Phil Mankowski was a third baseman for the Tigers and Mets
from 1976 to 1982.
Philip Anthony Mankowski was born January 9, 1953, in
Buffalo, New York. His father, Ben, had played 33 games at first base for the
Rome Colonels of the Class C Canadian-American League in 1940, and his older
brother Paul was a middle infielder in the Twins’ system from 1965 to 1969. Phil grew up playing baseball, and played four
years on the varsity at Bishop Turner High School before graduating in 1970. He
was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the ninth round of the free agent draft
that June, but apparently didn’t sign a contract until September, and made his
professional debut in the Florida Instructional League that fall.
Phil started 1971 with the Bristol Tigers of the Rookie
class Appalachian League, where he played third base and batted third; after 14
games he was hitting .377/.417/.509, with zero strikeouts, and he was moved up
to the Batavia Trojans of the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. For Batavia
he hit .262/.324/.354 in 195 at-bats.
Phil spent 1972 playing third base for the Lakeland Tigers
of the Class A Florida State League; in the one box score I found he was
hitting third. He hit .273/.341/.318 in 403 at-bats with just 26 strikeouts. He
spent 1973 with yet another Class A team, the Clinton Pilots of the Midwest
League. He was the everyday third baseman; in April and May he was hitting
fourth, and by July he was hitting seventh. He hit .231/.316/.313 in 454
at-bats.
For 1974 Phil was moved back to Lakeland, where he hit
.256/.323/.389, with a so-far-career-best five home runs in just 234 at-bats in
64 games before suffering a season-ending injury in July. He got his first Sporting News writeup in the August 3
issue:
Lakeland (Florida State) has placed third baseman Phil Mankowski on the indefinite disabled list. The infielder was to undergo surgery to remove an arthritic spur on the instep of his right foot. He probably will be sidelined for the remainder of the season.
For 1975 Phil moved up to the Montgomery Rebels of the Class
AA Southern League, where manager Les Moss worked with him and helped him to
improve his hitting, as Phil would relate in a 1976 article in the Evansville Courier:
“I used to have a lot of trouble hitting curves and off-speed pitches, had a hard time picking up the curve and didn’t wait on the ball very well. Les is the kind of manager who comes to the park early to help you work on things, and he picks up a sweat himself.
“He pitched batting practice, threw breaking ball after breaking ball until I learned to pick up the pitch and keep my bat back. He taught me to stay relaxed and wait on the curve, not be too anxious.”
The same article also said that Phil, who had had a
reputation for good hands but limited range in the field, also credited Moss
with helping him with the latter. In mid-June of 1975 Phil was third in the
league with a .320 batting average, and he was selected to the Southern League
all-star game. He wound up hitting .283/.342/.403, all personal highs other than
his 14-game stint in Bristol, and also reached new highs in runs (44), RBI
(49), and homers (9), in 407 at-bats in 124 games. Montgomery won the league’s
Western Division and beat Eastern Division champs Orlando in the playoffs,
three games to none; Phil drove in all four runs with two two-out, two-run
singles in game one’s 4-3 victory. He was named the third baseman on the
year-end league all-star team.
After the season Phil was put on the Detroit major league
roster, and was sent to the fall Florida Instructional League. He went to
spring training 1976 with the Tigers, then was assigned to the AAA Evansville
Triplets of the American Association. On April 10 the Evansville Courier, introducing the newcomers to the team, called
him “Excellent fielder at hot corner,” while the next day’s edition included
thumbnails of the entire roster and said of Phil “Impressed in big league camp
this spring. Third baseman said to lack range, but makes plays he can reach.”
On June 5 the Courier asked the
Triplets “which ballplayers they have most admired,” and Phil’s answer was:
Stan Musial, because of his all-around ability. He was a good hitter and hustler. I grew up in Buffalo and my dad used to take us to New York to see him (Musial) play.
Early in the season Phil batted second in the order; later
on it was fifth, sometimes sixth. On July 4 the Courier ran the feature article from which were taken Phil’s kudos
to Les Moss:
Bat Practice Helped Triplets’ Mankowski
By Pete Swanson
Most impressive youngster in Detroit’s spring training camp?
