Stan Musial died today. He’s easily one of the top ten best players to ever play the game of baseball. Earl Weaver died today. He’s easily one of the top ten best managers in the history of baseball. I never got to see Musial play, but I enjoyed watching Weaver manage the Baltimore Orioles in the 1970’s. He was managing them for the first game I ever saw in person, in 1977 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. His epic battles with Billy Martin form some of the happiest memories of my childhood. He was a character, and he and Martin basically formed as the archetype in my mind for what a baseball manager should be like.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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We’re about the same age I believe so you may recall how early in the ’78 season during a Yankees-Orioles game Martin had his pitchers brushing back the Orioles hitters with chin music. At one point when Weaver came out to argue with the umpires he told Thurman Munson when near home plate, “I’m going to get you.” And Martin went hysterical and screamed at Weaver threatening to come over to the Oriole dugout and beat him up.
Weaver was actually a very cerebral manager. One of the first to rely on data for match up advantages. Like Stengel he platooned heavily and wanted an offense built around people getting on base and power.
One of my favorite anecdotes about Weaver was how during a game in the ’80s, his 2nd baseman Rich Dauer, a contact hitter who rarely struck out hit into a couple double plays to kill rallies. So Weaver politely suggested Dauer should strike out instead of hitting into double plays.
I do remember that incident.
Weaver was brilliant, but I always preferred Martin’s style. Weaver didn’t inject himself into the game as much. He wanted three-run homers. Martin wanted to claw out a run. I want my manager working the game, not sitting back waiting for something to happen. Almost everyone plays Weaver’s way these days because players have so much more power that it doesn’t make sense to make outs on the bases.
Billy Martin improved his team’s W-L record wherever he went just using the same players. It was quite measurable because he did this at so many teams.
Unfortunately, the way he did it was to overplay his best pitchers, resulting in immediate dramatic improvements but hurting the pitchers and team performance in the long run. I suspect that Steinbrenner figured this out after his first stint as Yankee manager and this may be why he hired him 4 additional times but each for short periods.
While Weaver didn’t fiddle with details like calling for bunts or special running plays nearly as much as Martin he would constantly tinker with line-ups and in-game substitutions for both position players and pitchers.
Billy Martin wore out Sparky Lyle and Goose Gossage, but he managed the starters pretty well. It was in Oakland where he totally abused his pitching staff. That was ridiculous.
Booman- I will be disappointed if you don’t have the answer I have Forgotten.
It was a different era when Weaver managed, and one of the differences is that they don’t allow “smoking” in the dugout no mas.
Weaver got the nickname “Full Pack” because of what pitcher, who it was said Weaver would smoke a full pack of ciggies while this guy was pitching?
Hint: It did not take many innings for Weaver to smoke them all.
Can’t help myself. The answer is Don Stackhouse the Orioles closer for their 1979 AL pennant winning team.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Stanhouse
From the Wapo obit:
….
Despite his salty, inventively profane diatribes, Mr. Weaver considered himself a practicing Christian. Nonetheless, Pat Kelly, on Orioles outfielder who later became an evangelist, once asked Mr. Weaver why he didn’t join players at chapel meetings.
“Don’t you want to walk with the Lord?” Kelly reportedly asked.
“I’d rather walk with the bases loaded,” Mr. Weaver replied.
…..
My kinda guy.
Classic Weaver.
My dad used to take my brother and I to the Polo Grounds after NL baseball came back to NY courtesy of the Mets. We were fortunate to see Willie Mays play, and Stan the Man when the Cardinals came to town. We saw him hit the last 3 of his 4 consecutive home runs. At 9 years old, I had no idea how amazing that was.
The best quote ever about Earl Weaver was from Jim Palmer, “The true test of a Timex watch would be to strap it to Earl’s tongue.”
RIP
That’s cool that you saw the three-homer game.
I am looking forward to all the Weaver yarns that will be coming.
My favorite Weaver story was from Ron Luciano, the very entertaining umpire who gained some celebrity in the 1970’s. A sports magazine of the era pubished Luciano’s Top 5 most difficult managers. As I remember his description:
Grew up in New York, a huge Yankee fan. Then I went to college in Baltimore and my fraternity worked a Memorial Stadium concessions stand. We used to actually pull beer cups out of the garbage, rinse them out and sell them again, pocketing the money (because the only measure of how much beer we sold were the number of cups taken from inventory). Doing this, we’d pocket tons of cash. Hopefully, no one got ill drinking from a germ-laden cup.
But that bit of malfeasance aside, I got to see both Earl Weaver and Billy Martin quite a bit. Weaver was brilliant. Everything he did was for effect. I remember one time he threw this legendary tirade which was designed to get the Yankee pitcher, who had just come into the game from the bullpen, probably a bit too fast, cold. It worked. The Orioles hit him hard and won the game. Billy was fit to be tied.
Martin was smart too but in a totally different way. When he pitched a fit, he had truly lost control of himself. But he was real smart about measuring the strengths and weaknesses of his team and managing accordingly. He was more instinctive than Weaver. Weaver was more the numbers man. Billy played his hunches. Neither was afraid to take risks.
