You guys got a good one...and good luck this season!

http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/story/453685.html

Reeves: Trey Hillman fights losing by keeping a team loose
By JIM REEVES
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

LIBERTY HILL -- Deep in the Hill Country, about 30 miles northwest of Austin, Trey Hillman is walking the back section of his six-acre spread -- what he likes to call his "goat ranch" -- out behind the five-bedroom house, the pool and the new pavilion.

Spread across the Texas dirt is a deep green sea of artificial turf. This will soon be Hillman's pride and joy, his own private big league-size infield, complete with base paths, foul lines and pitcher's mound, all right beside a new state-of-the-art batting cage.

Oh, and don't forget the three par-3 golf holes.

"Hillman's Haven," will have it all, but putting the word "private" on it is a bit of a misnomer. Knowing Hillman, he'll be out there hitting fungoes to 14-year-old son T.J., 11-year-old daughter Brianna and every other kid in three counties.

That is, when he's not in Kansas City, hitting fungoes to his Royals.

A week before flying to Arizona to kick off spring training at Surprise as the Royals' new manager, Hillman is as relaxed as a man not already in Okinawa can be.

That's where he was this time last year, already putting the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters through their own spring training.

I'd driven almost three hours south from Fort Worth to visit with Hillman, the Arlington Sam Houston/UTA product, and his wife, Marie, but the guy I really wanted to meet was "Otto Waby."

"Waby" is Hillman's alter ego, a character he created years ago while in the minor leagues with Cleveland, when he noticed his Latin American teammates struggling with saying "That a baby."

"Otto Waby" was born for comic relief in the clubhouse.

Hillman resurrected "Waby" about midseason last year, when his Fighters were struggling to score runs. He believed the Japanese players, who always take things so seriously, needed to laugh and relax.

"We were so lethargic offensively, not from lack of work or effort, there just wasn't the talent-base there," Hillman said. "So I came up with this 'Otto Waby,' guest motivational speaker from the kontoku [manager]."

Waby -- who, of course, was Hillman in disguise -- walked into a team meeting wearing gym shorts, tennis shoes with no socks, a holey T-shirt, a wig under a crazy hat and Bubba teeth.

"Talk about a challenge, trying to be a comedian with an interpreter," Hillman said with a laugh. "I did 'Otto Waby' about three different times. The first time, they didn't know who it was at the beginning. When they realized it was me, they burst out laughing.

"My interpreter had been trying to keep a straight face, because I was so goofy looking. I looked like I was straight off the streets."

Waby would comically praise players for positive things they'd done in the previous game and hand out monetary bonuses -- straight out of Hillman's own pocket -- accordingly, from 10,000 yen ($10) to 50,000 yen ($50).

The Waby character followed on the heels of Hillman's decision to purchase a pingpong table for the clubhouse, another move to lighten the tense atmosphere.

"The whole point was to keep it light," Hillman said. "We were in last place in the Pacific League, eight games under .500, in early to mid-May.

"You would not believe the joy in that clubhouse after that. It sounded like an American clubhouse. They were laughing; they were hanging out with their buddies."

The biggest change, though, came on the field, where the Fighters, who had lost two key offensive performers from their 2006 Japan League champions, caught fire and again advanced to the Japan Series, ultimately losing in five games to the Chunichi Dragons.

By that time, Hillman had already announced that he was heading back to the States after five years as a Japanese manager. A month later, Kansas City general manager Dayton Moore flew to Japan to hire a two-time minor league manager of the year and the man who took the once moribund Fighters to back-to-back Japan Series. Imagine Tampa Bay -- or, closer to home, the Rangers -- in the World Series and you get the picture.

In Hillman's perfect world, he would already be the Rangers' manager, leading his hometown team back to respectability, instead of just sharing a spring training site with them.

The Rangers had their chance, twice in fact, first when they wound up with Buck Showalter because Hillman wouldn't back out on the Fighters after giving them his word, and then again in 2006, when he was among those interviewed before Ron Washington was hired.

Hillman's penchant for intense preparation and organization may have made him look too much like another Showalter to the Rangers the second time around, but his record would indicate that he doesn't grate on players the way Buck sometimes does.

He also interviewed with San Diego and Oakland after the 2006 season and fretted about what he'd done wrong in his interviews, especially with the Rangers, when he didn't get any of those jobs.

"You're making this too difficult," Marie told him. "God's just not ready for us to go home yet."

Hillman saw the wisdom in her words.

"She was right," he said. "It's not my plan; it's God's."

He had, it turned out, even more to learn and another impressive page to add to his résumé.

If anything, his managerial performance with the Fighters in 2007 was even better than it had been during their 2006 championship run.

Now he'll see if he can apply the same principles to making the Royals winners again.

He won't try to reinvent the game -- he believes strongly in pitching and defense -- but he will bring many of the lessons he learned in Japan into play.

"The manager has to set a positive atmosphere and then massage it from time to time," Hillman said. "Things get stagnant because of the length and marathon aspects of the season."

Hillman has a stock response to those who claim he gets too close to his players.

"I'd rather make a mistake being too close, rather than not being close enough," he said.

And if the going gets tough, as it inevitably will, the Bubba teeth, the wig and hat will be close by.

"Otto Waby" is always on call.
revo@star-telegram.com
Jim Reeves, 817-390-7760