That’s easy. Pitcher Mark Fidrych.
Then who?
Phil Mankowski, 23-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., native who is deemed the Tigers’ third baseman of the future, unless he is claimed by Seattle or Toronto in October’s American League expansion draft.
Except for his youth and the presence of veteran third baseman Aurelio Rodriguez, Mankowski might have gone north with the Tigers in April. That’s how impressive he was in Florida, after his most impressive of five minor league seasons…
A southpaw swinger who stands in and gets his cuts against lefthanded pitchers, Mankowski sees differences between Triple-A and Double-A hurlers.
“They’re a little smarter up here and have a little better control. If you play every day you become a better hitter, but you have to battle. Because if you hit the fastball this time, you may not see the same pitch the next. Or you’ll get it on the corner, away from your power.
“It’s an all-around better brand of baseball.”
The Tigers’ ninth draft choice in June 1970, when he graduated at 17 from Buffalo’s Bishop Turner High School, Phil turned down full-ride baseball scholarships to Brown, Clemson and Miami (Fla.) because “I wanted to play pro baseball.
“I’m pretty fortunate with the way things have gone. No special goals. I just want to stay free of injuries and finish up with a good year.”
He is en route.
On August 8 the Courier
reported that Phil, “who suffered a knee bruise and possibly a leg muscle
strain when struck Friday [6th] by his own batted ball, may go on
the disabled list,” but he was back in the lineup in a few days. On August 29,
as the Triplets approached the end of their season, Aurelio Rodriguez injured
his ankle sliding into second in a game in Oakland, ending his season, and Phil
got called up to play third base for Detroit. His Evansville numbers were
.288/.350/.385 in 413 at-bats.
Phil debuted the next night in Anaheim, batting sixth in the
Tigers’ order, behind Jason Thompson and ahead of Bill Freehan. He got his
first major league hit, a single, in his second at-bat, off of Paul Hartzell. He
was the third baseman the rest of the way, appearing in a number of spots in
the batting order but eventually being used mostly at the leadoff position. On
September 28 he hit his first major league home run, off Dennis Eckersley. He
hit .271/.300/.353 in 85 at-bats in 24 games, fielded well, and was regarded as
a success.
In 1977 people in Evansville were thinking they would be
getting Phil back, but he made the Tigers’ opening day roster, just not the
starting lineup, appearing strictly as a pinch-hitter until April 26, when
Rodriguez “suffered a severe sprain to his left ankle [same one as before]
making a needless slide into home plate.” Phil stepped right in and picked up
where he had left off the previous fall, but hitting better; on May 7 the Evansville Courier ran a story from the
UPI:
Ex-Triplet big hit as sub for Tigers
By Richard L. Shook
DETROIT—“Fill-in” Phil Mankowski longs for the day he can play regularly.
Mankowski, the former Evansville Triplet who is playing third base for the Detroit Tigers while Aurelio Rodriguez recuperates from a severe ankle sprain, continued his fine hitting last night by driving in a pair of runs with two singles in a 5-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers…
Still, it is fairly certain that as soon as Rodriguez is well again, Phil Mankowski and his magic wand will be back on the bench watching Aurelio and his Golden Glove perform at third base. But Mankowski allows himself to hope.
“It’s hard to say what will happen,” said Mankowski, who lifted his batting average to .355 with a 2-for-4 game. That doesn’t make him Ron Cey, but the two RBIs did double his season’s total and that isn’t bad for 31 at-bats.
“I’m just happy to get the opportunity,” he said. “When Aurelio gets back, whatever happens, happens. I really didn’t expect to get a starting shot this spring, but last fall gave me a lot of confidence.”
Mankowski was called up from Evansville last Aug. 30 when Rodriguez tore ankle ligaments and hit .271 in 24 games.
“He’s playing just like he did last year,” manager Ralph Houk said of his fill-in. “He makes all the ordinary plays but he doesn’t make the spectacular ones like Rodriguez. Nobody does. If he continues to hit like he has, that will be great.”
