Baseball: Past and Present

In my last blog, I identified Mickey Vernon as one of my choices for Baseball Past and Present’s Second Annual “Fifty Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame” voting.

While I was researching Vernon, I realized that his Washington Senators’ teammate from 1951 to 1955, Pete Runnels, was a solid if not spectacular player, too. And since Runnels never received even a single vote for the Hall, I’m including him just because.

There’s not a team in the Major Leagues that would not jump at the chance to sign a Runnels-type player. One of the most consistent hitters from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Runnels won two batting titles for the Boston Red Sox (1960 and 1962) who acquired him in a trade from the Senators for Albie Pearson and Norm Zauchin. During Runnels’ 1960 batting title season (.320), he knocked in only 35 runs—hard to do given that his 169 hits included 33 for extra bases. Runnels barely missed out on a third title (1958) when on the season’s final day in Washington against his old Senators, he went 0-4 while the eventual winner, Ted Williams, got two hits.

Always the gentleman, Runnels later said:

I enjoyed Ted’s 1958 catching me [for the batting crown] on the final day more than the later titles of 1960 and 1962 because of the great competition. Wasn’t he capable?

Still, Runnels was quick to attribute his success as a Red Sox to Williams who taught him to slap the balls into infield holes and slice line drives off Fenway Park’s Green Monster. In five Red Sox seasons, Runnels averaged .320 and never hit less than .314. A master at bat control, he was a notorious singles hitter who had one of the game’s best eyes and compiled an outstanding 1.35 walk-to-strikeout ratio (844-to-627). Altogether Runnels batted over .300 six times, once with the Senators, five with the Red Sox.

Runnels, who played all four infield positions with above average skill and appeared in three All Star games, finished his career with a .291 average. After his last two seasons with the HoustonColt .45s, Runnels returned to coach the Red Sox (1965-1966). Then when Boston fired manager Billy Herman, Runnels was tapped as the Red Sox new pilot to manage the last 16 games. Retired from baseball, Runnels returned to his Pasadena, Texas home to open a sporting goods store.Runnels attended Rice Institute (now Rice University) and served in the U.S. Marines (1945-1948). In 1991, at age 63, Runnels  died from a heart attack he suffered in Houston.  The Boston Red Sox induced Runnels into its Hall of Fame in 2004.

What he did: On the surface, Pedro Martinez’s 2000 season is impressive enough: 18-6 record, 1.74 ERA, 284 strikeouts, and the best WHIP of all-time, 0.737. Of course he was the American League Cy Young, and Martinez even finished fifth in MVP voting. Usually, these kinds of years for pitchers come during times that favor them, the Deadball Era, the pitching Golden Age of the 1960s, and such. But Martinez did his thing at the height of the Steroid Era when offense reigned supreme. His ERA+ was an almost-comical 291, courtesy of an AL average ERA of 4.91.

In 1931, Lefty Grove dominated in similar circumstances, overcoming one of the greatest offensive years in baseball history. This was the season the Yankees scored 1,067 runs and still finished second, where Babe Ruth had an OPS+ of 218 and didn’t come close to winning MVP. That went to Grove who finished 31-4 with a 2.06 ERA, leading most major statistical categories for pitchers, and taking his Philadelphia Athletics to the World Series. If he’d been in a pitcher’s era, there’s no telling what Grove might have done. And given the similarities between Grove and Martinez, both men temperamental, brilliant flamethrowers, it makes me wonder how Martinez might have fared in his place.

Era he might have thrived in: We’re putting Martinez on the last great team Connie Mack managed before the Great Depression forced him to scuttle his dynasty. The ’31 A’s boasted the likes of Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Mickey Cochrane, went 107-45 in the regular season, and then took the Gashouse Gang St. Louis Cardinals to seven games in the World Series. I don’t know if Martinez could have filled in for Grove’s 31 wins, given that he pitched more than 200 innings just seven times in his career. In most other departments, though, Martinez would be a dominant force in 1931.

Why: First off, I ran Martinez’s 2000 numbers through the stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com. With the A’s in 1931, his stats convert to a 19-3 record with a 1.83 ERA and 264 strikeouts. I’ll admit I don’t always trust the B-R converter for pitching stats, and in this case, it has Martinez throwing just 202 innings in a year that Grove had to throw 288 (which later contributed to him blowing out his arm and becoming a junkballer his last several seasons.) That being said, a lot of things still seem to favor Martinez thriving in 1931, assuming of course we suspend disbelief about his dark skin keeping him from playing in the majors prior to 1947.

