Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The (6 page)
Read Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The Online
Authors: Bill James
Tags: #SPORTS &, #RECREATION/Baseball/History
F
RED
C
LARKE
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S
All-Star Team
Most Successful Managers:
1. John McGraw
2. Connie Mack
3 (tie) Pat Moran -
Bill Carrigan
Most Controversial Manager:
Roger Bresnahan
Bresnahan played several years for John McGraw, after which McGraw sold St. Louis owner Stanley Robison on the idea that Bresnahan would be a great player/manager. Most of Bresnahan’s managerial career was consumed in one sort of controversy or another. Bresnahan got the St. Louis job in 1909 and was okay for a year or two, but by 1912 Robison had died, and the Cardinals weren’t doing a whole lot better. Robison’s niece, Lady Bee Britton, inherited the Cardinals.
According to Fred Lieb’s
The St. Louis Cardinals
, Bresnahan “was as truculent and as much of a battler with umpires and rival players as was (McGraw) … Bresnahan, reared by McGraw in a tough baseball school, wasn’t particular about his language. He talked to Lady Bee Britton as he would have talked to Frank DeHaas or Stanley Robison.” Lady Bee fired him.
Others of Note:
Pants Rowland
Jake Stahl
George Stallings
Joe Tinker
Stunts:
The New York Highlanders finished last in the American League in 1908. In 1909 they hired George Stallings to be their manager, and improved by 24½, to 74–77. By late 1910 they had improved another 11 games, to 78–59, to second in the American League.
The Highlanders’ first baseman was Hal Chase. Chase went to the team owner, Frank Farrell, and complained about Stallings’s management, said that all the players were unhappy with him. Farrell fired Stallings and hired Hal Chase to manage the team.
In two years they were back in last place.
Typical Manager Was:
Either a player/manager or a man in his forties who had played for Ned Hanlon in the 1890s. Managers were becoming much more professional.
Percentage of Playing Managers:
44%
Most Second-Guessed Manager’s Move:
Horace Fogel, owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, was inclined to drink too much and make indiscreet remarks. At the close of the 1912 season Fogel alleged that Roger Bresnahan had rolled over for the New York Giants, not playing his strongest lineup against them. This allowed John McGraw, whom Bresnahan idolized, to win the pennant.
Fogel was banned from baseball for making this remark. A pertinent note: Bresnahan’s sixth-place Cardinals had in fact beaten the Giants seven times in 1912, whereas Fogel’s Phillies, who finished fifth, beat them only five times. The Cardinals had posted a better record against the Giants than fourth-place Cincinnati, fifth-place Philadelphia, seventh-place Brooklyn, or last-place Boston.
Clever Moves:
In September 1915, Whitey Appleton of the Dodgers was pitching against the St. Louis Cardinals. The game was tied in the seventh inning, but the Cardinals had a runner on third and two out.
Cardinal manager Miller Huggins, coaching at third, yelled to Appleton, “Hey, Bub, let me see that ball.” The rookie pitcher threw the ball to Huggins, who stepped aside and let the ball roll up the third base line as the winning run dashed home.
It’s irrelevant to the present story, but if you ever see a picture of Casey Stengel, there’s a prominent scar coming out of his bottom lip and running jaggedly down the left side of his jaw. Whitey Appleton gave that to him. Appleton was Stengel’s roommate that summer. One day they went to visit a couple of nice young ladies at their home on Coney Island, had too much to drink, and got into a terrible fight on the way back to their apartment. Appleton got his fingers inside Stengel’s cheek and gave a yank, tearing Stengel’s face wide open.
Player Rebellions:
St. Louis (A), 1917, vs. Fielder Jones.
Evolutions in Strategy:
In 1914 George Stallings platooned at all three outfield positions. His team, the Braves, had finished last in the league in 1910, 1911, and 1912, sixth in 1913. They were dead last in late July 1914, but stunned the baseball world by surging to the 1914 National League pennant, then defeating Connie Mack’s mighty A’s in four straight.
This event had tremendous impact on other managers, almost revolutionary impact, as opposed to evolutionary. Managers had platooned, a little bit here and there, since the 1880s, but it was very rare, the sort of thing that somebody would try once or twice a decade for a few weeks.
From 1915 to 1925, basically all major league teams platooned at one or more positions.
