A Whole New Ballgame : As a General Rule, Less-Gifted Players Have Had the Most Success as Managers

Since 1954, only two men have managed the Dodgers. Both enjoyed successful minor league playing careers, but combined they appeared in only 27 major league games.

Walter Alston was a first baseman who committed an error in his only big league game and struck out in his only time at-bat. Tom Lasorda was a left-handed pitcher who was winless in four major league decisions. He walked 56 batters in 58 innings and set a National League record with three wild pitches in one game.

As managers, however, Alston and Lasorda have guided the Dodgers to 2,859 regular-season victories, 5 world championships, 10 National League pennants and 6 West Division titles.

Baseball’s most successful managers in the past 40 years have been those whose playing careers have been less than spectacular--to put it charitably.

Whitey Herzog of the Cardinals batted only .257 in eight major league seasons, but in his first eight full seasons as a manager led his teams to first place five times and second place once. Dick Williams of the Seattle Mariners, a lifetime .260 hitter in the majors, is one of only two managers to guide three different teams to the World Series. Angel Manager Gene Mauch batted only .239 with five home runs in 304 major league games spanning nine years. But he is among the top nine managers on the all-time list in games, victories and years of service.

Former Cub Manager Jim Frey, who spent his entire 14-year playing career in the minor leagues despite a .302 career average, managed the Kansas City Royals to the 1980 American League pennant and the Chicago Cubs to the 1984 N.L. East Division title.

Earl Weaver, who also never played a game in the majors, started this season as the third-winningest active manager with a .592 percentage. His Oriole teams have won six division titles and four pennants, finished first or second in their division 13 times in the past 16 seasons, won 100 or more games five times and 90 or more 12 times.

Weaver spent most of his 13-year playing career as a second baseman in the Cardinals’ system. He was named most valuable player in three different minor leagues, and in 1949 drove in 101 runs while hitting only two home runs. But he never made it past the Double-A level.

“There was a shortage of ability somewhere,” he said. “I hit well with men on base and I had good defensive ability, but I was a one-position player. My arm wasn’t strong enough to play on the left side of the infield and my speed wasn’t such that I could be a Lou Brock.”

So, instead, he became a manager. He toiled for 12 years in such places as Knoxville, Elmira and Rochester before coming to the Orioles midway through the 1968 season. In 1969 and 1970, the Orioles won 109 and 108 games, respectively, along with two pennants and a world championship.

Of course, it doesn’t always require someone who has played in the minors his entire career to be a successful manager, either. There are exceptions. Yogi Berra, the only Hall of Fame player in the past 40 years to manage an entire season and win a pennant, accomplished the feat with the 1964 Yankees and the 1973 Mets. Of the 16 others, 13 have done it as player-managers.

You can count the stars who became first-place managers on your fingers. Ten-time All-Star Red Schoendienst anchored second base for three pennant-winning teams, the 1946 Cardinals and the 1957 and 1958 Milwaukee Braves. Later, he managed the Cardinals to consecutive pennants and a world championship in 1967.

Eight-time All-Star Joe Torre, the N.L. MVP in 1971 and a .297 lifetime hitter, was named N.L. Manager of the Year in 1982 after guiding the Atlanta Braves to a division title.

Former All-Star second baseman Davey Johnson is well on his way to a third consecutive 90-victory season as manager of the New York Mets, who won their first pennant and World Series 17 years ago under the leadership of another outstanding ex-ballplayer named Gil Hodges.

But generally, a superstar doesn’t pan out as a manager. In most cases, he starts right away in the majors and doesn’t play in the minors. And the reason for that could be anything from his marquee value to his vanity.

“A lot of very good ballplayers didn’t want to start in the low leagues and at the low salaries,” Lasorda said. “We started at the bottom and worked our way up, and we were just thankful for the opportunity.”

Detroit Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson, a teammate of Lasorda’s in the Pacific Coast League with the 1957 Los Angeles Angels, said: “Guys who can’t play have nothing else to go to. They have no finances to set themselves up in anything else. So they’re all the time concentrating on baseball and saying, ‘How can I stay in this game? I want to stay in something that I know something about.’ ”

Anderson was a minor league second baseman in the Dodger system who learned the game from Branch Rickey, Fresco Thompson and Al Campanis.

“Probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me was that I was in the Dodger organization,” Anderson said. “Any young kid that was raised in that era under those people had a great knowledge of the game.”

All that knowledge, however, didn’t help him hit. The highest level he reached was the Triple-A International League, with the Montreal Royals.

He made it as far as spring training with the Dodgers in 1958, when General Manager Buzzie Bavasi made a promise to him before sending him back to Montreal: Anderson either would be promoted to the big club the next season or be traded.

Bavasi kept his word and sent him to the Philadelphia Phillies. During that 1959 season, his only one in the majors, Anderson batted just .218 in 477 at-bats with 0 home runs and only 12 extra-base hits. He spent the next four years back in the minors before coming to the realization that his future was in managing.

