All nine of these candidates appear  in the list of Top 20 Winningest MLB managers, but there are some big names missing, including all-time leader Connie Mack, unfairly put-upon Gene Mauch and the legendary Casey Stengel. Why? Dunno. Just gut feeling. Please feel free to vote "Other" and fill in the name of another deserving candidate!

Leaving Casey Stengel off the list is a mistake. That team would destroy everyone, and Casey could provide the comic relief.

come on, admit it. who voted for cito as "other"? ;-)

There's even a debate about this? Why?

Weaver, Cox, and Durocher each won one championship. LaRussa has won twice, McGraw and Anderson three times, Alston and Torre four times. (And Connie Mack won five in half a century). Joe McCarthy won seven. Seven.

So did Casey, of course - but Stengel's teams had losing records eight times in nine seasons before he came to New York. Stengel's best non-Yankee team went 77-75. McCarthy never had a losing season. Not once. Not even after beginning his managerial career by taking over a last place Cubs team.

What Magpie said.  Weaver and McCarthy shared a remarkable ability in handling a pitching staff. The only comment I can make in Weaver's favour is that the AL competition in his time may have been stronger than it was in McCarthy's. 

Bobby Cox is leading the pack???

I voted for Mack: given some cash, he could have won a lot more than one year in ten.  Plus, he's got some experience.

That being said, McCarthy should probably win..

McCarthy was a great manager, even though his total number of major innovations in baseball was about zero, give or take zero.  Anybody who gets disrespected by Jimmy Dykes, of all people, isn't the greatest manager of all time.  However, this team doesn't need the greatest manager of all time in that sense; they need someone who will just keep out of the way.  They don't need a battlefield genius like McGraw or Weaver, or a molder of players like Stengel.

I chose McGraw because I think he was the best, but he's clearly not the ideal manager for this team (just like the best shortstop for this team in a sense wouldn't be Ripken or Wagner but Ozzie Smith; who needs another power bat on this team?).  Marse Joe might be.

McGraw's bloodlines run real, real deep in managerial circles...

Cox played under Ralph Houk who played and coached under Stengel who played for McGraw;

Alston played under Frankie Frisch who played and coached for McGraw;

Durocher also played under Frankie Frisch who played and coached for McGraw (he also played for Art Fletcher who had played for many years under McGraw);

LaRussa played for Eddie Lopat who had played for Stengel who had played for McGraw; he also played for Hank Bauer who had also played for Stengel, etc.;

Torre played for Bobby Bragan who played for Durocher (who had that link to McGraw I went through above); he also played for  years for Red Schoendienst who had played for Eddie Stanky who had his own playing links to  McGraw, again through Leo Durocher.

Weaver, like McCarthy but like few other good or long-term managers, was essentially sui generis... and didn't have links to the great managers of the early 20th century.  (Sparky Anderson is part of a different "manager family" from McGraw's; Sparky played for Eddie Sawyer, who played in the minors for Billy Meyer who later managed the Pirates.  Meyer had played for Connie Mack.) 

McCarthy, of course, never played in the majors and I haven't quite been able to figure out who his minor league managers were. I believe he played briefly for Ducky Holmes in Toledo, around 1910. Holmes spent a couple of years with the old Baltimore Orioles and played for both Ned Hanlon and John McGraw.

One of my - reservations? - about Stengel involved how he ran his pitching staff.  I still don't quite get why he could only give Whitey Ford more than 30 starts in a season just one time (not to mention just twice in the 1960 World Series.) . Ralph Houk, upon taking over, ran Ford out there every fourth day and he went 83-25 for Houk and each ERA was better than the one before.

But what do I care, really - Stengel's New York staffs were almost always one of the two or three best in the league, and he won titles in the Bronx with all sort of ne'er do wells, has-beens, and never-weres.

By the way, if you could guarantee that the world and all creation would cease to exist with the end of the next baseball season - I would very, very seriously consider Billy Martin.

But not if Life as we know it were to go on....

Tommie Lasorda :-p