Best Part Of Lee Elia's Baseball Career Is Last

Lee Elia is sitting in the back yard of his country home in Odessa, Fla. It is another warm early-autumn evening, and Elia and his wife, Priscilla, are looking at the lily beds and the peaceful woods and talking about their future.

The 1996 baseball season has just ended and in these quiet moments Elia is as far away from the game as he can get. He is enjoying the peace and the view and this time with his family. He is wondering if maybe this is where he should be all of the time. Tending the gardens, watching his 7-year-old grow up, maybe scouting for some big-league club.

Maybe after 39 years in organized ball, it is time to retire. Time to thank the game for its memories and its opportunities; time to tell his manager, Lou Piniella, to find another bench coach; time for the quiet life.

Elia has asked Piniella and General Manager Woody Woodward to give him a week to think about his future. This is the night that decision will be made and Priscilla knows the answer before her husband does.

"It's not right in your heart yet to leave," she tells him. "I think there's some more work to be done. I don't think, if you would leave this year, that you would be happy. Why don't you go back for another year."

A year later, the time is, if not right, better. Elia is 60. He has been in baseball for 40 years and he has survived a bout with prostate cancer.

The Mariners have won their second American League West championship in three years and, as hitting instructor, Elia has presided over a record-setting season of home runs and hits. If he leaves now, he leaves on top.

"It's been a wonderful run," he says on the eve of the AL Division Series with Baltimore. "These have been my best five years in the game. This time in Seattle was special, because when we came here, they had had only one .500 season. There was a lot of work to do and it was fun doing it."

Quietly last week, Elia announced his retirement. He didn't expect much reaction. "I'm just another guy who went down this road," he says.

He is much more. His legacy will be enormous.

As manager of the Chicago Cubs, he coaxed greatness out of Ryne Sandberg and he turned Lee Smith from a starter into a closer.

He worked with Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose in Philadelphia and Don Mattingly in New York. He gave Dan Wilson a program that helped raise the Mariner catcher's batting average some 60 points. He coached Hall of Famers and he managed Cy Young winner Steve Bedrosian.

Elia is baseball. Rough hewn, but sentimental. All spit and vinegar. For Elia, every day at the park is a party. His work is his pleasure.

"I just decided, it's time to go home," Elia says, his voice cracking slightly. Tears forming at the corners of his eyes. "I guess when you turn 60, you start thinking a little bit more about spending more time with those people who have loved you for 40 years.

"Now's the time, but it's not going to be easy. I always can't wait to go to the park. It's been like that for 40 years. How many men can say they can't wait to go to work? I'm kind of blessed in that respect."

The flip side is that every time he goes back to Odessa he wonders how he can ever leave.

"It comes down to a decision only you can make," Elia says. "A lot of people have told me I'm crazy. That I'm too young. You've got things that you can offer. But they forget one thing. I've got a great wife and a great kid and that's got the edge right now over coming back."

Elia planned a life in football. He was an outstanding running back at the University of Delaware. He thought he could play in the NFL.

Then he got hurt and he got baseball.

"Back then I never dreamed I'd be in baseball," he says. "I loved football. I loved the thrill of breaking a tackle and breaking a play open, going 67 yards for a TD. I was consumed with playing football. But when I broke my hip and I couldn't play for a year, fate took me to Nova Scotia and I played baseball and signed a contract (with the Phillies)."

He became one of baseball's foot soldiers. He thrived in the game's shadows, spending much of his playing career in backwater towns like Elmira, Williamsport, Little Rock and Chattanooga. He had 95 games in the big leagues, 80 with the White Sox and 15 with the Cubs.

He became a student and learned he could communicate his knowledge of the difficult science of hitting to other players. He turned a summer trip to Nova Scotia into a 40-year career.

"When you think about a guy who was born in center city Philadelphia," Elia says, "and his dad came from the old country, to have the privilege of managing two major-league clubs (Cubs, Philadelphia), be a third-base coach in the (1980) World Series, to be a dugout coach in an All-Star Game and to be a part of this for five years with the Mariners, I consider myself really lucky.

"And, at this time, to have beaten the early stages of prostate cancer, I mean, how lucky can you be?"

If you're scripting the dream ending to Elia's career, you have one of his guys, maybe Dan Wilson, line a double into the gap that scores the eventual winning run in the final World Series game against Atlanta.

"That would be the greatest scenario of all," Elia says. "To come in with a championship in 1980 and to leave with one. That would be the ultimate."

Lee Elia's last ride is about to begin.