He’d have a great team, an iconic, underrated one in historical terms, really. He’d have a legendary manager who guided Hall of Fame pitchers like Rube Waddell, Chief Bender, and Grove and who loved to use his hurlers for both starting and relief. Martinez thrived in both capacities through the course of his career. And in the ’30s, Martinez would be pitching in a time where a young flamethrower didn’t need a complex repertoire of pitches. Really, before Grove hurt his arm, he was a thrower more than he was a pitcher, someone who could just chuck fastballs. Martinez could do likewise. Would it be enough to silence the bats of men like Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer and others? I don’t know. But it might be enough to secure a Hall of Fame plaque for Martinez who in his own era doesn’t quite seem a lock for Cooperstown.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Al Simmons, Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies,Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson,Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe,Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film),Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson,Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson,Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Will Clark, Willie Mays

Preparing my ballot for Baseball: Past and Present’s annual 50 Best Players Not in the Hall of Fame project, I put on the top of my list Dwight Eisenhower’s favorite Washington Senators player, Mickey Vernon.

Here’s how Vernon became Ike’s #1. On Opening Day 1954 Vernon walloped a two-run homer off New York Yankees’ pitcher Allie Reynolds that won the game for the Senators, 5-4, in the bottom of the 10th. After he touched home plate, Vernon was grabbed by a man he mistook for an overly zealous fan. But it was a Secret Service agent who escorted Vernon to the president’s box where Eisenhower told him, “Nice going.”

In 14 full seasons (measured by 400 at bats or more), Vernon batted over .335 twice, over .300 five times and over .290 nine times. He had two outstanding seasons: 1946 when he won his first batting title with a .353 average and 1953 when he won his second (.337) edging out Cleveland’s Al Rosen by .001 Vernon’s career high in home runs came in 1954 with 20.

Vernon’s final season was unusual. In 1960, he spent most of the year as the Pittsburgh Pirates’ first base coach. But the Pirates, in need of a left-handed pinch hitter for the stretch drive, activated Vernon in September.  In eight plate appearances, Vernon managed only one hit and returned to the coach’s box where he remained for the World Series.

During his 20-season career, Vernon played for the Cleveland Indians, the Milwaukee Braves and the Boston Red Sox as well as the Senators and Pirates. Vernon also managed the expansion Senators from 1961-1963.

In addition to his two batting titles, Vernon was a 7 time All Star, led the league in doubles three times, participated in 2,044 double plays, the most in major league history, and fielded .990, an astonishing average.

But for a miscommunication, Vernon could have notched a sixth .300 season. In 1941, the Senators’ final three games were in New York. Coming into the series, Vernon was hitting .302 and manager Bucky Harris offered to sit him. But Vernon declined. By Sunday, his average had dipped to .299. Yankees’ third baseman Red Rolfe pulled Vernon aside in the runway and told him to lay down a bunt. “I’ll be back on my heels,” Rolfe said. The game was inconsequential since the Yankees had wrapped up the pennant weeks earlier.

In Vernon’s first three at-bats, the Senators had men on base so he had no bunt opportunity. But in his last at bat and needing the one hit, Vernon looked down the third base line where, as he had promised, Rolfe was playing deep. Vernon, feeling certain that .300 was a lock, put down his bunt. Rolfe didn’t make a play. But catcher Bill Dickey, remembered Vernon:

…came charging out, picked up the ball and threw me out. We had forgotten about him and I ended up with .299.

The Mickey Vernon Sports Museum in Chadds Ford, PA honors Vernon’s career and military service. Vernon. a U.S. Navy World War II veteran, died in 2008 from stroke complications.

Editor’s note: I’m pleased to reintroduce “Does he belong in the Hall of Fame?” as a regular Tuesday feature here. I previously wrote the column weekly for about a year before taking a hiatus in June.

_______________

Claim to fame: Black baseball had its kingpins. First there was Rube Foster, a gifted pitcher who organized the first black professional baseball circuit in 1920. Then came Cum Posey who built the Homestead Grays into a powerhouse that won nine straight pennants in the the late ’20s and early ’30s. But Foster suffered a mental breakdown and died young, and Posey couldn’t maintain his level of success. He was unseated by Gus Greenlee, a Pittsburgh-area numbers king and nightclub owner who raided Posey’s roster for stars like Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, and Satchel Paige, among others. Greenlee’s resulting Pittsburgh Crawfords are perhaps the greatest team for talent in the history of black baseball.

