Manager | The Baseball Zealot

RIP Chuck Tanner

Former MLB manager Chuck Tanner died yesterday after a long illness at the age of 82.

Tanner ranks 27th all-time among managers in wins with 1352. Unfortunately, he has 1381 losses just barely giving him a losing record for his career. Of course, his crowning jewel was his World Series victory in 1979 with the Pirates.

He was described as “upbeat” by the media and that was collaborated by my friend, Todd the Ump, who is a die-hard Pirates fan.

When I got home my son was watching the Pens post game show and they started showing clips of the 1979 Pirates and Chuck Tanner. My son said, "Oh yeah, he died." I didn’t believe it. Chuck Tanner is not supposed to die. He is the eternal optimist who said "You must never ever ever ever quit." Other than the normal happiest days of my life (i.e. kids being born, day I got married – yes I actually do love my wife) the day I met Chuck Tanner and had my picture taken with him at PNC ranks right up there.

You couldn’t help but like Chuck Tanner. He never said a bad word about any player and you never heard a player say a bad word about him. Looking back it’s hard to believe that when he skippered the Buccos to the ’79 Championship that he was only a few years older than I am now. Yet when I met him a few years back he didn’t seem to be any older than he was in 1979.

I hope the Pirates do the right thing and retire his number 7 this coming season. After all, he quite possibly will be the last man to lead them to a World Series title.

I don’t think anyone could have said it better.

Counterpoint: Was Quade really the right move for the Cubs??

DonS, a long suffering fan of TBZ, emailed me a response to my article in favor of the Cubs hiring Mike Quade. He makes some good points against the hiring I’m posting it tonight. -tbz

I said the following the day Lou left: “Lou leaving in mid-season” is the worst thing that could happen to the Cubs. What if the “Interim Flunky” hits a hot streak? Now you’re stuck with him.

Is that exactly what happened?. Quade went 24-13 (that projects out to 105 wins in a full season). So now the Cubs think this guy is the answer.

The guys on WSCR think this is a great move. But keep in mind: That’s a bunch of White Sox fans who hope the Cubs lose every game. Some endorsement, huh?

Nothing against Quade. But the guy spent 17 years in the Cub minor league system. In that time, I never heard him rumored to be a managerial candidate at the major league level, for the Cubs or for anybody else. Now, based on 37 games, he gets the job?

One More Thing: I said on the day of the hire, “If I am Ryno, I am outta there.” I heard yesterday that Ryno has left the Cub Organ-I-Zation. It sounds like he told Jim Hendry where he could stick his “Go back to Iowa” idea.

Seems obvious to me that the Cubs NEVER intend to hire him to be the manager. It’s not like they bypassed him for a proven manager, like Girardi or Torre. They had told him, “Go to the minor leagues, ride busses, work hard, … ” Something negative to Ryno must have happened in those four years.

Or maybe Jim Hendry is every bit the stumbling dunderhead that his critics think he is.

As the late Mike Royko often said, “I may be wrong, but I doubt it.”

Quade- the right answer for the Cubs

What to think about the hiring of Mike Quade?? Well, let’s start with the details… He’s getting a two-year contract from the Cubs with an option for 2013. At this point, no money considerations have been discussed.

I like the deal. I’ve been struggling to evaluate the move on its merits alone. As a natural born cynic, I’ve tried to distance myself from my perceptions of the Cubs’ potential motives of hiring Ryne Sandberg (should they have done so). Let’s face it, Ryno has proven himself as manager in minors the last few years. Hiring him would have been more than just a public relations move as I’ve insinuated to my friends. Honestly, Sandberg wouldn’t have been a bad choice at all.

But when it came down to it, I favored hiring Mike Quade as manager of the Cubs and now that the deal is done, I still like it. Forget the 24-13 record he posted at the end of 2010, the 53-year old Evanston, IL native has the goods without it. Quade has experience. He’s managed a prolific 2,378 games in the minors. But more importantly, he has a reputation of possessing strong leadership skills and being a good on-the-field manager, all which comes with experience.

Earlier, I said forget Quade’s 24-13 run with the Cubs in 2010. But maybe don’t dismiss it completely. The Cub players responded quite well to Quade’s leadership and even said so to the press. The cynics among us have said that perhaps it was more the lack of Piniella that players were responding to and that is a point well taken. Yet, no one can dismiss the support that he got both implicitly and explicitly.