Rodriguez returned on June 5, by which time the idea of
moving him to shortstop in place of Tom Veryzer and keeping Phil at third had
been considered and rejected. Instead, Houk decided to platoon the two third
basemen, which meant that Phil, the left-handed hitter, would get the majority
of the starts. At this point Phil was hitting .293/.354/.345, and he was over
.300 as late as July 5, but he faded after that and at the beginning of August
Rodriguez began to get most of the starts—Phil started just 11 of the last 57
games. He ended up hitting .276/.318/.353 in 286 at-bats in 94 games, and had a
better range factor at third base than Rodriguez, though a lower fielding
percentage.
During the off-season Phil played in the Puerto Rican Winter
League, while Rodriguez was being quoted as saying he wanted to play every day.
The Tigers went into spring training 1978 with the third base situation up in
the air; when the regular season began Phil and Rodriguez were platooning
again. Phil, batting second, hit a three-run homer on opening day. But after
that Aurelio got off to a hot start offensively, hitting over .400 through
April, and that won him more playing time than just when a lefthander was
pitching, so he and Phil wound up splitting the third base starts about 50/50.
In
the May 27 Sporting News, an article
on Rodriguez had this to say about Phil:
Mankowski, meanwhile, is just happy to be playing, even if it is only part time.
From the day he reported to the Tigers’ minor league training camp in ’71, he has heard people compare him to Rodriguez.
“Everybody compares me to Chi Chi (Aurelio), but compare me to any other third baseman in the league and I think, with experience, I’ll be able to make all the plays any other third baseman in the league makes.
“It’s hard to break in with a guy like Chi Chi ahead of you, but all I ask is a chance,” he continued. “I’m 25 years old, I’ve played six years in the minors and I’m not going to get any experience sitting on the bench. I feel my future is now.”
Phil wound up the season at .275/.344/.365 in 222 at-bats in
88 games, improving over the previous year while offense in the league as a
whole was on the decline. Defensively, his fielding percentage was up while his
range factor was down. At the end of the season Ralph Houk retired, and Phil’s
mentor Les Moss, who had just been named Minor League Manager of the Year by
the Sporting News, was hired to take
his place.
During the off-season there was some talk that Phil might be
traded, but it didn’t happen. The 1979 season began with Rodriguez getting the
majority of the time at third base and Phil playing some of the time against
righthanders. On June 12 Moss was fired, not because of anything he’d done
wrong but because the Tigers jumped at the chance to hire Sparky Anderson. The
change in managers doesn’t seem to have changed things much at third base, but
on July 6 Phil suffered a hand injury and was placed on the disabled list. On
the 21st it was reported that he would be activated on the 24th,
but somehow that changed and he didn’t come back until September 1st.
He started at third his first two games back, then was limited to a few games
off the bench the rest of the way. His season numbers were .222/.286/.263 in
just 99 at-bats in 42 games.
On October 31 the Tigers, looking for a third baseman with
power, traded Phil along with Jerry Morales to the New York Mets for Richie
Hebner. (A month later Aurelio Rodriguez was sold to the Padres, but Hebner
ended up playing mostly first base for the Tigers, as Sparky Anderson had
become enamored with third baseman Tom Brookens, who had been called up from
AAA when Phil had suffered his hand injury.)
In February 1980 Phil filled out a questionnaire in which he
listed his nickname as “Manko,” his home as Huntington Woods, Michigan, his
size as 6-0, 190, his hobbies as “music, all sports, cars, home improvements,”
and his greatest thrills in baseball as “hitting game winning home run opening
day 1978” and “playing behind Mark Fidrych.” At spring training with the Mets,
Phil had another battle for his position, this time with Elliott Maddox,
usually an outfielder. From the March 22 Newark
Star-Ledger:
Mankowski set?
By Dan Castellano
ORLANDO, Fla.—He’s heard all the jokes about the Mets and their slapstick tradition at third base. And, to give you an indication of his good-natured sense of humor, he’s joined the laughter.
