Gene Mauch has the Sparky
Anderson old thing going on. In this photo he is about 48 years old. But he has
a fat smile on his face and he should as he was about to lead the Expos to
their best season for a few years, one in which they would contend until a
late-September slump took them out of the running for a division title. He used
the NL’s best OBA to run his “small-ball” theme pretty well and if he had one
more dependable starter he could have won the whole thing. What he did win was
the NL’s Manager of the Year award. The nice thing about the ’73 fade was that
it wasn’t his fault. That probably made it a lot easier to bear than that one
in ’64.
Gene Mauch was born in Kansas but relocated to California as a kid and played middle
infield and pitched while attending Fremont High in LA.. He was signed by the
Dodgers in ’43 just out of school and that summer after hitting .322 in B ball
put in a few games in Double A. Shortly after starting at Brooklyn
and then hitting .283 in Double A he enlisted, spending the balance of that
year and all of ’45 in WW II. He returned in ’46 to put in a full season at
shortstop in Triple A, hitting .248 with a .359 OBA, but with tons of errors. After
the season he was traded to Pittsburgh
where he moved to second and after hitting .300 the first half of the season
was promoted. He spent the balance of the season hitting .300 in a few games of
infield back-up. After a flip back to Brooklyn
(with Billy Cox and Preacher Roe) a slow start as a reserve got him to the Cubs
on waivers. The rest of that year and the next he got 300 at bats worth of
back-up infield work. Prior to the ’50 season he was traded to the Braves where
he did a season-plus up top and also hit over .300 in Triple A in ’51 and ’52.
In ’53 he went down to Double A as a player/manager and went 84-70 and made the
playoffs. He then returned to Chicago
where he played for three seasons in the PCL, hitting well each year and
topping out with a .348/20/84 season in ’56. Those numbers turned on the Red
Sox who purchased Gene for the stretch run – he hit .325 – and then kept him up
top for all of ’57 where he split time at second and had his biggest year at
that level, hitting .270 with 28 RBI’s in 222 at bats. He was then released as
a player and went to Triple A to manage for the Sox and in both ’58 and ’59
took his team to its championship series, winning the whole thing the second
year. He turned in some time as a player there also and finished that role
after the ’59 season. Gene hit .239 in the majors in just over 300 games and
.291 in the minors with a .385 OBA.
Mauch was planning on
returning to the Boston organization for the ’60
season but instead got hired into the Philadelphia
one as a coach up top and took over the team two games into the season. The
first two seasons were pretty tough but by ’62 Gene and management had built a
pretty good nucleus around outfielders Johnny Callison and Tony Gonzales and that season he won his
first Manager of the Year award. Then with the arrival of Chris Short and Jim
Bunning on the mound and rookie slugger Dick Allen in a couple years he had the team in first
place with a bit over a week to go in September ’64. But the Phillies famously lost
ten straight as Gene opted to go with his two above mound starters almost exclusively; three straight losses were to the surging Cardinals who went on to win the
Series. Still Gene again won Manager of the Year again and kept the Phillies on the
plus side of the win column even though the talent got scarcer and there were
all sorts of fallouts between him and Allen. He was canned midway through the
’68 season and was then hired to manage the new Expos. Again the going was
rough initially and while he never got to a winning record with Montreal he did get them
to a respectable place pretty quickly by building around a good core and
playing smart fundamental ball. He lasted with Montreal through ’75 and then
was hired to run Minnesota.
There he kept the team competitive even after Rod Carew’s departure, until he
was let go during the ‘80 season. A year later he was following Jim Fregosi in
managing the Angels and in ’82 he won his first divsion title. He was released
after losing to the Brewers in the playoffs and was then hired back for ’85
when owner Gene Autry realized he acted too hastily. Again within a year Gene
had California
on the playoff track, winning his second division title. But reprising an old theme, after
his team had its his opponent on the ropes, the Angels allowed Boston to
recover to win the playoffs. Gene managed the Angels one more season and then,
facing health problems, retired from managing. He was a big smoker and would have lung
problems the rest of his life. Gene went 1,902-2,037 and he has coached and won
the most games without winning a title. He worked for the Angels front office
for a bunch of years and passed away from lung cancer in 2005 when he was 79.
Dave Bristol was born in Macon, Georgia,
and was also a middle infielder in high school, as well as an all-city
basketball guard and halfback. He was signed by Cincinnati
in 1951 after a year at Western
Carolina University
– he would complete a degree there and at UNC in education – and then hit .270
in D ball that summer. In ’52 and ’53 he moved up to C ball where he hit
roughly .245 before later the second season he joined the military. He returned
in ’55 to hit .247 in B ball and in ’56 moved back to D ball where he hit .274.
