Bowa to become Yankees' third base coach ESPN.com news services
Larry Bowa accepted the New York Yankees' offer to become the team's third base coach Thursday.
A former manager of the San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies, Bowa said he's prepared to work for Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who doesn't hesitate to second-guess his coaches.
"You'll be on the hot seat. You don't like it, don't take the job," Bowa, who just completed his first season as a baseball analyst with ESPN, said recently at the World Series. "Everybody's got a boss -- I don't mean that [as in] 'The Boss.' Everybody's got a higher-up that you have to account for, and that's the way it is."
Bowa was a five-time All-Star as a player, and he managed San Diego in 1987 and 1988, and Philadelphia from 2001-04. He was a third-base coach for the Phillies (1988-96), the Angels (1997-99) and Seattle (2000).
"If another organization had called me, I'd have probably told them 'No thanks, I like what I'm doing,'" Bowa told the New York Daily News in a phone interview last weekend. "What happened in Philadelphia kind of turned me off to it all. I thought I did a pretty good job -- we were over .500 three of the four years I was there except for one year when we missed by one game. And then for it to end the way it did, I'm just sort of down on it now.
"But the Yankees, that's a special circumstance. I'd be very selective right now, certainly, but the Yankees are one team that I think I'd enjoy being a part of," Bowa added.
Luis Sojo has been the Yankees' third-base coach for the past two seasons. He's likely to be asked to move to first base if Bowa is hired to coach third.
"That's a demotion," Sojo told The Post of possibly being asked to vacate the third-base post to become first-base coach. "I don't know. I got to see what they are going to do. When I find out, I will make a decision. I like third base and I didn't do a bad job."
Like Torre, Bowa thought the Yankees were worn out during their playoff loss to Los Angeles after a regular season in which they didn't clinch a playoff berth until the next-to-last game.
"The Yankees had to fight all year to get in," Bowa said. "When you're fighting all year and fighting all year, it wears you out a little bit."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