But there’s a serious side to Phil Mankowski. By the end of this spring, he hopes to prove to the Mets and their fans that, at 27, he can and will be their everyday third baseman for a long time.
It’s hard, though, to avoid a joke now and then.
“So I’ll be the 64th, huh?” he said with a smile. “I guess the $64 question is how soon there will be a 65th.”
Jokes aside, Mankowski has been working extremely hard this spring, taking extra ground balls at third after workouts have ended, taking extra batting practice against lefthanded pitching.
“That’s a big key,” said Mankowski, who was either platooned or not played at all during his four seasons in Detroit, averaging only 173 at bats per year before coming to the Mets with Jerry Morales in the Richie Hebner trade.
“I’d like a real shot against lefthanders,” Mankowski said. “Playing behind Aurelio Rodriguez for four years, I never got that chance. If they let me try it, I think I can do it.
“That’s my attitude this spring. I want to play full-time. I’m capable.
“Elliott is a good ballplayer, too. We’ll see what happens. I’m trying not to put pressure on myself. This is like my rookie year all over again. It’s a new league so the pitchers don’t know me and I don’t know them. We’re even.”
And that’s about where the Mankowski-Maddox battle stands. Both have been fine in the field, neither has hit much…
Maddox started the season as the primary third baseman. Phil
got his first start in the fifth game, as reported in the May 3 issue of the Sporting News:
Mets Start New ‘Error’—Mankowski at Third
NEW YORK—Because there had been so many before him, Phil Mankowski was aware his debut would not go unrecorded. And when he became the 64th third baseman in the New York Mets’ 19-year-history, Mankowski helped etch another line in the record books. He led the way to a club record-tying performance April 15 by committing two of the Mets’ six errors.
Mankowski was charge with a throwing error on the first ball he handled and a plain boot on the next one when he let a ground ball skip through his legs.
Phil was 1-for-4 at the plate, 1-for-3 in the field.
“A New Error Begins at Third For Mets,” the New York Daily News headlined the event the next day.
“Actually, I did worse in my first game in Class-A ball,” Mankowski admitted. “I made three errors in one inning.”
On May 3 Phil, who had only ten at-bats to that point, was
placed on the disabled list, retroactive to April 29, due to “impingement
tendinitis” in his right shoulder. On May 14 the Star-Ledger reported that his shoulder was responding well to
treatment, and that he was almost ready to come off the disabled list. They
were apparently jumping the gun, though, and it wasn’t until early July that
Phil was sent to the Tidewater Tides of the AAA International League on a rehab
assignment. He went 7-for-28 in nine games there—and then was hospitalized with
hepatitis. The Tigers moved him from the 15-day disabled list to the 60-day
list; on September 24 he was finally activated, and he made two pinch-hitting
appearances before the season ended. For the Mets he went 2-for-12 in eight
games for the season. On October 24 his contract was assigned from New York to
Tidewater.
The Mets did invite Phil to major league spring training in
1981, but despite hitting .438 in six exhibition games he was sent back to
Tidewater. The July 10 Newark Star-Ledger
reported something new about him:
3B Mankowski also plays piano
NORFOLK, Va.—Phil Mankowski doesn’t consider himself a Van Cliburn or Vladimir Horowitz just yet, but he’s working on it.
The former New York Mets third baseman, who is now playing for the Tidewater Tides in the International League, has been actively pursuing a career as a concert pianist since last fall.
In fact, the 27-year-old Mankowski, whom the Mets acquired from the Detroit Tigers for Richie Hebner in 1979, rents one piano in his Norfolk apartment and owns another one in his Detroit, Mich., home.
Phil practices three hours a day and takes lessons from Carol Noona, whose husband is the conductor for the Virginia Pops.
“Playing the piano just relaxes me,” said Phil, who has suffered one crippling injury after another since he came to the Mets. “Baseball is still number one with me, but classical music just helps me take my mind off things.”
Mankowski became interested in the piano while walking to and from his apartment last summer in Manhattan.