In '57 he had moved to C ball where he was hitting .333 when he was asked to
manage a D club. There he hit .332 while leading the club to a record of 38-59,
significantly better than his predecessors. He continued to play through ’61,
recording big seasons in C ball in ’59 (.289/13/97) and in D ball in ’60
(.295/15/85) and finished with a .283 average. He remained in the Cincinnati system as a
manager through ’65, running up a record of 662-562 during that time and
winning league championships in five of those nine seasons. In ’66 he was
brought up top to coach and early that season was named manager. As a manager
he was a taskmaster and bench jockey who got in trouble for riding the umps. He
did a pretty good job putting together the team that would become The Big Red
Machine but couldn’t get to the playoffs so was dismissed following the ’69
season. He was hired by Montreal
but then jumped ship to manage the Brewers which he did from ’70 through mid-’72. In
’73 he became a coach with Montreal
for real, which he did through ’75. He then moved to manage the Braves where in
’77 he was replaced by team owner Ted Turner for a game before the league put a
stop to that and Dave returned to finish the season. In ’78 he coached the
Giants and then took over managing in ’79 as the team failed to move ahead in
its rebuilding. But there he clashed with Jack Clark and got into a fight with
John Montefusco and was done after the ’80 season. After a year out of the game
he returned to coach for the Phillies (’82-’85, ‘88) and the Reds (’89 and
’93). In between and thereafter he returned to his off-season business of
raising horses back in North Carolina.
Dave’s record was 657-764 overall up top and he continues to reside in his base
state.
Larry Doby was born in South Carolina and relocated to New Jersey when he was a kid after his
father died. He spent high school in Paterson where he was all-state in the
big three sports and track and he played both semi-pro (with Monte Irvin) and
Negro League ball before he finished school (he adopted the surname Walker when
he played in the Negro Leagues). After graduating in ’41 he went to Long Island University on a hoops scholarship. He
did not finish out the year but did play pro hoops for the Harlem Rens and
baseball for the Newark Eagles the following spring, playing second and hitting
around .390. He then transferred to Virginia
Union University
and then in ’43 again played for Newark
before being inducted into the military. He played some service ball over the
next three seasons while being stationed in the US and the Pacific. He returned to Newark in ’46 and hit .341, which got him noticed by Cleveland owner Bill
Veeck. After a winter of pro hoops for the Paterson Crescents he returned to Newark where he was hitting .458 with Negro League-leading
totals of 16 doubles and 13 homers when he was signed by Veeck and later that
summer became the first black player in the AL. He only got some token time at the plate
that first season but returned in ’48 to take over center field and hit .301
before leading Cleveland
hitters in the Series with a .318 average. In ’49 he hit .280 while upping his
RBI total to 85 and increased everything in ’50 with a .326/25/102 season with
an AL-leading .442 OBA. After a knee injury hurt his power a bit in ’51 he
returned to put up his three biggest power years, averaging 31 homers and 111
RBI’s through ’54 while hitting about .272. During that time he led the AL in
homers twice and runs and RBI’s once. In ’55 he hit .291 with 26 homers but a
leg injury helped pull his RBI number down to 75 and after the season he was
traded to the White Sox. His first year in Chicago he had a .268/24/102 season but he
again injured his leg in ’57 and his numbers slipped to .288/14/79. He was
then traded back to Cleveland where he hit .283 with 13 homers and 45 RBI’s in half
a season in ’58. He then went to Detroit and
back to Chicago for a few games before
re-joining Cleveland
at their PCL franchise. There a couple games in he broke his ankle and missed
the rest of the season. He signed with Toronto
of the IL in ’60 but was cut when his ankle didn’t come around. After returning
to Paterson to coach and run his club in Newark he went to Japan in ’62 with Don Newcombe to
play for Chunichi as the first Americans to play there. That ended his playing
career and he finished with a .283 average with 253 homers, 970 RBI’s, and a
.386 OBA. He hit .237 in ten post-season games and made seven consecutive
All-Star teams. In ’63 he resumed his work in Paterson which he did until he became a scout
and minor league hitting coach with the new Expos in ’69. He moved up top to
coach from ’71 to ’73 and then returned to Cleveland to coach in ’74. There were rumors
that he would become MLB’s first black manager but when the Tribe traded for Frank
Robinson that opportunity slipped away and Larry was released as a coach prior
to the ’75 season. In ’77 he moved to the White Sox as hitting coach and then
replaced Bob Lemon as manager mid-way through the ’78 season. He went 30-57 in
that role before again becoming hitting coach in ’79. He then moved on to
basketball and from ’80 through ’90 worked for the New Jersey Nets in various
community-relationship roles. He then did some admin work for the MLB offices
but mostly retired to Montclair,
NJ. He was inducted into the Hall
in ’98 and passed away in Montclair
in 2003 from cancer. He was 79.
Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar
Tuskahoma McLish had a dad who was nearly a full-blooded Native American and
who obviously liked names. Cal grew up in Oklahoma and was signed
by the Dodgers as a bonus baby pitcher in ’44 out of high school and therefore
began his career right away in the majors. He went 3-10 that summer with a 7.82
ERA and then spent the next two years in the military, grabbing an inning on
his return late in ’46. He then got traded – with Gene Mauch – to Pittsburgh where he did a
couple seasons in Triple A and won 12 games in ’48. But his control wasn’t
great and his ERA was toppy so he was traded to the Cubs and had another
mediocre season in ’49 at the same level before going 20-11 with a 3.60 ERA in
’50. That got him back up top but a ’51 season of 4-10 with a 4.45 ERA moved
him back down and he spent the next four seasons in the PCL going a combined
56-53 with a 3.55 ERA and much better control. He then got purchased by
Cleveland for whom he returned to the top. After a not great ’56 he put
together three pretty good seasons: 9-7 with a 2.74 ERA in ’57; 16-8, 2.99 in
’58; and 19-8, 3.63 in ’59. He then went with Billy Martin to the Reds in a
trade but went only 4-14. He had another losing season in ’61 with the White
Sox before going to Philadelphia
where over the next two years he was 24-16 with a 3.66 ERA. After a couple
games in ’64 he was done and finished with a record of 92-92 with a 4.01 ERA,
57 complete games, five shutouts, and seven saves. In Philly
Cal’s old buddy Gene Mauch was the manager and
in ’65 Gene named Cal
pitching coach which he did through ’66 before working the next two seasons as
a scout for the team. He then re-joined Mauch as a coach for the new Expos
which he did through ’75. He then moved on to Milwaukee as its pitching coach (’76-’82) and
scout (’83- late Nineties) and then retired. He passed away in Oklahoma in 2010 at age
84 from leukemia.
Jerry Zimmerman was born in Omaha, Nebraska and moved
to Oregon as
a kid where he excelled as an athlete at Milwaukie High. There he was chased
down by every MLB club after hitting .423 for his career – and .621 his senior
year of ’52 – as a catcher. The Red Sox won him with a bonus of between $65,000
and $80,000 and he hit .230 that summer in C ball. He upped that to .265 in ’53
but with very little power. In ’54 he hit .302 in D ball, followed by a .275 in
B ball in ’55 and a .231 in A ball in ’56. He was very adept at handling difficult
pitches and had very low error and passed ball totals. He had one of his better
offensive years in ’57 with a .266 Double A year and then hit .250 in Triple A
the following year. After starting off ’59 badly he was released and picked up
by Baltimore. His average didn’t improve and after the season he was sent to Cincinnati for whom in
’60 he hit .279 in Triple A. He finally made The Show in ’61 when he stepped in
as part of a three-man rotation at catcher and had the best average – at only
.206 – of any of the guys in that position on the pennant winner. He got some
Series time and then was traded to the Twins for whom he spent the next five seasons
backing up Earl Battey. He returned to the Series in ’65 and had his best
season up top in ’66 when he hit .252 with 15 RBI’s. He took over as a starter
in ’67 when Battey got sick and also was the club’s bullpen coach, a role he
continued partly in ’68, his last season. He finished with an average of .204 in
the majors, .258 in the minors, and went hitless in one at bat in the
post-season. While in the minors he had played for Gene Mauch and he rejoined
him as an original Expos coach in ’69, staying there through ’75. He then
returned to Minnesota
with Mauch and coached there through ’80 and in ’78 umped a game during the
umpire strike that year. He was then a scout for the Yankees for two years
before taking on that role with Baltimore,
which he did through ’97. He passed away from a heart attack in ’98 when he was
63.
The double hook-up returns
since Gene did some good time in the majors. For him as manager:
1. Mauch managed Mike
Marshall on the ’70 to ’73 Expos and the ’78 to ’80 Twins;
2. Marshall and Mickey Stanley ’67 Tigers.
And for him as a player:
1. Mauch and Jim Piersall ’57
Red Sox;
2. Piersall and Jim Perry ’59
to ’61 Twins;
3. Perry and Mickey Stanley
’73 Tigers.
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