So does this recycling of managers ever work?
Not very often.
By happy coincidence, Chris Jaffe has a piece over at the Hardball Times on the recycling of managers. Jaffe lists all the men who received at least a second shot (sometimes more than a second shot) at running the same team. (One of them, Bucky Harris, was actually recycled by two teams.)
Here's his list, augmented by his readers (who spotted some guys he'd missed):
Some of those listed... well, it's pretty questionable as to whether they really belong on this list in the first place (Bill McKechnie); some cases pretty much defy all description (Burt Shotton). I myself quarrelled with the inclusion of Whitey Herzog, who left the dugout during the final six weeks of 1980 to conduct an Inspection Tour of his own organization (he was the Cardinals GM at the time). Jaffe himself believes Herzog intended to hire a replacement in the winter of 1980. However, he couldn't get the guy he wanted (Dick Williams, running the Expos at that time), and went back to the dugout himself. Montreal, of course, fired Williams the following September while the Expos were battling it out with Herzog's Cardinals for the second-half pennant...
Anyway, you'll notice that this type of thing used to be much more common in the Days of Yore. Prior to Gaston returning to the Toronto dugout, we have to go back almost two decades to find our preceding instance, when Atlanta GM Bobby Cox selected former Braves manager... Bobby Cox! - to take over as the manager. (Like Herzog, Cox would subsequently shed himself of the GM's responsibility to concentrate on running the team on the field.)
There appear to be two reasons that account for the majority of these rehirings. They are 1) The Manager's Health, and 2) Nostalgia for the Good Times. Nostalgia for the Good Times is most often the key factor in the majority of these hires. It was ever thus. Bill Carrigan (Liam's great-uncle!) managed the Red Sox to a pair of World Series titles, before retiring after the 1916 season, at age 33, to become a banker. When the team went completely into the dumpster in the 1920s, they persuaded him to return. Likewise, Bucky Harris had won in Washington, Charlie Grimm in Chicago, Ralph Houk in New York, Cito Gaston in Toronto.
If it was the manager's health that was a major reason for him leaving the post in the first place, he'll often get the job back if he overcomes the health problem (or if he misses the action so much that he doesn't really care.) The organization, feeling nostalgic for the good times, is generally happy to have him back. So Al Lopez went back into the Chicago dugout, and George Bamberger returned in Milwaukee.
But while many managers were very successful the first time around, just three of these managers have won a championship during their second tour. None of them was a nostalgic rehire; only one of these three had won a title during his first tour.
That man would be Danny Murtaugh kept stepping away from the Pirates job because of health issues. He won a championship with them in 1960, but gave up the job after the 1964 season. He was only 47 years old, but he had heart problems. He came back to finish the 1967 season, before stepping away for a couple of years. He came back again in 1970, and won his second championship in 1971. He retired again, but came back for his fourth tour in late 1973. This team he managed the Pirates through the 1976 season. At its conclusion, he retired one more time. The Pirates replaced him by trading their catcher to Oakland for Chuck Tanner, and Murtaugh died a month later. He is the only man to win championships on two separate tours of duty.
Another winner was Alvin Dark, who had managed the A's for a couple of lousy years in mid 60s. But then Dick Williams got tired of Charlie Finley and shocked everyone by resigning after the 1973 World Series, Finley brought Dark back as a replacement. He was able to lead the team to their third straight title.
And finally we have Bobby Cox, who was fired by Ted Turner in 1981. Turner re-hired Cox as GM after the 1985 season, to the dismay of Blue Jays fans. After several years wearing a suit, and looking really damn strange doing so, Cox appointed himself to be field manager in 1990. John Schuerholz soon came aboard to run the front office. That worked out pretty well.
Whitey Herzog, of course, won a title in 1982. That would make him the fourth guy to win a championship in his second tour, but I don't think he qualifies as having two tours of duty.
But really, that's not what I wanted to talk about today....
With my interest piqued in the general subject of managers through history, I was - naturally - over at baseball-reference.com looking at manager's records. Playing with the totals. Clicking on the links. Sorting them by various categories. I can do this sort of thing all day, I have no life. By the way, Cito Gaston is currently 70th in career wins. He should move up a few spots in 2010, and pass a couple of Hall of Famers in the process (Bill Terry and Charlie Comiskey.)
