PITTSBURGH— When Chuck Tanner talks baseball, people listen.

Tanner, 77, of New Castle held court this week at PNCPark, serving as an honorary coach on Houston Astros manager Phil Garner's National League staff for the All-Star game.

From stolen bases to starting pitching, former players to current managers, the always-positive Tanner can talk about the game for hours, captivating his audience while doing so.

Garner was the former Pittsburgh Pirates manager's second baseman when the team won the World Series title in 1979. Tanner also managed Garner in Oakland in 1976.

Garner, known as "Scrap Iron"from his playing days, became a manager because of Tanner and petitioned the National League to allow Tanner to be one of his All-Star Game coaches this year.

"For him to take the time to do that, managing Houston in the middle of the pennant race and all ... When I got that call, I cried,"Tanner said.

"As far as I'm concerned, I probably don't have a baseball career to this extent without Chuck Tanner,"Garner said. "In a small way, hopefully, this honors Chuck and what he's meant to baseball all over, particularly here in Pittsburgh."

Tanner admired the hard-nosed way Garner played the game. When he was named manager of the Pirates in 1977, one of his first moves was to bring Garner to the Pirates.

"I knew what kind of player he was, I wanted him and I knew I could get him,"Tanner said, recalling the nine-player trade Pittsburgh made with Oakland to acquire Garner on March 15, 1977.

"The A's had Joe Rudi, Sal Bando, Rollie Fingers — all kinds of talent. I knew they'd part with Garner, but they made us give them six guys to get him. I told our general manager to make the deal anyway."

The Pirates gave up a wealth of young talent, including young sluggers Mitchell Page and Tony Armas, and relief ace Dave Giusti in that trade. Tanner and the organization were criticized for the move at the time.

Then again, that's how Tanner was. He threw starting pitchers for 300-plus innings, put runners in motion repeatedly and turned the disgruntled Dick Allen into the American League MVP.

"I did things my way,"Tanner said. "I never worried about what the fans thought, what the writers thought or what the players thought. I was the manager.

"I'm the only manager in baseball history to have teams steal a combined 600 bases over two consecutive years. If you played for me, you learned how to run the bases."

Players who stole bases nowhere else in their careers — Bill Madlock, Jorge Orta, Sal Bando, Ed Ott, etc. — stole bases for Tanner.

"Bando stole 20 for me my one year in Oakland,"Tanner said. "He didn't steal 20 bases total during the rest of his career."

While major league pitchers rarely throw 225 innings in a season today, Tanner's Chicago White Sox of the early 1970s had Wilbur Wood, Terry Forster, Tom Bradley and Stan Bahnsen comprise a rotation that threw well over 300 innings each.

"I subscribed to the theory that the more you pitch, the better you pitch,"Tanner said. "Bahnsen won 20 the year I kept him out there. All of those guys located the ball well and hit the corners.

"Do I think pitchers are being pampered today. Yes, I do. Absolutely,"Tanner added.

Allen was branded one of baseball's trouble makers in the prime of his career, being traded from the Phillies to the Dodgers, then peddled off to the White Sox a year later.

Tanner didn't see it that way.

"That man had Hall of Fame abilities,"he said. "He took infield practice at every position. More importantly, he wanted to win and knew how to win."

The White Sox finished 87-67 during that 1972 season after losing 106 games just two years earlier.

And Tanner's long, successful managerial career was under way.

"I'll always be a Pirate," he said Monday, glancing down at the Pirates jersey he was wearing. "This is where I'm from and this is the town I got my (World Series) ring.

"Istill love this game as much today as I did when I was 17."

And he convinced Garner to go into managing.

"He was so into the game as a player. I told him, 'Phil, you have to manage.' He was afraid of time away from family,"Tanner said. "Hey, when the kids are out of school, they can join you. That's the way I did it."

Numerous other players under Tanner — Tim Foli, Ken Macha, Bucky Dent, Bill Robinson, Ott, Bill Madlock among them — are big league coaches or managing in the minor leagues today.

"It's rewarding to see that,"Tanner said. "But Jim Leyland is the best manager in baseball today. He knows how to communicate and motivate.

"He gets the most out of every player on his roster. He knows when to hug them, he knows when to kick them. More than anything else, that's the key."