What does Cub Nation think about the Quade hiring?? If you take Bleed Cubbie Blue’s vast readership as any indication, you can check out its poll on the hiring of Quade. BCB readers support it… kinda. A whopping 38% supported the hiring of Quade while 19% didn’t (41% didn’t really have an opinion. An indecisive bunch, these Cub fans).

A few questions remain:

How much of a leash does Quade have with a rebuilding 2011 Cubs team?
For that matter (and this is relevant, of course), what of Jim Hendry? Is he on the hot seat?
Will Cub fans learn to embrace Mike Quade when he won’t be able to replicate his 24-13 success in 2011 (let’s face it, the biggest Quade fans out there know he can’t do that)?
What happens to Ryne Sandberg? There have been rumors you might see him on the coaching staff of the Cubs.

At any rate, I wish Mike Quade well. He’s (officially) stepping into some big shoes and doesn’t have an easy row to hoe in 2011.

Gaston gone

Cito Gaston is gone as Toronto manager. On his leaving, he wrote a apparently heartfelt letter to the fans of the Blue Jay Nation published in the The Star.

A couple points on Gaston:

One, in this day and age of musical managers, it’s hard to believe that he’s been with Toronto for twelve years (albeit with an eleven year break in between). Not only that, his first six years were pretty phenomenal. Five first place finishes placing second in his sophomore year. It all resolved itself into two World Championships in 1992-1993. Some, like Dave Perkins of The Star, think this warrants a Hall nomination for Gaston.

Which brings me to my second point. Gaston managed to bring this success with little fanfare or controversy. We don’t hear much Cito here in the Midwest and I think I mean that as a compliment. The biggest controversy we heard about Gaston was that he didn’t get Mike Mussina into the 1993 All-Star Game in front of his home fans in Camden Yards. Big deal.

Finally, is it me or is this the Year of the Manager Goodbyes? Granted, Gaston hasn’t ruled out his options for the future but with Piniella and Cox saying sayonara to the game, it seems like there is some major transitions going on at the manager level.

via Baseball Musings

Manager Connie Mack

connie-mack-hof-1 Here is another fact off my tear-off White Sox trivia calendar. Who holds the record for most years as a Major League manager? Connie Mack (53 years)

He is the longest-serving manager in MLB history, holds records for wins (3,731), losses (3,948), & games managed (7,755), with his victory is almost 1,000 wins more than any other manager. Mack was the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics for the club’s first fifty years before retiring at the age of 87 in 1950.

Connie played eleven years (10 in the NL & one in the Players League) in the major leagues, as a light hitting catcher, .245 career average. He hit five home runs in 2,931 at bats, three in 1888, when he sacrificed average for power, batting only .187 (his only season below .200). His best season as a player was in the Players League in1891 when he batted .266 with12 triples, he was HBP 20 times. His last three seasons as a player, were also his first three as a manager, as he was the Pittsburgh Pirates player/manager (even back then they were trying to save money).

Mack wanted men who were self-directed, self-disciplined, and self-motivated; his ideal player was Eddie Collins. As a manager, he won nine pennants and appeared in eight World Series, winning five.

Over the course of his career he had three pennant-winning teams. His original team, with players like Rube Waddell, Ossee Schreckengost, and Eddie Plank, won the pennant in 1902 and 1905, losing the 1905 World Series to the New York Giants. During that season, New York’s manager John McGraw said that Mack had “a big white elephant on his hands” with the Athletics. Mack adopted a white elephant as the team’s logo, which the Athletics still use today.

As his first team aged, Mack acquired a core of young players to form his second great team, which featured Mack’s famous “$100,000 infield” of Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Jack Barry, and Stuffy McInnis. These Athletics, captained by catcher Ira Thomas, won the pennant in 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1914, beating the Cubs in the World Series in 1910 and beating the Giants in 1911 and 1913, and losing to the Boston Braves in 1914.

That team was dispersed due to financial problems, from which Mack did not recover until the twenties, when he built his third great team. The 1927 Athletics may have been the best second-place team in history, featuring several future Hall of Fame players including veterans Ty Cobb, Zack Wheat, and Eddie Collins as well as players in their prime such as Mickey Cochrane, Lefty Grove, Al Simmons, and rookie Jimmie Foxx. That team won the pennant in 1929, 1930, and 1931, beating the Chicago Cubs in the World Series in 1929 and beating the St. Louis Cardinals in 1930, and losing to the Cardinals in 1931.

The Veterans Committee voted Connie Mack into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937.