Aside from this, Greenlee founded black baseball’s version of the All Star Game in 1933, formed the second incarnation of Foster’s Negro National League that same year, and erected the first black-built and operated ballpark, Greenlee Field. Greenlee was also a noted philanthropist and aided Major League Baseball’s integration with his help launching a black professional circuit that gave Branch Rickey his subterfuge to scout Jackie Robinson. But Greenlee differs from Foster and Posey in at least one significant respect. While Foster and Posey have both been elected to Cooperstown in recent years, Foster in 1981 and Posey in a special election in 2006, Greenlee didn’t even make the final ballot for the latter election.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Greenlee, like his bitter rival Posey was one of 94 candidates selected by a screening committee in 2005, ahead of the 2006 special election. Posey and 38 others made the final two ballots, and in February 2006, Posey and 16 others (including fellow owners J.L. Wilkinson, Alex Pompez, and Effa Manley) were enshrined. That Greenlee rated such minimal consideration seems suspect, if not outright unjust.

Why: For better or worse, Greenlee was black baseball in the 1930s, assembling the greatest black baseball team money could buy by offering more money than Posey and doing things like paying his player’s salaries during spring training, a rare feat in black baseball. Sure, some of the means to Greenlee’s ends are questionable, and he lost his spot in baseball at the end of the ’30s in part because of rumors he fixed a game in 1936. Still, the Hall of Fame has honored some nefarious characters before who did less for the game than Greenlee.

Is Greenlee’s Cooperstown candidacy anything more than a longshot? I doubt it, at least at this point. His reign at the top was probably too short, about half a decade, and baseball in general could do a better job honoring its owners, with Charlie Finley a candidate on this year’s Veterans Committee ballot and George Steinbrenner and Jacob Ruppert among others not enshrined.  I’d venture, though, that all of those men have higher profiles than Greenlee, who died in 1952 and seems a largely forgotten man today. That’s a shame.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? will relaunch on a weekly basis the first Tuesday after the postseason ends.

Others in this series: Adrian Beltre, Al Oliver, Alan Trammell, Albert Belle, Allie Reynolds, Barry Bonds, Barry Larkin, Bert Blyleven, Billy Martin, Bobby Grich, Cecil Travis, Chipper Jones, Closers, Curt Flood, Dan Quisenberry, Darrell Evans, Dave Parker, Dick Allen, Don Mattingly,Don Newcombe, George Steinbrenner, George Van Haltren, Harold Baines, Harry Dalton, Jack Morris, Jim Edmonds, Joe Carter, Joe Posnanski, John Smoltz, Juan Gonzalez, Keith Hernandez, Ken Caminiti, Larry Walker,Manny Ramirez, Maury Wills, Mel Harder, Moises Alou, Pete Browning,Phil Cavarretta, Rafael Palmeiro, Roberto Alomar, Rocky Colavito,Roger Maris, Ron Guidry, Ron Santo, Smoky Joe Wood, Steve Garvey,Ted Simmons, Thurman Munson, Tim Raines, Tony Oliva, Will Clark

I was going through my baseball card collection the other day and stumbled upon a two -season collection of cards issued by the then Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Phillies Triple-A-affiliated Ottawa Lynx.

We were fortunate to have this team for 15 years, mainly as an affiliate of the Montreal Expos. The last two seasons, 2006 and 2007 I was part of the press box, covering each and every home game and doing numerous interviews with players on the home team and the visiting teams.

Shuffling through my baseball card collection I noticed one startling fact. The vast majority of the Lynx players have never and probably will never make it to the major leagues for anything more than the proverbial cup of coffee if even that. This is most likely the norm for other organizations and not the exception.

Tommy Lasorda once stated that most players who get signed are only there to play catch with the future stars.  It got me to wondering as to the reasons. These players made it to one step below the Show but couldn’t make that seemingly small leap up the ladder to the big time. What were/are the reasons? Was Lasorda correct in his rather brutal assessment?