But the guy who caught my attention was Jim Mutrie. Also known as "Truthful Jim" and "Smiling Jeem."
Who?
Well. Joe McCarthy is the most successful manager who ever lived. He managed 24 seasons, for three different teams. He never had a losing record, and his teams played .615 ball. He couldn't win a championship with the Cubs, but he did take them to the World Series. He couldn't win a championship with the Red Sox, but both his Boston teams won 96 games. In between those two gigs, he won seven titles with the Yankees. He has the best winning percentage for any manager, ever.
Jim Mutrie is the guy in second place.
He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1851 and he was a cricket player in his youth. Some of the lads who had seen him play invited him to try baseball. He joined the local team and by the time he was 24, in 1875, he was managing a baseball team in Lewiston, Maine (where the afore-mentioned Bill Carrigan was born in 1883, and where he spent his entire life save for his years with the Red Sox.)
Mutrie came to New York in 1880, a young man with a plan. He wanted to organize a really good baseball team, and he was looking for financing. He got a man named August Belmont to fund the original Polo Grounds (actually, the facility, such as it was, already existed, but it had never been used for baseball.) He found another man named John Day to cover the costs or outfitting and running the team. They operated outside of a league structure at first for those first few years, playing independently - but they were successful at turning a profit. In 1883, his New York Metropolitans joined the American Association, and in 1884 they won the league championship.
In 1885, Mutrie moved over to the New York Gothams in the National League. He brought with him pitcher Tim Keefe and third-baseman Dude Esterbrook with him from the Metropolitans. Buck Ewing, Roger Connor, and Mickey Welch were already there - they had come to New York from the ruins of the Troy Trojans, an early NL: franchise that had folded after the 1882 season.
Over the next five years, Mutrie's New York teams went 395-206, won the 1888 and 1889 championship0s, and picked up a new nickname. Mutie himself was a tall, slim man who wore a large top hat. His team was supposed to have included a number of big men, and when someone pointed this out to Mutrie, he responded that "They're Giants on the field as well."
And Giants they are to this day!
Were they really Giants? Well, most of the players for whom there is a listed height were around 5-8 to 5-10. But Roger Connor, the great first baseman, is listed at 6-3. That doesn't seem like much now, but back then? I know that more than 50 years later, when a 6-3 hockey player finally came along he was immediately nicknamed Big Jean (or Le Gros Bill). Connor must have seemed like Paul Bunyan.
In 1890, the first player-management war erupted. The Giants best players jumped to the Players League, which lasted for one season, and when the great reorganization of baseball came in 1891, Mutrie and Day lost control of the New York franchise. One of his final moves running the Giants brought in a teenage pitcher named Amos Rusie, who would win 233 games for New York over the next nine years before being traded to Cincinnati so the Giants could reacquire a pitcher they'd looked at briefly during the 1900 season but lost after the season in the Rule 5 draft. Kid named Christy Mathewson.
Mutrie left baseball and never came back. He went into the hotel business, and then he ran a newstand. His health started to fail in the early 1920s (he was in his 70s by then) - Charles Stoneham and John McGraw, who owned and operated the Giants by now, provided him a pension to support him for the rest of his days. He died in January 1938, at the age of 86.
"If I had been willing to let the politicians run my business, I could have stuck with the Giants. I took a bat to one who wanted to hold me up for $4,000 to keep a street from being run through the ball grounds. That's why I was forced out."
Not very often.
By happy coincidence, Chris Jaffe has a piece over at the Hardball Times on the recycling of managers. Jaffe lists all the men who received at least a second shot (sometimes more than a second shot) at running the same team. (One of them, Bucky Harris, was actually recycled by two teams.)
