Manchester Boutique
Thursday, December 1, 2016

The honeymoon period that Manchester Maulers General Manager Morris Cooley enjoyed with the local nine’s fan base ended some time ago, but it now appears that the Pavlovian control that Cooley has exerted over Maulers’ owner Arturo Bruto is also beginning to wane. Having engineered the ouster and exile of incompetent former GM Jeff Dudas in a series of brilliantlyexecutedmaneuvers that saw him at his Machiavellian best, Cooley’s guidance of the Maulers to the Rodriguez Cup finals in 2012 solidified his grasp on the reigns of the franchise. He could, in Bruto’s eyes, do no wrong.

And so, recall: the head-scratching trades; the non-intuitive free agent signings; the undisguised contempt for the annual PEBA amateur draft; the multiple rosterteardowns; and the nearly complete media blackout for seasons on end. These foul displays of omnipotence were Cooley’s hallmarks. They were the distinctive markings of a general manager unconstrained.

To be sure, Cooley has, since his days as the Maulers’ head scout, displayed an undeniable ability to unearth baseball talent where others failed to tread. With rare exception, his teams have consistently over-performed the expectations of most seasoned baseball observers. It is almost certainly this manifest competence that has kept Cooley in Bruto’s good graces for so long. Bruto – far more consumed with his once quixotic but now prophetic quest to reunite the rock band Bush than with anything having to do with the operation of the Maulers – has been only too happy to leave the heavy lifting to Cooley. But there are signs that the haze of Bruto’s splendid indifference is beginning to lift.

Consider, for example, the wild spectrum of Bruto’s behavior during the brutally disappointing 2016 season. The Maulers, you will remember, came into the season with hopes to compete for the playoffs and, potentially, the Rodriguez Cup itself. Cooley reconstructed the major league roster in breathtaking fashion, complimenting an emerging young core of players with All-Star-caliber talent through trades and the free agency market. The 2015-16 off-season appeared, at the time, to be Cooley’s pièce de résistance; anyone who had ever questioned his heavy-handed (if always inscrutable) ways was left awestruck, as Cooley intended.

For the first time since 2013, Maulers’ spring training headquarters in Panama City, Florida burst with optimism and excitement. This would be the team that would justify all of Cooley’s scheming. This team would forever mark Cooley as the baseball genius that his supporters claimed him to be. And no supporter had proclaimed Cooley’s genius any louder – albeit in a voice that devolved with disconcerting regularity into a farcical approximation of Gavin Rossdale’s smooth baritone – than Bruto.

Indeed, Cooley’s magnificent off-season efforts stirred something primal in Bruto’s breast. Was it boredom that manifested in the aftermath of his successful attempt to reunite Bush? Was it rekindled nostalgia for boyhood dreams of baseball glory that had long since evacuated his body and soul? Was it a long-needed recalibration of his medication? Or perhaps, was there something more sinister and devious afoot? Whatever it was that jolted him out of his baseball somnambulance, one thing was certain: Bruto suddenly gave a f#$*, and something righteous.

Accordingly, when the Maulers began April with a shocking ineptness that produced a 6-18 record, Bruto was inconsolable. He holed up in the freshly renovated office suites at Whiten Field for days on end, seeking solace in the dulcet tones of his musical heroes. But “Glycerine,” on these occasions, offered only cold comfort. Employees reported seeing Bruto wandering Whiten Field’s sparkling and spacious hallways at all hours, his gait halted and his physique wasted, as though he had consumed neither food nor drink for days on end.

These were, by all accounts, harrowing times for the Maulers’ owner. No longer the doofus figurehead of local sports radio skits, Bruto was quite literally living and dying with his team. Even Cooley, I am told, betrayed his always cool exterior out of concern for the stricken owner. Although Cooley later vehemently denied them, multiple reports claimed that, following a particularly dispiriting Maulers loss, Cooley personally removed Bruto’s limp body from the owner’s box, carrying him like a child to the trainer’s room for emergency medical care.

A 13-16 May brought about little improvement in Bruto’s condition. By now, the rumors heretofore limited to the confines of the Whiten Field corridors began to filter into media accounts. These accounts became so prominent by June (a month in which the Maulers improved to a passable 14-12) that Cooley was compelled, in a rare moment of media interaction, to issue a terse, dubious statement regarding Bruto’s health. “Manchester Maulers owner Arturo Bruto is, overall, in sparkling health,” Cooley equivocated. “He is, of course, disappointed by the way that the season has gone thus far, but he has decided that the best thing that he can do is to limit his public appearances and media availability so that our players can concentrate on the task at hand: delivering to the residents of Manchester the highest quality baseball possible.” This was no deft touch on Cooley’s part, for his statement simply fueled speculation as to the “true” nature of Bruto’s “malady.”

The end of July (a month marked both by an 11-14 regression and Cooley finally admitting that he had constructed a historically bad bullpen – “Yes, alright, it’s pretty clear to everyone that these guys suck,”) seemed finally to rouse Bruto. By the beginning of August, the reclusive owner had burst back onto the public scene. Bearing little trace of his months-long convalescence, Bruto pursued a frenetic pace. He attended countless fan forums, at which all sorts of existential vitriol was directed at him and Cooley. (“If the Maulers were the only team in the PEBA,” claimed one especially dispirited fan, “they still couldn’t win the Rodriguez Cup!”) He began to regularly frequent the Maulers clubhouse, dispensing his special brand of hackneyed wisdom. (“You’ve got to get right back on that trike after it leaps off the cliff!” Bruto instructed a puzzled Jimmy Brandt). And he began – ominously for Cooley – to assert himself in the media. (“Look here, Lewis: we all know that what this franchise needs is a public face, and I intend to be that face!”) [ed. note: Bruto was apparently mistakenly directing his comment to Boutique correspondent L.H. Thompson]

It made little difference that the Maulers performed seven games over .500 over the last two months of the season. Now oblivious to his club’s actual play, Bruto maintained his punishing, manic public schedule. Press conferences were hastily arranged and executed, events at which Bruto consistently refused to allow Cooley to answer media questions – at least, on those rare occasions when the GM was so inclined. More and more, Bruto was asserting himself as the image of the franchise, a move that increasingly displaced the tight-lipped and dour Cooley from the club’s public profile. With Bush reunited, Bruto had finally found a new outlet for his occasionally prodigious work ethic: he would pull the Maulers up by their bootstraps. Whether that effort laid waste to Morris Cooley’s most carefully laid plans was, apparently, of no concern whatever.

And thus, the Maulers enter the 2017 off-season marked by ominous signs. It is a franchise bedeviled by the burdens of failed on-field expectations. It is a franchise sagging under the weight of financial decisions that have effectively deprived Cooley of the ability to engage the free agent market, which has historically provided him his strongest source of talent. And it is, by appeal to all evidence, a franchise beset by a bitter power struggle between its taciturn but thoroughly capable general manager and its bipolar, incompetent owner. Indeed, storm clouds are on the horizon: God help us all.