The baseball of 1915–1919 was choking in strategy. Runs were scarce, and every one-run strategy (sacrifice bunts, stolen base attempts, issuing intentional walks, drawing the infield in, etc.) was used with great frequency. Combined with platooning and greatly increased use of pinch hitters and relief pitchers, this put the game into the hands of managers in a way that it never had been before.
ILBERT
R
OBINSON
: Living the Good Life
Evolution in the Role of the Manager:
By 1919, major league managers were highly professional. At the start of the 1919 season, not one of the sixteen major league managers was a player/manager, although two managers were fired during the season, and in both cases veteran players were assigned to take over the team. Those sixteen managers include eight Hall of Famers, all of whom were selected to the Hall of Fame largely for their contributions as managers or executives (Miller Huggins, Hughie Jennings, Ed Barrow, Clark Griffith, Connie Mack, John McGraw, Wilbert Robinson, and Branch Rickey.) One of the other eight, Hugo Bezdek is in the college football Hall of Fame. Five of the remaining seven (Pat Moran, George Stallings, Fred Mitchell, Lee Fohl, and Kid Gleason) were successful or highly successful managers, although they are not in the Hall of Fame.
Of these sixteen managers who began the 1919 season, at least seven had played for Ned Hanlon, and at least three of the others had played for some other manager who had played for Ned Hanlon.
The managers of 1915–1920 are as impressive a group as you would find in any era of baseball history.
Year of Birth:
1873
Years Managed:
1899, 1901–1932
Record As a Manager:
2,784–1,959, .587
Managers for Whom He Played:
Ned Hanlon, Billy Barnie, Patsy Tebeau.
Characteristics As a Player:
Extremely high on-base percentage. Fast, aggressive, fearless. Quick fielder with quick release, arm not outstanding.
McGraw’s career on-base percentage, .465, is the third-highest ever among players with 4,000 career at bats, behind only Ted Williams and Babe Ruth. He was a .334 hitter who walked almost once a game.
WHAT HE BROUGHT TO A BALL CLUB
Was He an Intense Manager or More of an Easy-to-Get-Along-With Type?
He was very intense. According to Rogers Hornsby in
My War With Baseball
, “If players thought I was mean they should have spent a little time under John McGraw… He’d fine players for speaking to somebody on the other team. Or being caught with a cigarette. He’d walk up and down the dugout and yell, ‘Wipe those damn smiles off your face.’”
Was He More of an Emotional Leader or a Decision Maker?
He was both. McGraw was a master of detail. Casey Stengel remembered that McGraw would go over the meal tickets at the team hotel, checking to see what his players were eating. If a player wasn’t eating right, McGraw would talk to him about it.
According to Hornsby, McGraw had an 11:30 curfew, and somebody would knock on your door every night at exactly 11:30. And you’d better answer.
Was He More of an Optimist or More of a Problem Solver?
One key thing that McGraw brought to a team was
direction
and order. An awful lot of what happens on a baseball team is wasted effort due to chaos and disorder. McGraw was such a powerful figure that he organized the world around him by his mere presence. If John McGraw traded for you, you knew why he had traded for you and what he intended for you to do. If you were a young player, you knew what his plans for you were. The rules were well understood. This put his teams ahead of most of the other teams.
| Johnny Evers Johnny Evers, the scrappy little leader of the Cubs, was, during the 1913 season, the same bundle of nerves and ginger as of old. He probably carried his aggressiveness even further than he formerly did, because of a healthier and stronger constitution. The Evers who suffered a nervous breakdown in 1911 was not the Evers of 1913. The Trojan declared recently that he did not care much about managing a club from the bench. Said he:
|
HOW HE USED HIS PERSONNEL
Did He Favor a Set Lineup or a Rotation System?
A set lineup, with the exception noted below. McGraw used his bench players
less
than the typical major league manager during his time, but in more well-defined roles.
Did He Like to Platoon?
McGraw adopted platooning after it was popularized by George Stallings in 1914, as did almost all of the managers. He was never ahead of the curve on platooning, and was not aggressive in its use, but he did normally platoon at one or two outfield positions for the rest of his career, 1915–1932.
Did He Try to Solve His Problems with Proven Players or with Youngsters Who Still May Have Had Something to Learn?