“There was a music shop right by my apartment,” said Phil. “I went by the shop daily and all I heard was classical music. It just fascinated me.
“My wife is interested in classical music, too, and I decided to try to see if I could learn how to play the piano,” he continued. “I owe a lot to my first piano teacher in Detroit, Esther Sibrack, who just recently died. She showed a great deal of patience with me and if it wasn’t for her, I probably would have given it up before I started.”
…In 1980, injuries limited Mankowski to only eight games and 12 plate appearances for the Mets.
“It was a year I would like to forget,” he recalled. “First, I injured my right shoulder and that turned out to be a torn muscle. When I started to recover from that, I came down with hepatitis. It was really a lost season.”
This spring didn’t start out any better for Mankowski. He missed three weeks of action after getting hit with a pitched ball on his right elbow.
“After I got hit I was beginning to think I was jinxed or something,” Phil laughed. “But things have been better lately. I am playing third on a regular basis now at Tidewater and I’m hitting the ball pretty well.”
Mankowski is batting .265 with five homers and 30 runs batted in for the Tides.
While he continues his battle to make it back to the majors, Mankowski will continue to play his piano.
“Naturally my main priority is to become a big leaguer again,” said Phil. “But I don’t plan to forget about the piano either. It’s more than a hobby now.
“When we are on the road with the Tides, I look for pianos to play in hotels and restaurants. I will keep at it even if I do make it back to the majors. Maybe I’ll be the first concert playing third baseman in the big leagues.”
The July 25 Sporting
News mangled the story, mentioning in a blurb that Phil was studying to
become a concert violinist. A few days before that, though, he had suffered a
torn calf muscle and was out for the rest of the season. Between the injuries
he played in 55 games, hitting .251/.320/.362 in 199 at-bats.
1982 found Phil back with Tidewater, now playing more
designated hitter than third base. On May 22, Sports Editor Dave Johnson of the
Evansville Press wrote a column about
Phil and the piano:
Piano man…Former Triplet gets hits and plays them, too
When Phil Mankowski was with the New York Mets, he and his wife lived in an apartment in Manhattan.
Down the street were two music schools. Every day, Mankowski would walk past and hear the beautiful sounds filtering through the windows.
“There were all kinds of sounds, and they were so beautiful,” Mankowski recalled…
“I wish I’d have done this earlier,” Mankowski said. “It’s rare to get started so late.
“I know a few concert pianists back home (in Detroit), and they all started playing when they were two or three years old. My teacher had a recital for her students once and I went to it. Most of the pianists were eight or nine years old, and they’d been playing for five years.
“They were amazing.”
The amazing thing about Mankowski is he’d never played an instrument until two years ago. The 29-year-old infielder couldn’t even read music.
“I was pretty shaky at first. All I was doing was making a lot of noise. But I’m improving. I can play some minor pieces—a couple of Chopin waltzes, for example—but nothing major.”
…This year, Mankowski is Tidewater’s designated hitter and backup third baseman and first baseman. He is hitting .330.
“I know I can still play,” he said. “I’d just like to put one good year together.”
Mankowski said playing the piano doesn’t get in the way of his playing baseball.
“During the day, there’s so much free time, it’s no problem.
“I try to practice at least an hour a day when we’re home. When you miss a day, it’s just like missing batting practice. You get rusty.”
Mankowski said he doesn’t have a piano at his apartment in Norfolk, Va., but he’s allowed to use the piano at a nearby church whenever he wants.
“On the road, I get one anyone I can find one. When we arrive in a new town, the first thing I do is look in the phone book.”
Mankowski said his wife, Sue, a dental hygienist, doesn’t join him at the piano—“I think she’s afraid she’ll break her long nails”—but she’s been very supportive.
“She’s always encouraged me. Living in Manhattan, we were exposed to so many different things. She said we should take advantage of them.”
Mankowski’s interest in the piano has become “more than just a hobby. During the off-season, it can get to be an obsession.”
“It’s a great release for me,” Mankowski said. “I know I’m never going to be anywhere near good enough to be a concert pianist. But I’m going to stick with it.