The Yankees back then were chock full of characters. In “76 they won the pennant with all these lunch pail type guys like Thurman Munson, Greg Nettles, Sparky Lyle, Lou Pinella and the like. Then in “77 Reggie Jackson came along and, with his big ego and well-intentioned but self-aggrandizing talk, pissed all of them off. They seemed to take everything so seriously. Man, those guys were kooks.
you will do time in hell for that cup stunt.
One reason Willie Randolph was so valuable was that he was steady amongst the Bronx Zoo. I never forgave Reggie for what he said about Thurman. I never forgave Sparky Anderson for what he said about Thurman. If a kid had said something about Thurman I would have fought him. I loved that guy with a fierce loyalty, and his death was the single hardest thing I had to deal with other than the disappearance of my cat during my early childhood.
Yeah, yeah . . . time in hell, no doubt to remind me of my misspent youth.
Willie was my favorite Yankee. Chris Chamblis was another steady guy. In hindsight, though, the press blew the supposed feud between Munson and Jackson way out of proportion. They wound up becoming friends. Jackson was on Munson’s airplane (with Greg Nettles) three weeks before the crash and when Jackson found out about Munson’s death, he wept. As for Sparky Anderson, he didn’t say anything so terrible. He called Munson a great ball player. He added, in response to a follow-up question, that no one was in Bench’s league and, looking back, that was quite true.
.
I was fortunate enough to see Musial play at Sportman’s Park [video] at Grand Av and Dodier in St. Louis.
I saw Hank Aaron play on tv. I knew he broke Babe Ruth’s record. But I really didn’t appreciate baseball until the 1976 season, which has his last. So, I missed out on Willie Mays. I got to see plenty of Yaz, however.
.
How
can you not respect a manager who grows tomato plants in left field?
You can’t not respect him.
You should search YouTube for Earl Weaver and Terry Crowley. Manager’s Corner. Team speed! Funny stuff. R.I.P Earl.
Two older guys, who lived full, robust lives in which they showed us how to do their jobs, passed on, or more accurately, died.
I do not consider this a sad day. Death comes for us all. While we are waiting for the inevitable, did we do good things and cause others to rejoice in our lives?
In the case of these two guys, the answer is YES. They were great players of the game. I’d be happy to go out with the kinds of accolades being offered to these two guys.
It is not a sad day. It’s a day to remember these two, and that is a tribute to them.
But my college grade advisor did. He grew up in western Pennsylvania, die hard Pirates territory. As a kid, he went to Forbes Field to see the Pirates take their usual lumps from Musial’s Cardinals. Lo and behold, they actually won, but the group of kids all wanted to see Stan the Man, so they hung around outside the visitors’ exit for a glimpse of the superstar.
Cardinal after Cardinal walked out the door and got on the team bus, but no Stan the Man. The players weren’t much in the mood after losing a game they should have won, but the kids didn’t know anything about that. Finally, after the bus was loaded, another kid came running down the sidewalk, “I just saw Stan the Man! Stan the Man looked right at me and talked to me! I saw Stan the Man!” Musial had taken another exit, boarded a waiting cab, and left the premises.
The other kids clustered around to hear the details of the Musial epiphany. “I just saw Stan the Man! He talked to me!” It took a few seconds to calm the kid down. “I was standin’ right by that door” – a point down the sidewalk, half a dozen necks craned, then returned to the raconteur – “And Stan the Man came out. He looked right at me, and he talked to me.”
“What did he say? What did Stan the Man say to you?” Details, dude!
“He looked right at me and he said, ‘Outta my way, kid, or I’ll knock you down’.”
I cannot vouch for the veracity of the story, but I can vouch that I heard it more than once.
I have Stan Musial’s autograph. My Dad and I went to see a few Cards-Mets spring training games at Al Lang Field in 1972, iirc. We got there early so we could watch batting practice and I could snag some autographs. I really wanted Yogi Berra’s, but he was a tough get because he rarely came close enough to the stands. Then one day, he did, but before I could ask/plead/beg, a drunk guy grabbed my program and said, “Wait a minute, kid, and I’ll get you a real autograph.” He took the program to a couple of older men sitting a couple rows behind us, and got them to sign it. One was August Busch, and the other was Musial.
Musial’s autograph didn’t mean much to me at the time–I had never seen him play and besides, I was a Mets fan. It came to mean more as time passed.
Stan Musial was my childhood hero. After he retired I realized that I was a Musial fan rather than a Cardinal or baseball fan. His grandson and I worked at the same company in Louisville, KY. Jeff met with my daughter to help her understand the life of a marketing executive, a career she was considering. After their meeting I thanked him and expressed my admiration for his grandfather and his abilities as a baseball player. He told me that the greatest thing about his grandfather was that he was a much better person than he was a ballplayer. Watching him in the old Sportsmans Park or listening to Harry Carey describe him launching one on Grand Ave. was the absolute best for a Little Leaguer in the ’50’s.