John McGraw lived to teach young men how to play baseball. I mean, he loved the horses, he loved the stage, he loved his cigars, and he loved his whiskey, but teaching young men to play baseball was what he
did
.
Consider this, from
Frankie Frisch: The Fordham Flash
, by J. Roy Stockton:
McGraw gave me a lot of personal attention … He saw to it that I was given a chance to hit during batting practice. He used to play the infield himself and he personally took charge of polishing up my fielding. He would hit grounders for hours. He’d hit them straight at you and he’d hit them to either side … McGraw even hit to the infield in the pre-game warm-up. If you didn’t make a play the way McGraw wanted it, he’d hit you another, five more, ten more, until the play was made the way he wanted it.
Over the course of his career, he took on many, many young men with no minor league experience or very little minor league experience, and worked with them until they became outstanding players. His list includes Mel Ott, Fred Snodgrass, Fred Merkle, Freddie Lindstrom, Larry Doyle, Ross Youngs, George Kelly, and Travis Jackson.
He was incredibly tenacious in teaching young players. He thought nothing of taking on a young player, and working with him every day for three years, gradually breaking him into the lineup. Of course, many times these kids didn’t pan out. Over the years he had countless young players like Eddie Sicking, Joe Rodriguez, Tillie Schaefer, Andy Cohen, Gene Paulette, and Grover Hartley whom he would work with for a year or two, and then decide that they weren’t going to make it.
If he couldn’t develop his own player, he wasn’t opposed to trading for or purchasing an established player from somebody else; he also did that many times. But most of his stars were homegrown. His first option was always to spot a hole developing two or three years down the road, and start getting some twenty-year-old kid ready to move in there.
| Rube Foster’s Ox Rube Foster was the greatest manager in the history of the Negro Leagues, not to mention a leading pitcher, the owner of the American Giants, and the de facto commissioner of Negro baseball. Foster usually had a pipe in his mouth, even when he was in the dugout, and like most pipe smokers, he wasn’t going to take the thing out of his mouth to talk to you unless he actually had something to say. When he had a young player who didn’t give quite the appropriate effort, Rube would take him aside and tell him this story. A farmer had a donkey and an ox, which he worked as a team. It was hard work, and one day the ox decided just to stay in his stall all day and eat. When the donkey got back to the barn that night, the ox asked him, “What did the boss say about me?” “Didn’t say nothing,” said the donkey. The ox slept well that night, and when the farmer came out the next morning, the ox again balked at leaving the barn. When the donkey came back that night, he asked again, “What did the boss say?” “Didn’t say nothing,” the donkey answered, “but he visited the butcher.” The next morning the ox was out of his stall early, waiting by the yoke when the farmer appeared. “You might as well go back to your stall,” the farmer told him. “I’ve already sold you to the butcher.” |
How Many Players Did He Make Regulars Who Had Not Been Regulars Before, and Who Were They?
Too many to name. In addition to those named above, one could add Bill Terry, Buck Herzog, Art Fletcher, Art Devlin, Chief Meyers, Josh Devore, Jeff Tesreau, Carl Hubbell, and Freddie Fitzsimmons.
Did He Prefer to Go with Good Offensive Players or Did He Like the Glove Men?
He wouldn’t risk his defense to get a slugger in the lineup, because he never thought he had to.
Like most managers, McGraw was a control freak, and as such perpetually battling against anything that represented a loss of control. If a player doesn’t make the plays he is supposed to make, that’s a loss of control. He didn’t get much out of Hack Wilson, for example, because he was concerned about the stocky Wilson’s ability to play the outfield. He rejected a young Earl Webb, a career .306 hitter who holds the major league record for doubles in a season, because he didn’t like Webb’s defense. He got rid of Rogers Hornsby after one year. He used George Kelly, who had the defensive ability of a middle infielder, as a first baseman. There’s a story about Bill Terry (below) which also reflects on this issue.
Did He Like an Offense Based on Power, Speed, or High Averages?
McGraw’s teams commonly led the league in batting average—a total of eleven times in his career. Until 1920, McGraw’s teams were speed dominated. His 1911 team still holds the major league record for stolen bases, and five of the top ten teams all-time were McGraw’s teams.
When the game changed in 1920, however, McGraw understood the change and adapted to it more rapidly than any other established manager.
