Cyclones' new manager has words to live by

It was the most meaningful meaningless phrase Rich Donnelly has ever heard. The new Brooklyn Cyclones manager was the Pirates' third-base coach during the 1992 playoffs when his teenage daughter Amy noticed how animated he became when he shouted to baserunners. So she asked him, "What are you telling those guys, 'The chicken runs at midnight?' "

He had no clue what she meant by "the chicken runs at midnight." Nor did she. Amy told her dad, "It just came out."

It didn't matter. The coach was just happy to have her there, in between her chemotherapy treatments for a brain tumor.

She was brought to the game in Atlanta by a neighbor in Texas, a man originally from Brooklyn. With the way things tend to work out, the new Cyclones manager is not surprised now that the guy was from Brooklyn.

Anyway, "the chicken runs at midnight" became a family slogan. After Amy left it as a phone message for her father at the ballpark, it became the motto for the team, too. The Pirates did not beat the Braves in that series, but they sure made an 18-year-old happy when she heard second baseman Jose Lind shout her phrase in the dugout on national TV. She held on to that joy after the doctors said her tumor could not be cured.

When it came time for her family to decide what to engrave on the tombstone, there was no contest: "Amy Elizabeth Donnelly. April 16, 1974-Jan. 28, 1993. The Chicken Runs at Midnight."

To this day, she is a huge influence on her dad. Donnelly always had been considered a good baseball man, but since Amy's death, he has focused on being a good man, period. He rekindled his Catholic faith. He began giving motivational speeches. He became involved in charitable causes such as a buddy's road race in Haddonfield, N.J., for young cancer patients. It is held under the stars and is called "The Chicken Run at Midnight."

"She has touched so many lives since then. I've made so many connections with people," Donnelly said on the phone from Port St. Lucie, where he is running the Mets' extended spring training team and preparing for the Cyclones' opener in June.

His relationship with Amy is, as they say, soon to be a major motion picture. Well, maybe not so soon, but it will be made eventually. That is a promise from Anthony Zuiker, creator of the CSI television series. He heard about the story from CSI vice president Orlin Dobreff, who is married to Donnelly's daughter LeAnn.

Donnelly took last year off from baseball to work with Zuiker on the script, meeting at the executive's Hollywood Hills home (he saw neighbor Betty White tending flowers across the street). Zuiker since has been summoned back to help energize the TV program but vowed that he will finish the film.

Meanwhile, the coach realized how much he missed the game. He placed a few calls after getting the OK from his wife. "She told me, 'Go back to work, do us both a favor,' " he said. When the Mets asked him to manage their short-season Class A club, he didn't have to think for a minute. Binghamton manager Wally Backman, who played under Donnelly with the 1990 Pirates, had told him: "You've got to take this job. Other than the big leagues, it's the greatest place to be. They treat it like a big-league team."

The Mets were unfazed that Donnelly had not worked in the minors or managed anywhere in 30 years ("I tried to say that real fast during the interview," he said). They see in him the kind of person whom they want guiding their prospects.

"I find him to be one of the best baseball people and one of the most entertaining people I've ever been around in my life," said Mets manager Terry Collins, who was the Pirates' bullpen coach when Donnelly was in Pittsburgh. "He's a good, solid baseball man. He teaches all phases of the game and yet he can make it fun at the same time.

"You cannot find anybody who Rich Donnelly ever managed or coached that will say a bad word about him. Not one guy."

Donnelly will have plenty of stories to tell those Cyclones kids. He can talk about that Sunday afternoon when the 1992 Pirates clinched the division against the high-priced Mets. He can tell about the night Backman, then a Pirate, stormed the tunnel and tried to get into the Mets' dugout to confront Frank Viola, now the Cyclones' new pitching coach. "Davey [Johnson] intercepted him," Donnelly said, recalling that Viola had laughed on the mound after striking out Backman.

Those vignettes probably won't be included in the movie. This one will, though: Bottom of the 11th, Game 7, 1997 World Series. Donnelly was coaching third for the Marlins, having moved to Florida with his Pirates boss, Jim Leyland.

The coach said a few perfunctory words to the runner on third base, Craig Counsell, who was known as The Chicken for the way he flapped his arm at the plate. Donnelly leaped wildly as Counsell scored on Edgar Renteria's winning hit.

It was the happiest moment of Donnelly's professional life, but he saw his sons Tim and Mike, who were Marlins batboys, crying hysterically. He frantically asked why. Tim said, "Look at the clock."

Sure enough, it read "12:00."

The Chicken had run at midnight.

And the sobbing third-base coach, having spent his career giving signs, got the feeling he finally had received one.