I was privileged over the years to have been able to see close-up future stars such as Derek Jeter, Jon Lester, and B.J. Upton. For the most part, these types of players are generally promoted from Double-A. It is true that the International League has quite an impressive roster of graduates who not only played in the Major Leagues, but became noteworthy stars and Hall of Famers or at least future Hall of Famers. But International League and minor leagues seems to be, for the most part, stocked with players who will be used only for temporary injury replacements for the big club, or prospects who might flourish for a time as a utility player or long relief pitcher.

For every Jeter, there are many who didn’t make it and most likely never will. It was with a mixture of sadness and wonder that I interviewed several of these players. It was with the same mixture of wonder and sadness that I watched  fringe major league players  have long careers, players who didn’t seem to be better than those Triple A players I got to know so well. These players worked hard, as hard as any other, yet were becoming part of baseballs never to be. Other players often passed them by in the blink of an eye. With each passing season, their window to the bigs was getting smaller and smaller.

Some were stuck behind superstars. Some simply couldn’t find that extra drop of talent which would get them that final step up the ladder. I suspect many had through no fault of their own become labeled with the dreaded 4A status. A 4A status for those readers who are not familiar with the term, refers to players who are too talented for Triple A, yet not talented enough for the majors. Most have had a brief appearance in the majors but were deemed not good enough in their brief trial, or viewed only as a temporary replacement for an injured star.

Some gained the reputation as a premier minor league power hitter who would never be a power hitter in the majors. Some were first baseman, third baseman or corner outfielders who were able to produce a high batting average but not the power  in demand at those positions. They were stopped by a baseball tradition and way of thinking almost as old as the game itself. Even if successful during their trial, managers and coaches at the big league level often put this down to a flash in the pan. Sometimes it was ownership who didn’t want to pay a higher salary when they had ten more similar players who could temporarily fill the void.

I cheered and hoped for every one of these players I interviewed. They were all trying to grab the ring which I had always hoped for but was never nearly talented enough to achieve. Many are still out there trying as they know of no other life. I feel for them all despite the fact that they have never known 9-5. They are doing something, albeit at a minor league level, that I can’t even dream of doing.

In 1953, Sport Magazine published an article titled “The Yankee They Take for Granted,” a reference to the great and underrated Gene Woodling.

With the World Series recently completed, few remember that Woodling was one of the most consistent clutch hitters in series history. The lefty swinger helped the New York Yankees win five straight World Series from 1949 through 1953 when he averaged .318. His 27 postseason hits included five doubles, two triples, and three home runs. Woodling was one of twelve Yankees who played on all of the five winning teams. His mates: Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Hank Bauer, Jerry Coleman, Bobby Brown, Charlie Silvera, Johnny Mize, Joe Collins, Vic Raschi, Ed Lopat, and Allie Reynolds.

Woodling credited his big league success to the time he spent in San Francisco playing for the Pacific Coast League Seals under manager Lefty O’Doul’s tutelage. In 1948, the Pittsburgh Pirates sold Wooding to the Seals even though he had led four different minor league teams in hitting including back to back years of .394 and .398 in Class C and Class D.

Despite Woodling’s lofty averages, O’Doul moved him closer to the plate, placed his feet together and changed the position of his bat. When Woodling held his bat back, he assumed the crouched stance that he became so famous for and led the PCL in batting with a .385 average.

Woodling’s Seals teammate and former New York Giants pitcher Jack Brewer explained how O’Doul improved Woodling’s plate performance:

I remember in spring training Woodling was a punch and Judy hitter. He faced the pitcher in such a way that he couldn’t much power in his bat. O’Doul tied a rope around his waist to get him in the proper stance. To keep him from lunging, he worked with Gene by the hour and pulled that rope so he wouldn’t lunge out in batting practice. Woodling got his timing right and, boy, he was knocking down the fence that season.

In the PCL, Woodling caught Oakland Oaks’ manager Casey Stegel’s eye. When Stengel took over the managerial reins for the Yankees in 1949, he persuaded ownership to purchase Woodling’s contract for $100,000.

Once in St. Petersburg, the Yankees’ spring training site, Woodling joined another rookie Hank Bauer as well as Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Keller, Tommy Heinrich, Big Johnny Lindell and strong-armed Cliff Mapes in the bid for the starting spots.