Here's his list, augmented by his readers (who spotted some guys he'd missed):
Year Team Manager
1891 STC Charles Comiskey
1912 CWS Nixey Callahan
1927 BOX Bill Carrigan
1929 STC Bill McKechnie
1932 PIT George Gibson
1935 WAS Bucky Harris
1940 STC Billy Southworth
1941 CLE Roger Peckinpaugh
1944 CHC Charlie Grimm
1948 BRK Leo Durocher
1948 BRK Burt Shotton
1952 STB Rogers Hornsby
1955 DET Bucky Harris
1958 PHI Eddie Sawyer
1960 BOX Pinky Higgins
1966 NYY Ralph Houk
1967 PIT Danny Murtaugh (and 1970, 1973)
1968 CWS Al Lopez
1969 OAK Hank Bauer
1974 OAK Alvin Dark
1976 CWS Paul Richards
1978 OAK Jack McKeon
1979 NYY Billy Martin (and 1983, 1985, 1988)
1981 STC Whitey Herzog
1981 NYY Bob Lemon
1984 NYY Yogi Berra
1985 CAL Gene Mauch
1985 MIL George Bamberger
1985 BAL Earl Weaver
1990 ATL Bobby Cox
2008 TOR Cito Gaston
Some of those listed... well, it's pretty questionable as to whether they really belong on this list in the first place (Bill McKechnie); some cases pretty much defy all description (Burt Shotton). I myself quarrelled with the inclusion of Whitey Herzog, who left the dugout during the final six weeks of 1980 to conduct an Inspection Tour of his own organization (he was the Cardinals GM at the time). Jaffe himself believes Herzog intended to hire a replacement in the winter of 1980. However, he couldn't get the guy he wanted (Dick Williams, running the Expos at that time), and went back to the dugout himself. Montreal, of course, fired Williams the following September while the Expos were battling it out with Herzog's Cardinals for the second-half pennant...
Anyway, you'll notice that this type of thing used to be much more common in the Days of Yore. Prior to Gaston returning to the Toronto dugout, we have to go back almost two decades to find our preceding instance, when Atlanta GM Bobby Cox selected former Braves manager... Bobby Cox! - to take over as the manager. (Like Herzog, Cox would subsequently shed himself of the GM's responsibility to concentrate on running the team on the field.)
There appear to be two reasons that account for the majority of these rehirings. They are 1) The Manager's Health, and 2) Nostalgia for the Good Times. Nostalgia for the Good Times is most often the key factor in the majority of these hires. It was ever thus. Bill Carrigan (Liam's great-uncle!) managed the Red Sox to a pair of World Series titles, before retiring after the 1916 season, at age 33, to become a banker. When the team went completely into the dumpster in the 1920s, they persuaded him to return. Likewise, Bucky Harris had won in Washington, Charlie Grimm in Chicago, Ralph Houk in New York, Cito Gaston in Toronto.
If it was the manager's health that was a major reason for him leaving the post in the first place, he'll often get the job back if he overcomes the health problem (or if he misses the action so much that he doesn't really care.) The organization, feeling nostalgic for the good times, is generally happy to have him back. So Al Lopez went back into the Chicago dugout, and George Bamberger returned in Milwaukee.
But while many managers were very successful the first time around, just three of these managers have won a championship during their second tour. None of them was a nostalgic rehire; only one of these three had won a title during his first tour.
That man would be Danny Murtaugh kept stepping away from the Pirates job because of health issues. He won a championship with them in 1960, but gave up the job after the 1964 season. He was only 47 years old, but he had heart problems. He came back to finish the 1967 season, before stepping away for a couple of years. He came back again in 1970, and won his second championship in 1971. He retired again, but came back for his fourth tour in late 1973. This team he managed the Pirates through the 1976 season. At its conclusion, he retired one more time. The Pirates replaced him by trading their catcher to Oakland for Chuck Tanner, and Murtaugh died a month later. He is the only man to win championships on two separate tours of duty.
Another winner was Alvin Dark, who had managed the A's for a couple of lousy years in mid 60s. But then Dick Williams got tired of Charlie Finley and shocked everyone by resigning after the 1973 World Series, Finley brought Dark back as a replacement. He was able to lead the team to their third straight title.
And finally we have Bobby Cox, who was fired by Ted Turner in 1981. Turner re-hired Cox as GM after the 1985 season, to the dismay of Blue Jays fans. After several years wearing a suit, and looking really damn strange doing so, Cox appointed himself to be field manager in 1990. John Schuerholz soon came aboard to run the front office. That worked out pretty well.
