Earl Weaver, 82, dies

[Syt]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/earl-weaver-former-orioles-manager-dies-at-82/2013/01/19/d6e5c1a0-397d-11e2-a263-f0ebffed2f15_story.html

Earl Weaver, former Orioles manager, dies at 82

A scourge to umpires, goad to his players and a delight to fans, Earl Weaver was among the winningest managers in the history of major-league baseball. In his 17 years as chief helmsman of the Baltimore Orioles, his teams won 1,480 games, four American League championships and the 1970 World Series.

Mr. Weaver died Jan. 18 while on a cruise, the team announced. He was of 82. The cause and other details of his death were not immediately known.

Mr. Weaver's winning percentage as the Orioles' manager was .583 — the ninth best of all time. Three times he was named manager of the year. Five times his teams had 100-win seasons. The in-your-face bantam was thrown out of 98 games for arguing overzealously with umpires. The Orioles retired his No. 4 uniform, and he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996.

As a 5-foot-7 minor-league infielder, Mr. Weaver learned that his dreams of playing in the big leagues were unrealistic.

"It broke my heart, but right then I started becoming a good baseball person," he told Time magazine in 1979. "When I came to recognize and more important accept my own deficiencies, then I could recognize other players' inabilities and learn to accept them, not for what they can't do, but for what they can do."

He managed the Orioles from 1968 through 1982, when he retired the first time. By 1985, Baltimore's beloved O's had fallen upon hard times, and at the behest of the team's front office, the "Earl of Baltimore" returned in what proved to be a futile effort to right the ship. At the end of the 1986 season, Mr. Weaver retired for good.

After a sixth-place in the American League in 1967, the Orioles came storming back behind Mr. Weaver's leadership in 1968, finishing second.

The next year, they won the American League East division championship with a record of 109-53, the best in team history. The Orioles swept the Minnesota Twins 3-0 in the AL championship series, but lost the World Series to New York's "Miracle Mets."

In 1970, Mr. Weaver led the Orioles to 108 victories, paced by the slugging of first baseman Boog Powell, who had 35 home runs and 114 runs batted in and was named the American League's most valuable player.

After again defeating the Twins in three straight games for the AL pennant, the Orioles advanced to the World Series and beat the Cincinnati Reds, four games to one. Twice more, in 1971 and in 1979, Mr. Weaver took the Orioles to the World Series, only to lose both times to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

As an on-the-field manager, Mr. Weaver was primarily a motivator who seldom dwelled on the techniques of hitting, fielding or pitching.

"The only thing Weaver knows about a curve ball," Oriole Hall-of-Fame pitcher Jim Palmer once said, "is that he couldn't hit one."

Off the field, Mr. Weaver kept his distance from his players, sitting alone on airplanes when the team traveled. He could be harsh and sarcastic, and his verbal clashes with Palmer were well publicized.

"Any difference we ever had was overshadowed by the fact that his teams always won," Palmer said in 1996, after Mr. Weaver's election to the Hall of Fame. "I enjoyed our relationship even though there was some tension."

Five mainstays of Mr. Weaver's teams later entered the Baseball Hall of Fame: Palmer, third baseman Brooks Robinson, outfielder Frank Robinson, first baseman Eddie Murray and infielder Cal Ripken Jr.

Oriole pitchers won the Cy Young Award as the league's best pitcher six times under Mr. Weaver, including three Cy Youngs for Palmer. Another of his proteges was Davey Johnson, who won a World Series as manager of the New York Mets and later became manager the Orioles and Washington Nationals, among other teams.

Mr. Weaver understood each of his player's strengths and weaknesses, and he seemed to have a gift for knowing which ones to play and which ones to bench at any moment.

"The man's a genius for finding situations where an average player — like me — can look like a star," John Lowenstein, an Oriole outfielder in the 1970s and 1980s, told The Washington Post in 1982. "He has a passion for finding the perfect players for the perfect spot."

Mr. Weaver was tough on his players when they were winning, less so during the hard times when they were losing. He could be patient with hitters in prolonged batting slumps and pitchers who couldn't get batters out.

"I can sum up managing in one sentence," he told The Post in 1982. "A manager's job is to select the best players for what he wants done."

In 1982, when Ripken was in his rookie year, Mr. Weaver stayed with him over a dismal stretch of seven hits in 60 at-bats. He let pitcher Mike Cuellar go through 13 unsuccessful starts in 1976 before removing him from the rotation.

"I gave Mike Cuellar more chances than my first wife," Mr. Weaver said.

Mr. Weaver was often described as a master baseball strategist, and he understood the importance of on-base percentage and other statistical measures long before other managers. He disliked sacrifice bunts, which he considered "giving away an out," and he especially hated when his pitchers walked opposing hitters. His favorite "strategy" was the three-run homer.

"You win pennants in the off-season when you build your team with trades or free agents," he told Washington Post sports columnist Thomas Boswell in 1982. "The three-run homers you trade for in the winter will always beat brains.

"The guy who says 'I love the challenge of managing,' is one step from being out of a job."

When it suited him, Mr. Weaver had a gift for showmanship. After having been thrown out of a ballgame as a minor-league manager for protesting a foul-ball call at third base, he ripped the third base bag from its moorings and walked off with it, snarling at the umpire, "You won't need this anymore."