In an interview with my SABR colleague Jim Sergent, Woodling laid to rest the common opinion that Stengel platooned him with Bauer.
Said Woodling:

Casey only platooned us in about seven games a year. Nobody ever checks the records. You know what he’d do? We’d get a five-game lead, and Casey would platoon us. We’d get down to a tie or one or two games ahead, we’d play every day.

Woodling played left; Bauer, right and center, Joe Di Maggio until he gave way to Mickey Mantle.

Even during the last two years of his seventeen year career at ages 38 and 39, Woodling was still hitting. In 1961, he hit .313 for the Washington Senators and in 1962, a combined .279 for the Senators and the New York Mets.

When his buddy Bauer became manager of the Orioles, Woodling served as his first base coach between 1964 and 1967 and, in 1967, he was the Orioles’ hitting coach.

After Woodling passed away in 2001 at age 78, Ralph Houk said: “He was just such a great guy.”

What he did: Going through the early days of baseball history, players like Al Simmons come up every so often. They are the men who retire innocuously shy of career milestones, the Tony Mullanes and Bobby Mathews’s with just fewer than 300 wins. In Simmons’ case, he, like Sam Rice, Sam Crawford, and Rogers Hornsby quit within range of 3,000 hits. Today, none of these men would be gone before hitting those marks.

Different stories drove these men from the majors in their day. Mullane and Mathews both pitched in the 19th century when hurlers rarely lasted beyond their mid-30s. Crawford left the majors in favor on the Pacific Coast League and proceeded to rack up nearly another 1,000 hits in the minors. Rice simply got old, playing until he was 44, but still quitting rather inexplicably at the end of 1934 with 2,987 hits. Simmons and Hornsby didn’t have the best reputations, though, and declined precipitously as players. They changed teams frequently in the latter parts of their career.

Era he might have thrived in: I wrote awhile back that I could see Hornsby thriving in baseball’s recent years, and I think the same holds true for Simmons. With a bat like his and a chance to serve as a designated hitter, he’d have torn up the American League in the late 1990s and certainly gotten his 3,000 hits.

Why: For starters, Simmons hit big a lot of the places he went: Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit. He and Jimmie Foxx gave the A’s a potent 1-2 punch in their heyday of the late 1920s, and Simmons was one of four men to drive in 100 runs for Detroit in 1936. Imagine Simmons filling in for Magglio Ordonez with the Tigers today or finding a spot with the Rangers in the recent World Series. No way Tony La Russa would’ve had so sweet an end to his career.

Simmons played in the greatest offensive era in baseball history, and it seems unlikely he’d hit north of .380 today or drive in close to 200 runs. Still, the late 1990’s might have been the closest thing to this era (though I made sure to put the century in that date, since the 1894 Phillies hit .350 as a team.) If ever there was an era to put up gaudy number’s besides the actual time Simmons played, it was about a decade ago when guys like Juan Gonzalez, Larry Walker, and Nomar Garciaparra were putting up huge stats.

I ran Simmons’ numbers through the Baseball-Reference.com stat converter for the 1999 Texas Rangers. There are eight different seasons from his career he’d hit .350 or better on those Rangers, including his abbreviated 1927 campaign which converts to a .399 clip with 16 home runs and 118 RBI in 111 games. More importantly, playing with these Rangers, Simmons would probably be earning seven figures or at least working towards the chance for a large free agent deal, a great juxtaposition for a player who never earned more than about $33,000 in a year. He’d also have the benefit of modern medicine and maybe steroids. That all has to be good for something.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Babe Ruth, Bad News Rockies,Barry Bonds, Billy Beane, Billy Martin, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson,Bobby Veach, Carl Mays, Charles Victory Faust, Chris von der Ahe,Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Don Drysdale, Eddie Lopat, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, Gavvy Cravath, George Case, George Weiss, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Honus Wagner, Hugh Casey, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jim Abbott, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Joe Posnanski, Johnny Antonelli, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty Grove, Lefty O’Doul, Major League (1989 film),Matty Alou, Michael Jordan, Monte Irvin, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Rose, Prince Fielder, Ralph Kiner, Rick Ankiel, Rickey Henderson,Roberto Clemente, Rogers Hornsby, Sam Crawford, Sam Thompson,Sandy Koufax, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Vada Pinson, Wally Bunker, Will Clark, Willie Mays

Tony La Russa himself wasn’t much of a ballplayer. The middle infielder hit .199 in 203 Major League plate appearances, toiling in the minors for most of his 16-year career in professional baseball.

