Richards Receives Tributes

Paul Richards, who turned moribund franchises in Chicago and Baltimore into pennant contenders, was remembered Monday as one of baseball’s best judges of talent, and a shrewd executive and field manager.

Richards, a special assistant for the Texas Rangers, collapsed and died Sunday after finishing a round of golf at the Waxahachie County Club, where he had a house next to the second green. He was 77.

Funeral arrangements were pending Monday.

“No matter how much baseball changes, it will still need the human element and Paul was one of the most innovative,” said Roland Hemond, who was vice president of the Chicago White Sox when Richards returned to the club in 1976.

“It’s too bad the kind of knowledge he had couldn’t be stored in a capsule for use for all the present and future generations of baseball,” Hemond said.

A one-time major league catcher who by his own admission caught pitching better than he hit it, Richards made his mark as the manager of the White Sox during the early 1950s and then as the manager-general manager of the fledgling Baltimore Orioles.

“I just liked baseball,” Richards once said. “Before I went to school, I was reading about the ballclubs. It seems to me that as long as I can remember anything, I remember baseball.”

The White Sox were a second-division club for years until Richards made them a contender, finishing third in the American League from 1952 through 1954 during the reign of the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians.

Through the efforts of Richards and General Manager Frank Lane, the White Sox established a strong farm system that produced such players as Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio, who helped the White Sox win the 1959 American League pennant.

In 1955, he accepted the dual post of manager-general manager with the Orioles. The team had moved to Baltimore the previous year from St. Louis, where as the Browns they were traditionally one of baseball’s worst teams.

“He was the catalyst of our franchise,” said Jack Dunn, Oriole vice president, who once was an assistant general manager to Richards.

“He brought us respectability,” Dunn said. “He brought along all the young kids like (Milt) Pappas, Brooks (Robinson) and Boog (Powell). He was years ahead of his time. As far as a manager and an evaluator of talent, he had few, if any, equals.”