When Gabe Kapler came of age as a baseball fan, in Southern California in the early 1980s, he named his dog Pete for his first sports hero, Pete Rose, who played far away in Philadelphia. Pete the dog was a dirty, grimy mutt, Kapler said, some sort of terrier mix — a hustler, like Rose. Back then Kapler loved to wear a red, satin Phillies warm-up jacket, and a few years later he adopted another Philadelphia athlete, Charles Barkley of the 76ers, as a favorite.
That was the extent of Kapler’s ties to Philadelphia before the Phillies named him their manager in October, at age 42.