Sorry to interject a sports theme into the diaries, but one of my favorite baseball figures, Gene Mauch, has passed away at the age of seventy-nine.
Mauch was the manager of my beloved (and formerly hapless) Angels in ’82 and ’86, when they came soooo close to winning the pennant, I could almost taste it.
He is most remembered, however, for being at the helm of the ’64 Phillies when they went through one of the worst end of season collapses in the history of baseball. This tendency to lose, at the cusp of victory, became known, pejoratively, as the “Gene Mauch Jinx.”
He was a truly gifted manager, however, with a mind like a steel trap: He knew what to do in every situation, without looking at notes or scouting reports.
Mauch was probably the best manager to never win a World Series.
There will never be another manager like him.
John Kruk just noted that Phillies fans still booed Mauch more than forty years after the collapse — one of the reasons I’ve never liked Phillies fans (sorry Boo, Atrios, et al) — but he’ll always be a winner in my book.
Go with God, big guy.