Did He Use the Entire Roster or Did He Keep People Sitting on the Bench?
He kept kids sitting around, waiting to earn playing time, and also he liked to pick up a veteran player who maybe had had an injury or who had gotten out of shape, and just keep him sitting around playing twice a month until he could get him in shape. Jack Scott, for example, was released by Cincinnati in early 1922 and reportedly contacted every major league team, asking for a chance to pitch. McGraw said okay, come work out with us for a while, and we’ll see what we can do. By the end of the year he was 8–2, and pitched a shutout in the World Series.
But he also used
specialists
much more than any other manager of his time. He had several players that he used as full-time pinch runners. In 1914, for example, he kept Sandy Piez on the roster all year as a pinch runner. In 1913 he used Claude Cooper in that role, in 1919 he used Lee King, and in 1923 Freddie McGuire. He had Jim Thorpe for several years, and used him to pinch-run, and he would often use one of his young projects as a regular pinch runner.
Most intriguingly of all, one year he had Tony Kaufman. Tony Kaufman was a veteran pitcher, had been in the league for years, but his arm went dead and he was released by St. Louis in 1928. McGraw took him on and used him in 1929 as a pinch runner and defensive replacement in the outfield, just killing time hoping his arm would come back. It never did.
He also used pinch hitters probably more than any other manager of his time, and he absolutely loved to have a pitcher who could also pinch-hit. In 1923 he was thrilled when he was able to purchase Jack Bentley from the great Baltimore minor league team. Bentley had hit .371, .412, and .351 at Baltimore the previous three years, playing everyday at first base, and also filled in on the mound, going 16–3, 12–1, and 13–2 the same three years. McGraw made him mostly a pitcher, and in 1923 he went 13–8 for the Giants, also hitting .427, and leading the National League in pinch hits.
Did He Build His Bench Around Young Players Who Could Step into the Breach If Need Be, or Around Veteran Role-Players Who Had Their Own Functions Within a Game?
More of the latter. He always had kids on the bench, but he had a timetable in mind for them, and he wasn’t going to rush them in just because somebody got hurt. He liked to keep around two or three players who had been regulars for some other team, like Casey Stengel, Billy Southworth, and Beals Becker, who was a regular in Boston in 1909, and a bench player for McGraw from 1910 to 1912.
GAME MANAGING AND USE OF STRATEGIES
Did He Go for the Big-Inning Offense, or Did He Like to Use the One-Run Strategies?
McGraw made very sparing use of the sacrifice bunt after 1908. He used the running game a lot.
Did He Pinch-Hit Much, and If So, When?
He pinch-hit more than other managers of his era, at conventional times. He would pinch hit for his pitcher or his number-eight hitter when he was behind in the late innings.
An anecdote in the October 1956 edition of the
Baseball Digest
begins, “Probably the best pinch batter in the history of the major leagues was Harry Elwood (Moose) McCormick of John J. McGraw’s fabled Giants.” When Macmillan’s
Baseball Encyclopedia
was compiled in the late 1960s, we learned that McCormick had a career total of 28 pinch hits. He was, however, a regular pinch hitter for McGraw in 1912 and 1913, at a time when few managers used a regular pinch hitter.
Was There Anything Unusual About His Lineup Selection?
It was conventional. In McGraw’s time, catchers always hit eighth. McGraw’s catcher, Chief Meyers, led his team in hitting in 1911 (.332), 1912 (.358), and 1913 (.312), and McGraw finally relented and moved him to seventh in the order. That was as radical as he got in this area.
One of McGraw’s least-known stars was a leadoff man named George Burns, who was the absolute model of a leadoff hitter, hitting .300 several times, leading the league in walks five times, leading the league in stolen bases twice, and leading the league in runs scored five times. McGraw purchased him from Utica, where he was being used as a catcher.
Did He Use the Sac Bunt Often?
Early in his career, McGraw’s teams bunted a great deal. His 1903 and 1904 teams led the National League in sacrifice hits, with totals of 185 and 166.
About 1909, however, McGraw appears to have changed his opinion of the bunt, and from 1909 on the Giants bunted less often than any other National League team. The Giants were
last
in the league in sacrifice hits in 1909, 1912, 1913, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1926, 1931, and 1932. In almost all the other years, they were near the bottom of the league.