Even when Mr. Weaver was wrong, wrote Terry Pluto in his 1982 book, "The Earl of Baltimore," fans knew "he screamed and kicked and stomped and clawed for every advantage, and they loved him for it."

To dramatize his disdain for an umpire's knowledge of baseball rules, Mr. Weaver once tore up a rule book on the field. He kicked dirt in the air and staged his tirades all for the calculated effect of inspiring his team.

"If baseball can germinate genius," Boswell wrote in 1982, "then Weaver is the bloom of native American wit and savvy as revealed within our national pastime."

Umpires were less forgiving.

"Weaver's a pest, an insult to baseball, a clown who goes under the guise of manager," said Steve Palermo, with whom Mr. Weaver had often clashed.

'Managing is work'

Earl Sidney Weaver was born in St. Louis Aug. 14, 1930. His father ran a dry-cleaning shop, and he cleaned the uniforms of the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns, who in 1954 would move to Baltimore and become the Orioles.

Mr. Weaver was a second baseman on his high school team and also played American Legion baseball. He was small and a slow runner but still good enough to attract professional scouts. He played minor league ball in the Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates systems, then, in 1956, became a player-manager in the Oriole minor-league system.

He managed teams in Fitzgerald, Ga., Aberdeen, S.D., Appleton, Wis., Elmira and Rochester, N.Y., before arriving in Baltimore as a third-base coach for the Orioles in 1968. Three months later, he was appointed manager, replacing Hank Bauer.

Posted in the Oriole clubhouse on the day he took over was one of Mr. Weaver's favorite slogans: "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." That would later become the title of his 1982 autobiography.

He was 52 when he stepped down after the 1982 season.

"Playing baseball is fun," Mr. Weaver told The Post. "If I could play I'd never retire. But managing is work. It's constant decisions of whose feelings you want to hurt all the time. "

His short-lived comeback from retirement in 1985 and 1986 did nothing to change his views. He made a run at broadcasting after leaving the Orioles, but his reviews were mixed and he did not pursue it.

For much of his retirement, Mr. Weaver lived in Pembroke Pines, Fla. where he played golf, grew tomatoes and went to dog tracks.

In 1996, Mr. Weaver was on a golf course when his wife found him to say he'd been elected to the Hall of Fame.

"When I heard the news, my knees got weak," Mr. Weaver said in a conference call with reporters. "It was something that was hoped for but not necessarily expected....A manager gets in the Hall of Fame by what his players have done for him."

Mr. Weaver's 14-year marriage to his first wife, Jane Johnston, ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife since 1964, the former Marianna Osgood; three children from his first marriage; and a stepdaughter from his second marriage.

Mr. Weaver acknowledged the toll baseball took on his family, including his first divorce and years spent away from his children. Tense and high strung, he often slipped into the clubhouse to smoke between innings and would unwind with drinks after games. He once had his driver's license suspended for drunk driving.

Known for his salty, inventively profane diatribes against umpires, Mr. Weaver described himself as a practicing Christian. Nonetheless, while joking with outfielder Pat Kelly, who later became an evangelist, Mr. Weaver suggested that Kelly spend more time on his hitting.

"What's wrong?" Kelly supposedly said. "Don't you want me to walk with the Lord?"

"I'd rather have you walk with the bases loaded," Mr. Weaver replied.

Once asked by a Post reporter how he'd like to be remembered, an unrepentant Mr. Weaver said, "Sore loser is good enough for me."

[Ed Anger]

I should steal a base in honor of him.

[sbr]

RIP.  What a character, we won't see anyone like him again in mlb.

[Syt]

RIP.  What a character, we won't see anyone like him again in mlb.

That can be said for most sports. Maybe it's rose-tinted nostalgia, but unique characters are replaced by slick people with agents, PR advisors etc.

[CountDeMoney]

They just don't make managers that go on a midnight drinking bender with Cal Ripken, Sr. and wind up kicking the shit out of car of the state trooper that pulled him over during a field sobriety test like that anymore.

Goodbye, Earl. 

[katmai]

I thought that old coot died years ago.

[dps]

I always thought that Weaver, like Whitey Herzog, was over-rated as a manager.  I thought that both were certainly good managers (Weaver moreso than Herzog), but a large part of the press seemed to be in awe of them.

[katmai]

Just saw reports that Stan "the Man" Musial died today as well.

He was 92.

[sbr]

Just saw reports that Stan "the Man" Musial died today as well.

He was 92.

http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,9180.new.html#new

[katmai]

Just saw reports that Stan "the Man" Musial died today as well.

He was 92.

http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,9180.new.html#new

Created after my post

[sbr]

Just saw reports that Stan "the Man" Musial died today as well.

He was 92.

http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,9180.new.html#new

Created after my post

I know.  Stan deserved a thread and I was directing traffic there.

[katmai]

Fair enough, even if he was a Dirty Cardinal.

[sbr]

Were they dirty even back then?

[CountDeMoney]

I always thought that Weaver, like Whitey Herzog, was over-rated as a manager.  I thought that both were certainly good managers (Weaver moreso than Herzog), but a large part of the press seemed to be in awe of them.

Earl was the first to take a truly statistical analysis managerial approach to baseball, before it came into vogue.
Used to have index cards on every player and hitter-pitcher match up with him in the dugout, complete with stats and situational percentages. Nobody else ever did that at the time.

Had some damned good arms to work with back in the day, too.

[jimmy olsen]

Good night sweet prince.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWQbN0jFo_k