“I think something inside me just wants me to do it.”
On June 28 Phil got called up by the Mets when their regular
third baseman, Hubie Brooks, was put on the DL. He played third in 13 of the
next 20 games, nine of them starting. From Dan Castellano’s “Of All Sorts”
column in the July 11 Newark Star-Ledger:
When Brooks does come back, it will be farewell once more to a nice guy who never really made it, Phil Mankowski. At 29, Mankowski knows the end is near. If he’s returned to Tidewater, he’ll go and finish out the year but, after that, look for him to quit the game that has never really treated him very well, what with injuries and illnesses that curtailed a mediocre career.
"The only thing I know about my future is that I won’t be a career minor leaguer, like some other guys,” Mankowski said. “I figured this was my last shot at the majors. If nothing great happens, I’ll fall on some other things.”
On July 21, after playing in what would be his final major
league game, Phil was sent back to Tidewater. He had had eight hits in 35
at-bats with the Mets, and finished the season for the Tides hitting
.275/.348/.371, his best numbers since 1976, in 375 at-bats in 106 games. After
the season he became a free agent. In the spring of 1983 the Syracuse Chiefs,
the Cleveland Indians’ AAA farm team in the International League, approached
Phil about signing with them as a backup third baseman and first baseman, but
he didn’t care for their offer and decided to retire.
The next mention I found of Phil was in the Springfield Union of March 4, 1984:
Former Tiger part-time third baseman Phil Mankowski is now managing Rusty Staub’s gourmet restaurant in New York City. He’s also a star in the Central Park softball league.
By the time this appeared Phil had already had a leave of
absence from his job, during which he took another job, as an actor. From Dave
Johnson’s column in the May 15 Evansville
Press:
Phil Mankowski…He’s No. 5, the one who’s doubled over
Phil Mankowski spent three months acting in “The Natural,” but he still worried he’d end up on the cutting room floor.
“We really didn’t know what to expect,” said Sue Mankowski, his wife. “So many of our friends warned us not to get our hopes up. They said that by the time it was edited, Phil might be out of it entirely.”
Not to worry. Mankowski has one of the more memorable—albeit painful—parts in the movie.
He plays the third baseman who gets hit in a vulnerable spot by a bad-hop ground ball.
“I’m afraid that’s going to be Phil’s trademark,” Sue Mankowski said. “Everybody wants to know how many takes it took to get it right.”
Mankowski prefers to tell people to “just look for the guy wearing No. 5.”
…Appearing in a movie was the furthest thing from Mankowski’s mind until little more than a year ago. After retiring from pro ball, he’d taken a job as floor manager of The Clubhouse, a New York City restaurant owned by his former Tigers and Mets teammate, Rusty Staub.
Mankowski oversees 15 employees. One of them, a waitress who is also an actress, suggested he try out for a part as one of Redford’s teammates.
“I really didn’t think much about it at first,” Mankowski said. “But then, I figured I had nothing to lose.”
“I put a photograph and a couple of my baseball cards in an envelope and went to the casting director’s office. When I rang the doorbell, there was no answer. So I wrote my phone number on the back of the envelope and slid it under the door.
“About two weeks later, he phoned and asked me to try out.”
Mankowski said more than 300 people auditioned for the baseball parts. He is one of 13 who were selected.
Three of the others also have baseball experience—Joe Charboneau, a former American League Rookie of the Year with the Cleveland Indians; Tony Ferrara, a batting practice pitcher with the Mets and New York Yankees, and Sibby Sisti, an infielder with several National League teams in the 1940s and 1950s.
Mankowski agreed it’s almost unbelievable that a person with absolutely no previous acting experience could land even a small part in a major motion picture. But he said over the past couple of years he’s learned to “never say never.”
“Weird things happen in New York.”
The fact most of the baseball scenes were filmed at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo seemed a little weird, too. Mankowski was born and raised in Buffalo and had played at the old ballpark in high school.
“The fact I was going home and it was a baseball movie made it almost too good to be true,” he said. “The whole thing was like a dream.”
