A Whole New Ball Game

On a recent sun-drenched afternoon, the faded blue seats of Greer Stadium are one shade lighter than the sky. There’s a game tonight, and the Nashville Sounds are taking batting practice, socking balls into the far green reaches of the outfield. Frank Kremblas’ angular face is turned in their direction—you can even see the swings reflected in his mirrored shades. But it’s impossible to know exactly where he is looking, or what he is thinking.

Kremblas, the Sounds’ 21st manager in 30 years of baseball at Greer Stadium, gives nothing away. He’s not much for small talk, and extracting personal information is like squeezing granite for water. He does not suffer fools gladly, or at all. Without the glasses, his eyes can throw a piercing look that bores through steel, scaring the crap out of any player who dares to arrive late. He does not sit still easily, and he has neither the folksy charm nor the gruff but lovable manner of the stereotypical dugout denizen in Hollywood baseball movies. By the way, Frank Kremblas hates Hollywood baseball movies.

In fact, don’t get Kremblas started on his beefs. For instance, the Reds organization that drafted him in the 23rd round in 1989—especially Jim Bowden, who’s “a prick.” (Bowden, now the controversy-stirring GM of the Washington Nationals, once worked in player development for the Reds.) And politicians. The lights at Greer. Tardiness. Country music. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. O’Hare Airport. And United Airlines. Especially United Airlines.

“I had paid $400 to fly home early from an away series about a month ago,” Kremblas says, clearly still pissed. “I had to change airlines to make the connection in O’Hare, the worst airport in the country.” The Sounds may be fielding flies in his sunglasses, summer days don’t get any brighter, but Kremblas is suddenly somewhere else—back at a check-in counter in Chicago, ticking off hassles ranging from delayed flights to an obstreperous clerk who wouldn’t let him check or carry on his luggage.

“I asked her what she would suggest I do about my suitcase,” Kremblas continues, spitting out words like the sunflower seeds he chews throughout a game, one leg pumping in place like a piston. “She says, ‘I don’t know. Throw it away?’ I looked at her and said, ‘Where’s the trash can?’ She didn’t look like she believed me, but she pointed one out. I ripped the tags off the suitcase, left it beside the trashcan, and got on the plane. I had to go shopping for some new clothes when I got back because that was pretty much what I had. I hate United.”

The harangue confirms what Sounds fans and visiting players have suspected for the past two years: don’t challenge Frank Kremblas unless you’re ready for the consequences. He looks like a human bullet: shaved head, not an ounce of body fat on his streamlined build. A relative whippersnapper among league managers, he is not somebody you’d call “Pops.” Where his peers often sit nailed to their slice of wood in the dugout, Kremblas fidgets through every game. He’s up and down, up and down, up at the rail or down on the bench. When the Sounds are at bat, he assumes his place on the third-base line, his panoramic vision taking in the batter, the base-runners, the pitcher, the catcher, the officiating crew—and between batters, the women in the stands. He either stands ramrod straight or bent at the waist, hands on his knees, poised like a cat ready to spring.

“Other players are always asking us, ‘What’s up with your skipper? Is he weird?’ ” says Sounds infielder Brad Nelson. “He is so intense, there’s no way he could get any more intense.”

That intensity, though, has given a shot of excitement to a franchise in need of some juice. Since 2005—when Frank Kremblas assumed the helm of an all-new affiliation with the Milwaukee Brewers and an entirely new roster—the Sounds have turned into something more than a good team. They’ve given fans a show on the field. Sure, marketing has helped—the Bible-based bobbleheads, the Thirsty Thursdays. But under Kremblas’ Zenlike instruction to play with passion, not emotion, the players have brought scrappy new energy to their games, coming from behind time after time when all looked lost.

Last Thursday and Friday night against Omaha, for example, the games ended with walk-off home runs by Joe Dillon and Callix Crabbe, respectively—the first time for that feat in Nashville in 10 seasons. Then, on Sunday, Lance Nix hit a two-run homer in the sixth to take a lead the team would not lose for their fifth win in a row. Those dingers and subsequent wins put Nashville back in first place in the PCL North Division, and in possession of the best record in the entire league. That kind of drama puts butts in bleachers—and as the team rallies support for its still-debated new stadium, it couldn’t come at a better time.