Columnist Dean Juipe: 51s’ skipper Kennedy has background for success

Dean Juipe

Friday, April 9, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

Introduced individually along with his players before the game, Terry Kennedy received a noticeably warm welcome on a cool evening from those in the stands at Cashman Field. No disrespect to his predecessor as manager of the Las Vegas 51s, but it was apparent the fans were happy to have a recognizable baseball man running the club.

John Shoemaker did OK at the helm of the 51s last season, but Kennedy brings a wealth of baseball experience to a franchise and a city that feeds off star power.

Already part of a trivial potpourri, Kennedy could add to his notoriety if the Pacific Coast League season that opened Thursday night eventually includes Las Vegas as a playoff representative.

As it is, Kennedy lays claim to this bit of minutia: He and his father, Bob, are one of only four father and son combinations to both have played in a World Series.

But it could get even better, not only for Terry but history buffs as well. If he were to get a major-league managing job -- and it could happen before this year is out, given the shaky status of Jim Tracy with the 51s' parent team in Los Angeles -- the Kennedys apparently would be the first father and son combo to have managed in the bigs.

"Yeah, I do," Kennedy said, when asked if he aspired to manage in the major leagues. "But I've got some things to do here first. And if I do them it will help build me into a major-league manager."

Kennedy, whose team used four pitchers to defeat Portland 7-2 in the season opener on a soggy night at Cashman, was on the cusp of getting a major-league managing job when he stepped aside from his duties for family reasons two years ago.

"When things weren't going too well in Chicago (with the Cubs in the late 1990s) my name was thrown out there, but it was just supposition," he said of the rumors and his proximity to the job, working as he was then as the manager of the Cubs' top farm club.

The overture came and went and Kennedy shrugged it off, content to rejoin his family for a couple of summers as his children finished high school.

"It was important to me," he said of spending time at home. "I'd been the other route when my dad was away as I was growing up."

Bob Kennedy, now 83, played 1,483 games in the majors between 1939 and '57 before managing the Cubs between 1963 and '65 and the Oakland A's in 1968. He later was the general manager of the Cubs and, later yet, was an assistant to Houston general manager Al Rosen in the early 1980s.

(Trivia time again: Bob Kennedy was a popcorn vendor at Comiskey Park in Chicago on the day he signed his first professional baseball contract.)

His father may have been away summers, but Terry was a big kid (6-3, 220) who developed into an all-star caliber catcher and played 1,315 major-league games with the Cardinals, Padres, Orioles and Giants. Not a great hitter, he compensated with baseball savvy and the ability to get the most out of a pitching staff, and -- more trivia here -- when he represented Baltimore in the '87 All-Star Game he became only the second catcher to have ever started a midseason classic for both leagues.

He brings those qualities to a 51s team that doesn't look too bad on paper.

"I don't think of it consciously," he said of comparing himself to the men of his age (47) and talents who are managing now in the major leagues. "But I'll occasionally ask myself how I would handle certain (strategic) situations, just to see if how I'd do things would fit."

He says he's going to spend this season re-familiarizing himself with today's players and seeing if he can deal with what he expects to be 125 roster moves during the course of the year.

"I can't focus on myself or have everything I do be just for my own benefit," Kennedy said. "To put myself first would be extremely selfish and I won't do it."

He's not going to be ostentatious.

But he is going to be accessible, devoted and sharp.

And there's nothing trivial about that.