“Nobody likes to tell themselves the truth, but I couldn’t play and I think I understood that when I left,” he said. “I loved to play so much, but I had to be honest and admit to myself that I wasn’t a good enough player. I could field, but I just couldn’t hit enough to stay in the big leagues.”

In 1970, his first season as a big league manager, his Cincinnati Reds won 102 games--13 more than the previous year--and the National League pennant. It was the first of Anderson’s five West Division titles and four pennants in Cincinnati. He guided the Reds to consecutive world championships in 1975 and 1976 and left the Cincinnati with a .596 winning percentage.

Shortly after the Reds fired him, Anderson resurfaced in Detroit during the 1979 season and boldly predicted a championship in five years. The target year was 1984. The Tigers not only beat Dick Williams’ Padres in a five-game World Series, but they registered the first wire-to-wire championship since the 1927 New York Yankees.

Now in his seventh season at Detroit, Anderson already is the second winningest manager in Tigers history. He brought a .577 career percentage into this season--second only to Mauch among active managers--and has suffered only one losing campaign in his first 16 years as a manager. Anderson may not have been much of a player, but his success on the bench has more than compensated.

“I don’t think I knew any more than a Stan Musial,” he said, referring to the Cardinals’ Hall of Fame player who had the good sense to open a restaurant and a bowling alley instead. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that those guys don’t have the same smarts. You can’t be as good as those people were without knowing the game.”

Hall of Famer players Frank Robinson, Eddie Mathews and Ted Williams are among 13 major leaguers who have hit 500 career home runs. They felt they could transmit superstardom to their players by managing them. But when they tried, they found it a humbling experience. Suddenly they were dealing with mere mortals and, for the first time, endured two elements of the game that were foreign to them--failure and criticism.

“They couldn’t understand how other players couldn’t do the things they could do,” Lasorda said. “The guy who struggled in the minor leagues and worked there as a manager and coach had more patience than the other guy.”

Said Anderson: “Great players don’t want to have a poor club and get booed. They don’t want to have to fool with guys who can’t play. They’ve had great careers and they’ve made a lot of money. Why do they have to go out now and tolerate a lot of negative things when they’ve had such a positive career?”

Robinson, baseball’s first black manager, homered in his first game as the Cleveland Indians’ player-manager in 1975. But it was mostly downhill after that. In seven seasons with Cleveland and San Francisco, he lost 16 more games than he won.

Mathews returned to manage his old team, the Atlanta Braves, from 1972 through 1974 and lost 12 more games than he won. His only full season was 1973, when the Braves finished fifth, nine games under .500 and 22 1/2 games out of first place.

“I didn’t enjoy it that much, but it was an experience I’m glad I had,” said Mathews, who holds the major league record for third basemen with 512 career homers.

“I didn’t think I could improve the quality of the person’s ability, but I did feel I might be able to instill the attitude they need. I think I helped some kids. Others weren’t very receptive. You couldn’t get them to run to first base at full speed. And as much as you talked to them, it wouldn’t register.”

Williams, the last major leaguer to hit .400, managed the Washington Senators for three seasons and accompanied the team to Texas, where it lost 96 games in 1972. He finished his managerial career with a .429 winning percentage, adding fuel to the argument that the best players usually don’t make the best managers.

“That could be a part of it, but I don’t feel that is a manager is going to make that much difference in a club,” Mathews said. “If you don’t have the quality players who can go out there every day and do the job, you’re not going to win. I don’t care who you are.”

“I don’t think they failed,” Anderson said of Mathews, Robinson and Williams. “I think they found out after a while that they don’t need it. They don’t need trying to control 25 different people and trying to contend with the media and the fans.

“But people like me who couldn’t play will contend with anything because we know that, without this, we wouldn’t make a living.”

Anderson is the only manager to win world championships in both the American and National leagues, to win 600 games in both and to win 100 games in a season in both. He entered this season needing only 66 victories to become baseball’s 12th all-time winningest manager. And he wouldn’t trade those achievements for 3,000 hits, 500 home runs and a lifetime .300 batting average.

“There’s more satisfaction in the ups and downs of managing than anything else,” he said. “It’s more real to what life is. When you’re as good as Rose and Bench and Mays and Mantle and Koufax and Drysdale, it must be like a fantasy world. Being a great star like that cannot be real life.

“Managing is so satisfying, especially if you do it a long time and you’ve survived it,” he added. “They tried to get me, they tried to lynch me. But I can say to myself, ‘Hey. I was a man. I survived it all.’ ”

Asking Weaver to make the same choice would be tantamount to asking him to choose between his wife, his three children and his six grandchildren.

“At my age, I have to feel satisfied and happy with the little success I’ve enjoyed,” the 56-year-old Oriole manager said.

“I wouldn’t trade what I have now to have played in the major leagues, but it’s still the one disappointment in my life that I didn’t get to play in a major league game. When you think about baseball, playing is fun and managing is a job.”