With Iseman On Vacation, Who Knows What Can Happen! 
Dave Iseman Recently 
Disappeared In The Swirling Vortex That He Calls A Family For A Vacation, 
Foolishly Leaving The Hazleton Bureau In The Hands Of His Overworked, Underfed 
Minions.

Anna Wilk 
Aug. 7, 1996 
Anna Wilk, Of Wilkes-barre, Died Wednesday In Wilkes-barre General Hospital.

By SEAN McADAM; Providence Journal-Bulletin
 Saturday, August 10, 1996 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Page: 





That Butch Hobson would voluntarily confess to buying cocaine last May in
Pawtucket, R.I., and days later begin a public campaign suggesting he might
eventually be exonerated and keep his job as manager of Triple A
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, should not come as a shock. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 To those who dealt with Hobson on a regular basis, the discrepancies
between his private musings and public statements could be disconcerting. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In 1994, Hobson fully understood he was not a favorite of new general
manager Dan Duquette and would not be retained as Boston Red Sox manager
beyond that season. On Thursday, Hobson lost another job, when the
Philadelphia Phillies fired him as Red Barons manager in the aftermath of his
arrest on drug possession charges. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 "I'm not the guy (Duquette) wants," Hobson admitted to friends during the
summer of 1994. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Yet when he appeared at a press conference the day he was fired, Hobson
remarked that he was disappointed, because he thought that he was summoned
from his home in Alabama the night before so he could be given a contract
extension. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Hobson thought no such thing, and it was times like these that his Southern
gentleman stance seemed transparent and contrived. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Like many people, Hobson's private life and public image were often at
odds. In Hobson's case, the two rarely coexisted peacefully. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 A simple, down-home Southerner on the surface, Hobson is actually a mass of
contradictions. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The son of a football coach, Hobson was immersed in Alabama's football
culture. But it was baseball which he chose for his primary college sport and
ultimately his career. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 When he was selected as Red Sox manager -- prematurely, at the very least
-- Hobson was considered a younger, more aggressive replacement for Joe
Morgan, who was fired despite guiding Boston to two division titles in 3
seasons. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Former Red Sox general partner Haywood Sullivan, himself a Southerner and
also a former college football player, was Hobson's biggest benefactor.
Sullivan favored a tough approach with players, and figured Hobson would apply
a no-nonsense approach to the job. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 As manager of Boston's minor league teams in New Britain and Pawtucket,
Hobson earned a reputation as a skipper willing to spend long hours on
instruction and unafraid to discipline his players. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 But that Butch Hobson never surfaced in Boston. Instead, Hobson played the
role of Southern gentleman. Unfailing polite ("Yes ma'am," and "no, sir"),
Hobson seemed at the same time intimidated by his high-profile players,
unwilling or unable to confront them. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 When Hobson would challenge a player to improve his performance or effort,
it sometimes backfired. Once, while managing in the minors, Hobson goaded one
of his players in a bar, repeatedly questioning his toughness. The player
warned Hobson to quit and then lost patience and dropped Hobson with a right
to the jaw. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Hobson's penchant for living hard -- the genteel Southerner could turn into
a hell-raising good ol' boy when the situation dictated -- was legendary
during his playing days and his minor league managerial days. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 But the Red Sox served him early notice that they would not tolerate any
late-night forays that could embarrass the club. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Two months after his surprise hiring in 1991, Hobson appeared at the annual
winter meetings, as all major league managers do. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Staying late at the hotel bar on the first night of the meetings, Hobson
renewed baseball acquaintances and introduced himself to the beat writers who
would be covering the team. His behavior was hardly out-of-control, but when
word reached Red Sox management of his late-night appearance in the bar, he
was told in no uncertain terms to keep a lower profile. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 From that time on, he did. He often warmly complimented his players for
their own comportment in team hotels and on team flights. "We've got a lot of
good family men on this team," he would often say, beaming. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 In retrospect, Hobson was horribly miscast as a major league manager. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 His daily briefing sessions with beat writers, a routine all major league
managers must endure, were painful to observe. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Despite the simple nature of most of the queries -- Is Player A healthy?
Why is player B having difficulty at the plate? What are your plans for Player
C? -- Hobson treated the task as if it was a trip to the dentist's chair. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Rather than address these questions with candor, Hobson evidently saw it as
his duty to act as cheerleader for his players. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 No matter how poorly the team was playing or how badly an individual was
slumping, Hobson maintained a relentlessly upbeat approach, often to the point
of absurdity. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 "I really believe we're going to bust out of this, starting tonight," he
would say hours before game time. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 When his predictions proved to be sheer wishful thinking, Hobson wasn't
deterred in the least and would immediately begin a new Pollyannish-bit of
soothsaying. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 If he took offense at second-guessing or personal attacks in the newspaper,
he never let it show. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The only two times Hobson displayed his anger toward the media came on
issues relating to the image of the Red Sox. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Once, Hobson became enraged when a published report suggested that an
end-of-season breakup party in Detroit had been sparsely attended. To suggest
that the Red Sox were somehow less than a happy family was more than Hobson
could stand. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 On another occasion, during a September road trip, veterans forced rookies
to wear loud, outdated and mismatched clothing on a charter plane from New
York to Toronto and through Canadian customs. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The rookies complied. One player, Ken Ryan, was given a dress to wear, to
the delight of the veteran players. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 When newspaper reports made reference to Ryan's ensemble, an enraged Red
Sox chief executive officer John Harrington phoned Hobson in Toronto and
registered his displeasure in no uncertain times. The franchise's conservative
sensibilities had been breached. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Hobson, in turn, angrily confronted beat writers that afternoon, insisting
they had been guilty of shoddy reporting. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 "It wasn't a ... dress!" fumed Hobson. "It was a jumper, with a nice
blouse!" &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 In general, Hobson would do anything to avoid embarrassing his players, but
occasionally he would lose patience with them. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Asked after a particularly awful mid-season defeat in Kansas City how his
team could still be displaying such poor fundamentals, Hobson didn't hesitate. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 "Buddy," he drawled, "I don't have any (expletive) idea." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Sadly, that was too often the case during Hobson's managerial tenure. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Analysis &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Hobson's Life An Uneasy Tale Of Contradiction Former Red Barons Manager Also Was Hurt By The Discrepancies In His Private And Public Lives