Whitey Herzog, of course, won a title in 1982. That would make him the fourth guy to win a championship in his second tour, but I don't think he qualifies as having two tours of duty.
But really, that's not what I wanted to talk about today....
With my interest piqued in the general subject of managers through history, I was - naturally - over at baseball-reference.com looking at manager's records. Playing with the totals. Clicking on the links. Sorting them by various categories. I can do this sort of thing all day, I have no life. By the way, Cito Gaston is currently 70th in career wins. He should move up a few spots in 2010, and pass a couple of Hall of Famers in the process (Bill Terry and Charlie Comiskey.)
But the guy who caught my attention was Jim Mutrie. Also known as "Truthful Jim" and "Smiling Jeem."
Who?
Well. Joe McCarthy is the most successful manager who ever lived. He managed 24 seasons, for three different teams. He never had a losing record, and his teams played .615 ball. He couldn't win a championship with the Cubs, but he did take them to the World Series. He couldn't win a championship with the Red Sox, but both his Boston teams won 96 games. In between those two gigs, he won seven titles with the Yankees. He has the best winning percentage for any manager, ever.
Jim Mutrie is the guy in second place.
He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1851 and he was a cricket player in his youth. Some of the lads who had seen him play invited him to try baseball. He joined the local team and by the time he was 24, in 1875, he was managing a baseball team in Lewiston, Maine (where the afore-mentioned Bill Carrigan was born in 1883, and where he spent his entire life save for his years with the Red Sox.)
Mutrie came to New York in 1880, a young man with a plan. He wanted to organize a really good baseball team, and he was looking for financing. He got a man named August Belmont to fund the original Polo Grounds (actually, the facility, such as it was, already existed, but it had never been used for baseball.) He found another man named John Day to cover the costs or outfitting and running the team. They operated outside of a league structure at first for those first few years, playing independently - but they were successful at turning a profit. In 1883, his New York Metropolitans joined the American Association, and in 1884 they won the league championship.
In 1885, Mutrie moved over to the New York Gothams in the National League. He brought with him pitcher Tim Keefe and third-baseman Dude Esterbrook with him from the Metropolitans. Buck Ewing, Roger Connor, and Mickey Welch were already there - they had come to New York from the ruins of the Troy Trojans, an early NL: franchise that had folded after the 1882 season.
Over the next five years, Mutrie's New York teams went 395-206, won the 1888 and 1889 championship0s, and picked up a new nickname. Mutie himself was a tall, slim man who wore a large top hat. His team was supposed to have included a number of big men, and when someone pointed this out to Mutrie, he responded that "They're Giants on the field as well."
And Giants they are to this day!
Were they really Giants? Well, most of the players for whom there is a listed height were around 5-8 to 5-10. But Roger Connor, the great first baseman, is listed at 6-3. That doesn't seem like much now, but back then? I know that more than 50 years later, when a 6-3 hockey player finally came along he was immediately nicknamed Big Jean (or Le Gros Bill). Connor must have seemed like Paul Bunyan.
In 1890, the first player-management war erupted. The Giants best players jumped to the Players League, which lasted for one season, and when the great reorganization of baseball came in 1891, Mutrie and Day lost control of the New York franchise. One of his final moves running the Giants brought in a teenage pitcher named Amos Rusie, who would win 233 games for New York over the next nine years before being traded to Cincinnati so the Giants could reacquire a pitcher they'd looked at briefly during the 1900 season but lost after the season in the Rule 5 draft. Kid named Christy Mathewson.
Mutrie left baseball and never came back. He went into the hotel business, and then he ran a newstand. His health started to fail in the early 1920s (he was in his 70s by then) - Charles Stoneham and John McGraw, who owned and operated the Giants by now, provided him a pension to support him for the rest of his days. He died in January 1938, at the age of 86.
"If I had been willing to let the politicians run my business, I could have stuck with the Giants. I took a bat to one who wanted to hold me up for $4,000 to keep a street from being run through the ball grounds. That's why I was forced out."
