Weaving His Way Into Hall of Fame

When the rookie third baseman went an anxious 7 for 60 in the first month’s games, the manager called him in for a talk.

“You’re not going down,” the manager said.

The rookie liked that. No more minor leagues.

“We don’t have anybody else to play third, anyway.”

Faint praise, but the kid liked it.

“Just go out and play your game. Don’t worry.”

That the kid really liked.

Earl Weaver’s gift was knowing who could play. If Cal Ripken Jr. began the 1982 season hitting nothing, Weaver knew the kid would hit something and soon, which he did. Then, on July 1, Weaver moved Ripken from third to shortstop.

Why move anyone to the infield’s most difficult spot, let alone a kid who’d be 6-foot-4 and 220? At the time, Weaver said it’s easier to find a third baseman with power than a shortstop with power. “You never know,” Weaver said. “Rip might be a great shortstop.”

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A decade later, Weaver said he had put his job on the line. “Fire my butt out of here, I told ‘em, but as long as I’m here, the kid’s at short every day.”

Recognizing a Cal Ripken is easy. Building teams that win is what gets a manager in the Hall of Fame. Putting together a pitching staff that wins six Cy Young Awards does it. Winning 100 games in each of three consecutive years. Winning six division titles, four pennants, a World Series. Do all this in 17 seasons and you’re in the Hall of Fame, even if an umpire or two objects, as Bill Haller did in the early 1980s when . . .

Haller calls a balk, provoking Weaver to charge the ump five times, coming back each time he thinks up a new insult.

“You are lying,” Haller says, to which Weaver answers, “You’re a liar,” causing the umpire to offer a second opinion: “You’re no good, either.”

Weaver says, “Yeah? Five years, 10 years from now, you look who’s in the Hall of Fame.”

“Oooh,” Haller says. “You’re gonna be in the Hall of Fame?”

“You know it.”

We all knew it, and we’re all happy it has happened. Earl Weaver is a baseball classic, a whip-smart little infielder whose passion makes him a manager loved and loathed. Call the roll: John McGraw, Leo Durocher, Billy Martin, Earl Weaver, four of a fiery kind.

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Weaver told Thomas Boswell of The Washington Post how he came to trust his baseball judgment:

“I’ve been exercising that baseball judgment since I was 6 years old and every kid in St. Louis argued over whether Pete Reiser or Terry Moore was the best center fielder.

“Evaluating talent, having a feel for the game, is the heart of the job. From age 8 to 15, I watched a hundred games a season--Browns and Cardinals. Ran from school with my Knothole Gang card and saw the last six innings. Here I am, 12 years old, second-guessing Billy Southworth, who’s one of the three managers in history to win a hundred in three straight seasons.”

A sly pause: “Of course, I’m one of the three, too.”

A manager’s job is simple, Weaver said. Just pick the 25 best players for what he wants done.

Simple? First the manager must decide how he wants to play. With speed? With power? With pitching? Then he must find not the 25 best players but the 25 best for the way they’ll play.

“The guy who says, ‘I love the challenge of managing,’ is one step from being out of a job,” Weaver said. “I don’t welcome any challenge. I’d rather have nine guys named Robinson.”

Weaver spent 20 years in baseball’s backwaters. Just another uniform in the St. Louis Cardinals’ system, he’d been a 5-7 overachiever whose greatest achievement was his laughing excuse for not reaching the big leagues: “I always had Marty Marion in front of me.” Washed out at 25, he began a dozen years as a manager before the Orioles in 1971 gave him a team with two Robinsons, Brooks and Frank.

“Step on toes,” is part of the job, he said, “but step on them softly.” So when Mike Cuellar failed in 13 consecutive starts, Weaver put him in the bullpen and said, “I gave him more chances than my first wife.” The day outfielder Pat Kelly implored Weaver to give up profanity and “walk with the Lord,” Weaver told him, “I’d rather have you walk with the bases loaded.”

Tom Callahan has a story. Once a Washington columnist who studied Weaver, Callahan remembers Weaver, Jimmy Carter and chicken wings:

“The Orioles had the Pirates down, 3-1, in the 1979 World Series. Everyone assumed it was over because Weaver had all those Cy Young winners lined up to finish it off. But the day before Game 5, the Pittsburgh manager, Chuck Tanner, was publicly grieving because his mother had died the night before.

“So the Pirates go out and win one for Chuck’s mom. Now it’s 3-2 and they’re going back to Baltimore and the Pirates figure, ‘Well, we might as well play one more.’

“Of course, they win that one, and they win Game 7, too. Weaver is despondent, and he’s in his office eating chicken wings like a barbarian, ripping the chicken off the bone, grease flowing down his chin--when he looks up and it’s the president of the United States, Jimmy Carter himself, who says to him, ‘Please accept my condolences on the death of your mother.’

“I expected Weaver’s eyeballs to come 6 inches out of his head. I figured the Secret Service would have to pry Weaver’s fingers off Carter’s throat. I could see an international incident.

“But Weaver just waited a second. Then he said, ‘Mr. President, I think you have me confused with Mr. Tanner.’

“Forget the pennants and winning 100 games three seasons in a row. For that moment of restraint alone, Earl Weaver belongs in the Hall of Fame.”