and coached together for years. Ryan had said he wanted to see Vukovich.

"Don't worry about me," Vuke told him.

Ryan wouldn't take no for an answer. He caught a flight from New Hampshire to Philadelphia and sat in the cold for five hours to see his friend.

That's the type of loyalty, friendship and love John Vukovich inspired.

"He was the best friend I've ever had," Larry Bowa said. "You meet a lot of people in baseball, a lot of people you call a friend. But not all of them are lasting friendships."

Vukovich had innumerable lasting friendships. He knew everyone in the game.

Of course, the most lasting friendship he made in baseball was with that Hot Pants girl in 1971.

Shiny new Veterans Stadium was filled with happy faces. One of them belonged to a pretty girl from Olney named Bonnie Loughran. She was spending her summer as an usherette on the Hot Pants Patrol at the stadium.

Vukovich, a reserve infielder with the Phils, couldn't take his eyes off Loughran. He managed to pass her a note, inviting her to a party that pitcher Chris Short was having. Loughran and Vukovich began dating.

"Cancel your dates for the rest of the summer," he told her in his inimitable style.

They were married the next summer and made the world a little better with the additions of Nicole and Vince.

There are few things more beautiful than a father and son playing catch. Little Vince was a fixture around the Phillies as a youngster. His dad used to pitch him batting practice in stadiums all over the country. Before you knew it, Vince wasn't little anymore. He was hitting balls out of Dodger Stadium. He went on to star at the University of Delaware and played in the Phillies' minor-league system, making his dad proud every day.

And when it came to being proud of his kids, you should have seen Vuke last spring when Nikki gave birth to triplets - Anna, Lena and Stella.

May they always know that their granddad was solid gold.

The loss was particularly hard on Bowa, who, like Vukovich, is a big softie under that sandpaper exterior. They were teammates. They worked on the same coaching staffs. When Bowa managed the Phillies, Vukovich was his top lieutenant.

But their relationship went deeper than that.

Bowa was raised in Sacramento, Calif. Vukovich grew up in nearby Sutter Creek. They were both signed by Phillies scout Eddie Bockrath. As young minor-leaguers, they'd find an empty field in Sacramento and pitch to each other for hours in the off-season.

No one knew Bowa, his temperament or his idiosyncrasies better than Vukovich.

"If he didn't like how I looked when I left the park, he'd call me on the way home and say, 'You all right?' " Bowa recalled. "I'd say I was fine and he'd say, 'All right, let's go, then, let's get 'em tomorrow.' I can still hear him saying, 'Let's go.' That was his big thing."

Vukovich had two interim stints as a manager, one with the Cubs, one with the Phillies. He never got a full-time opportunity to manage.

But he sure made life easier for a lot of managers.

"He could have sat back and said, 'I want to manage,' and he would have been a great manager," Bowa said. "But he never shortchanged an organization. He was as dedicated as anyone could possibly be. And he took care of everything."

That's no exaggeration. Vukovich ran spring training. He did the schedules and decided which fundamentals would be worked on that day. Halfway through camp, he'd have his famous baserunning seminar. The base paths became a classroom and players stood in rapt attention as the professor taught his lesson.

Vukovich worked for Jim Frey, Gene Michael, Lee Elia, Nick Leyva, Jim Fregosi, Terry Francona and Bowa before moving to the front office in 2005, four years after at first surviving a scare with a brain tumor.

"Whomever the manager was, he was loyal," Bowa said. "He always tried to make the manager look good."

Vukovich was always good to the little people. He big-timed no one, not the 25th man on the team, not the part-time college kid who picked up uniforms in the clubhouse, not the reporters who covered the team. He was the type of guy who'd be introduced to your wife once, then greet her by name the next time he saw her five years later.

Ned Colletti was once one of the little people. He was a Philadelphia Journal sportswriter who took a job in public relations with the Cubs when the newspaper folded in the early 1980s. Vukovich was on the Cubs' coaching staff.

The two struck a friendship. Eventually, Colletti migrated to the baseball operations, then became an assistant general manager with the Giants, and is now the head man for the Dodgers. Colletti is no longer one of the game's little people, but he's thankful for the treatment Vukovich gave him when he was.

"He embraced me as a friend right from the beginning," Colletti said. "We continued to talk long after we left the Cubs. We'd laugh and argue all the time."

Whether he was working in Chicago or San Francisco, Colletti could always count on a call from Vukovich whenever the Phillies were in town.

"I'd come in the office and there'd be a nasty voice mail waiting for me," Colletti said. "Of course, he was just kidding. He'd make his point and the next thing I know, I'd be talking to the dial tone. He'd never say goodbye. He'd just hang up.

"This is such a transient game. People come in and out of your life. The ones that stay, like Vuke, are special."

On the outside, Vukovich could often be as cuddly as a porcupine. He was gruff and brutally honest. If someone messed up and needed to be reprimanded, he'd do it.

Inside, he was as soft as gelatin.

Players often didn't see Vukovich's soft side until they retired, though.

"You heard from some players that he was too hard, that he didn't get it," said John Kruk, one of the heroes of the 1993 Phillies. "Well, to me, the guys who said that were the ones who didn't get it.

"His toughness was nothing more than him caring about you and believing you could be better. As my career progressed, I understood that more."

Kruk will never forget the Phillies' home opener in 1994. He had missed the first road trip while undergoing treatment for testicular cancer. That afternoon, he got a thunderous ovation during introductions at the Vet.

He also got a glimpse into Vukovich's soul.

"I ran out to the field and he was bawling his eyes out," Kruk recalled. "I was like, 'OK, there is a heart in there.' It meant so much to me that he cared so much."

Vukovich loved the 1993 Phillies, a team that played hard and didn't whine.

Relationships Vukovich built with that team still endure. Curt Schilling continued to call him for scouting reports on hitters long after leaving Philadelphia. In recent years, Darren Daulton would greet Vukovich with a kiss on the cheek during visits to spring training. Mariano Duncan and Mitch Williams kept in touch. And then there was Dave Hollins, the hard-boiled third baseman.

"Everything Hollins did, every decision he made in and out of baseball, he ran by Vuke," Kruk said. "Vuke advised him on everything. They were that close.

"A couple weeks ago, we were down at fantasy camp and we got a call that he had taken a turn for the worse. It was like Dave's own father had passed away."

Kruk paused.

"Vuke meant a lot to a lot of people who came through here," he said.

John Vukovich was a good-glove, no-hit infielder who played 10 seasons in the majors. He was part of two World Series championship teams (the 1975 Reds and 1980 Phillies). He spent 31 of his 41 seasons in baseball with the Phillies and coached for them for a record 17 seasons.

Simply calling him a great baseball man, which he was, would be inadequate. He was so much more than that. He was a West Coast guy who loved Philadelphia and made it his home. He was an extraordinary family man.

Most of all, John Vukovich was a great man. We are so lucky that he came through our town and so saddened that he didn't stay longer.