Charlie Manuel, Larry Bowa remember Dallas Green

CLEARWATER, Fla. – Larry Bowa didn't get any sleep Wednesday night.

After hearing Delaware native and ex-Phillies manager Dallas Green died Wednesday afternoon at 82 following a long battle with kidney disease, Bowa's night was filled with thoughts ranging from everything Green taught him to his booming voice and the respect he commanded.

"Last night was probably the toughest since I’ve put on this uniform," Bowa said Thursday morning.

"This spring, him not being here, you miss that, ‘Hey Bow’ that you hear from three fields away. You miss that."

Green, a baseball lifer who filled nearly every role in the organization over his 60-plus years in the game, earned immortality for leading the Phillies to their first World Series title in 1980.

Related: Delaware native, ex-Phillies manager Dallas Green dies at 82

More on Green: His life in baseball

"It doesn’t matter if we’ve got 10 Pete Roses, we don’t win a World Series without Dallas," said Bowa.

Charlie Manuel, the only other World Series-winning manager in Phillies history, remembered the laughs, how Green's passion for baseball never wavered, and bonding over dinner and cocktails to help soothe a rocky start to their relationship.

"Baseball's going to miss Dallas Green," Manuel said Thursday. "I'm going to miss him."

Green's outspoken, public criticism of Manuel and his managerial tactics created problems. Before a game in August 2006, simmering tension between the two boiled over when Manuel confronted Green for comments he'd made during a radio interview a few weeks earlier.

"It was kind of like a challenge to me, but at the same time, I didn't think he had any right to challenge me because I thought I was manager and I was going to manage the way I wanted to and do what I wanted to," Manuel explained of their shaky beginning. "That's why I got hired to be a manager. And I felt like if I didn't know something I shouldn't be sitting in that seat as manager.

"When I look back, maybe he was testing me or having me show him," he added. "But I understood him, and I think at the end he felt he understood me."

The two eventually became good friends. On the night the Phillies won the 2008 World Series, Green joined Manuel in the manager's office at Citizens Bank Park. There they celebrated over Seagram's VO whiskey.

"Both of us are old school, but I’d say he’s more old school because he would challenge you like a devil’s advocate," Manuel said. "He’s like a Billy Martin kind of guy. He’ll tell you what he expects out of you, but at the same time, he’ll tell you that you can’t do something. That’s a big challenge to you."

Bowa's relationship with Green spanned 50 years. They met as Bowa came up through the Phillies' minor-league system after signing as an amateur free agent in 1965. Green managed Bowa from 1979-81 and then in 1982, as Cubs' general manager, traded Ivan de Jesus to the Phillies for Bowa and future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg.

Bowa credits Green for instilling mental toughness and demanding that every player gives everything he has for every pitch, every inning in every game. Often that meant Green employed a tough-love approach with his Phillies teams, once telling his players, "Look in the mirror. You’re not as good as you think you are."

Green was the essence of Philadelphia.

"I remember him telling me in the early '70s, if you’re not mentally tough you’ll get run right out of this city," Bowa said. "And as I’ve watched, people that aren’t mentally tough in this game, they don’t last very long here."

Bowa recalled one day when he and Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt had a screaming match. The next day, Green went up to Bowa, who was expecting to get chewed out for getting on Schmidt.

Instead, Green told Bowa, "That was good."

"He was a blue collar man, that lived in a blue-collar city that wanted you to play blue-collar," Bowa said. "He wanted the uniform dirty, he wanted you to scrap and claw, he liked when we argued, he liked when teammates argued."

Green held his players to a high standard, regardless if you were a bench player or a Hall of Famer. Sometimes that rubbed people the wrong way, but even though Bowa recalled often being a scapegoat during Green's team meetings, it didn't bother him.

"I’m glad that I was able to play for him, and I’m glad he put a ring on his finger," Bowa said.

Contact Meghan Montemurro at mmontemurro@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @M_Montemurro.