Maybe it was all that time on the bench that prepared La Russa for his managerial career. Because his teams seemed to over-perform from day one, beginning in 1979 when he inherited the 46-60 White Sox and led them to a 27-27 finish. Four years later Chicago made the playoffs for the first time in 24 years with the franchise’s best winning percentage since 1920, and La Russa won his first Manager of the Year award.

The White Sox’s early season struggles in 1986 prompted La Russa’s mid-season firing, but the skipper didn’t stay jobless for long. Only three weeks after being kicked out of Chicago, he was hired to manage his former team, the Oakland A’s, and immediately turned them around, just as he had the White Sox seven years earlier. 31-52 when La Russa took over, the A’s finished the season with a 45-34 run under their new manager.

And thus began the glory days of managing for La Russa, who announced his retirement today. La Russa’s Athletics almost immediately posted one of the most dominant three-season stretches of all-time, winning the AL West in 1988, 1989 and 1990, averaging 102 wins during that time and reaching the World Series each year.

Leading this mini-dynasty were Bash Brothers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, perennial Cy Young award candidates Dave Stewart and Bob Welch, future Hall-of-Fame closer Dennis Eckersley, and of course La Russa, who won another Manager of the Year award in ’88, then finished 3rd in the voting in ’89 and 2nd in ’90.

The 1989 A’s team, probably the weakest of the three great Oakland squads, was the only one to find success in the Fall Classic, sweeping their cross-bay rivals, the San Francisco Giants, in a World Series most remembered for the 6.9 magnitude earthquake that delayed Game 3 ten days. It was La Russa’s first World Series championship and his only in Oakland.

After a down 1991 season, the A’s bounced back to win the AL West again in 1992, and La Russa won his third Manager of the Year award. He would last three more seasons with the A’s, before the death of the team’s owner and the subsequent sale of the franchise prompted La Russa to bolt to St. Louis to manage the Cardinals.

It took only one season for La Russa to turn the 4th place Cardinals into an NL Central-winning squad, and despite a few down seasons to close the 20th century, St. Louis soon established itself as the perennial favorite in its division, finishing above .500 all but one year from 2000 to the present and earning six Central division titles during that time. In 2002 La Russa won his record-setting fourth Manager of the Year award (Bobby Cox has since tied that mark).

Arguably La Russa’s best Cardinals team, the 105-game winning 2004 squad, was swept out of the World Series, and the ’05 version lost in a seven-game NLCS. The 2006 Cards were worse than their predecessors by nearly every measure, but, despite only 83 regular season wins, unexpectedly brought La Russa his second World Series title.

This year’s Cardinals were not expected to deliver their manager championship number three. Ace Adam Wainwright was sent for Tommy John surgery after an injury in February, out for the year before throwing a single pitch. Closer Ryan Franklin blew four of his first five save opportunities, Albert Pujols battled a sluggish start, Matt Holliday struggled to stay on the field, and St. Louis trailed wild card-leading Atlanta by 10.5 games on August 24.

But with a bullpen rebuilt at the trade deadline and a newly-healthy offense, the Cardinals stormed back to clinch the playoffs on the season’s final day. In the NLDS, they upset the heavily-favored Phillies in five games. In the NLCS they handled the Brewers in six games, La Russa hailed as genius for his courage in pulling starting pitchers early in ballgames and his subsequent manipulation of his bullpen in the mid- and late-innings.

La Russa’s sixth World Series was an up-and-down one for the manager. Bullpenphonegate, as the Game 5 debacle came to be known, threatened to undermine La Russa’s successes and establish him as the series’ goat, but an all-time classic game 6—in which La Russa made no glaring errors and his counterpart Ron Washington orchestrated blunder after blunder—and a well-managed game 7 gave La Russa’s Cardinals another World Series championship.

Tony La Russa may from time to time appear whiny, stubborn or petulant. But you can’t argue with results, and with six pennants and three World Series titles in his 33 years as a Major League manager, the 67-year old is one of the most decorated skippers in baseball history. He’s third all-time in managerial wins and one of only two managers ever to win the World Series in each league. Where he ranks among the all-time greats is a discussion for another post, but in the wake of a World Series run during which he was praised repeatedly for his leadership and decision-making, we should all pause to admire the career accomplishments of Tony La Russa.