Mankowski had to get Staub’s permission to take time off from the restaurant.
“He wouldn’t believe me at first either.”
Mankowski put in longer hours as an actor than he ever put in as a ballplayer.
“We were on location for 11 weeks—six days a week, 12 hours a day. Ninety percent of the time, I was in uniform.”
Mankowski has no speaking parts, but he’s in about half a dozen scenes.
“You’ve gotta know who you’re lookin’ for,” he said, “and you’ve gotta look fast.”
The scene in which he was hit by the bad-hop grounder required about 30 takes, Mankowski said…
Mankowski and his wife attended the premiere of “The Natural” in New York last week and went to see it again last weekend. He said being in the movie was “really neat—an experience I’ll never forget.” Seeing himself on the big screen “was like my first game in the big leagues—an experience I never thought could be duplicated.”
Mankowski, 31, said he received union wages while working on the film and also became eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild. But he said he has no plans to do any more acting “unless somebody needs me for a beer commercial.”
He and his wife both intend to stay in the restaurant business.
“Sue works at the same restaurant. She’s the office manager. Rusty has been very good to both of us.”
Mankowski became friends with Staub when they were teammates at Detroit between 1976 and ’79. They also played together in the Mets organization from ’80 to ’82.
Mankowski compiled an average of .264 in 269 big league games. He said he hasn’t had one day of regret since he quit baseball in March of ’83.
“Sometimes, the end comes pretty fast. I spent 12 years in baseball and loved every minute of it. Oh, sure. I’d loved to have played for 15 years, or 20, like Rusty’s done. But it wasn’t meant to be.
“I know ex-ballplayers who’ve been out of the game for 10 years, and they’re still bitter. But that’s not me.
“For Sue and me, what’s happening now is like Part 2 of our story. Life has been good to us. I feel very lucky.”
On May 20 the Colorado
Springs Gazette reprinted a story from Newsday
that covered pretty much the same ground, but, strangely, differed
significantly on the matter of Phil’s job: “Mankowski, 31, is a manager of the
Vertical Club, a health and recreational facility on the East Side in which
Staub is an investor.” Phil’s comment about the beer commercial in the Evansville Press article proved
prophetic, as seen in another article in the Press, from January 8, 1985:
Ex-Triplet’s acting career continues
Phil Mankowski is running with a pretty fast crowd.
First, it was Robert Redford.
Now, it’s Rodney Dangerfield.
Mankowski, the former Evansville Triplet infielder, played a minor role this summer in “The Natural,” a motion picture which starred Redford as an aging slugger for the New York Knights baseball team. Mankowski played the team’s third baseman.
Now Mankowski is in a Miller Lite beer commercial which features Dangerfield, the popular don’t-get-no-respect comedian, and female bodybuilder Lori Bowen-Rice. It’s the first time Miller Lite has highlighted a woman athlete in one of its spots.
The commercial was aired twice Sunday during CBS’ telecast of the NFL playoff game between the Chicago Bears and the San Francisco 49ers. Mankowski is the good-looking guy seated at the bar behind Bowen, making small talk with a blond.
Mankowski, 31, lives in New York City and works full-time as night manager of The Clubhouse, a restaurant owned by his former Detroit Tigers and New York Mets teammate, Rusty Staub…
Phil got one last Sporting
News mention on April 13, 1987:
When he woke up a day after undergoing hernia surgery in New York, reliever Roger McDowell—known for his voracious appetite—called New York Mets publicist Jay Horwitz in Florida to complain that he was hungry. So Horwitz called former major leaguer Phil Mankowski, who is the daytime manager of Rusty Staub’s New York restaurant, and arranged to have a double order of ribs, two baked potatoes and two brownies with whipped cream sent to McDowell’s hospital room.
After that I pretty much lose track of Phil, other than an
anonymous claim on a New York Mets fan message board in 2007 that “Just saw Phil the other day, and
sure enough he is now in the food service industry in the Western New York
region. Still doing very well and still in pretty good shape.” In 2011 he was
named to the Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame.
No comments:
Post a Comment