At first Bowa calmly explained he couldn't see the outfield well enough - with men on first and second - to gauge whether or not to send runners on anything in the gaps. Then, once Bowa felt he was getting undressed, the veins began popping:
“We got a memo and an edict, and they’re adamant about the box and stuff,’’ [Montague] said. “Don’t go up in front of the box toward home plate, and don’t get any closer to the foul lines. I told Bowa in the bottom of the fifth, because he got up close. And that’s what caught my eye. And I just told him, ‘Bo, you got the memo, we got the memo, and you’ve got to stay back.’ I went over and told Joe in-between innings what I told Bo. And Bo just said, ‘I’m going to do it the way I’ve always been doing it.’
“I said, ‘Bo, if you go up, I’m going to have to run you.’ And he said, ‘Do what you’ve got to do, and it is what it is.’ When he got up in front of it again, I said, ‘Bo, I told you once, now get back in the box.’ He argued it, and finally I said, ‘You’re gone.’ So I gave him every chance in the book and he defied it.’’
"I did it all spring, nobody said a word,'' [Bowa] said. "I did it yesterday, nobody said a word. It's impossible to coach third and stay in the box with a runner at second.''It was even more uncomfortable once Joe Torre came out to calm his third base guru. Torre's bad knees had him helplessly tussling with the hotheaded Bowa to no avail. Any moment, it seemed, Torre's knees would buckle and yet another replacement surgery waited on the horizon.
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