When I was a kid I couldn’t
always tell whether or not Eddie Mathews was a white guy and it was photos like
this one that confused me. Eddie sure had a nice tan going which I guess came
with the territory of working in sunny Atlanta.
He’d returned there as a coach a couple years earlier and was elevated to
manager about two-thirds of the way through the ’72 season. He improved things
a bit and ’73 was his first – and only – full season in the role. There would
be some exciting times what with all the homers but the launch pad that County Stadium
resembled back then, coupled with some injuries, and just some dreadful
pitching, made it difficult for the team to get any real traction. He would
improve to a winning record in ’74 but, combined with other issues, that
improvement wasn't enough and he gave way to Clyde King 100 games into that
season. Here he looks moderately concerned home in Atlanta. Things down the road would warrant
that expression.
Eddie Mathews was born in Texarkana, Texas, and as
a young boy he relocated to Santa
Barbara, California,
where he was a big deal high school football and baseball star. He was highly
sought by many schools for the former sport but opted to sign with the Braves
in ’49 for a $6,000 bonus. In D ball that summer he had a .363/17/56 line in
just 240 at bats and the next year put up a .286/32/106 line in Double A. He
split the next season between Double A and Triple A but missed most of it to
Navy service for the Korean War before he was recalled because his dad was sick
and Eddie was his family’s only income producer. In ’52 he was called up to Boston where, though his
average was a bit light and his K totals a tad high, he wowed people with his
defense at third and hit 25 homers. He cranked things up big the next year with
his .302/47/135 line. His homer total led the NL and his OBA was .402 as he
made his first All-Star game. Over the next two seasons he would average lines
of .289/41/102/.418 as Milwaukee’s
main slugger as a young teammate Hank Aaron was establishing himself. Eddie’s
RBI totals fell a bit the next few years as Aaron became a premier slugger
himself and Eddie’s line averaged .274/33/89/.370 as he took two trips to the
Series, winning one. In ’59 he again led the NL in homers during a
.306/46/114/.390 season followed up by another big power year in ’60 with his
.277/39/124/.397 year. Beginning in ’61 he led the NL in walks three
consecutive years as his lines averaged .279/28/92/.394. By then he’d been
having some back and shoulder issues that were beginning to compress his swing
a bunch and in ’64 his numbers fell to .233/23/74/.344 before a big bounce in
’65 with a .251/32/95 line. By ’66 the back pain was serious and his days as a
big slugger were over. After a final season in ’66 with Atlanta
he was sent to Houston where he played primarily
first base in ’67 before an August trade to Detroit to help in the stretch run. He
remained with the Tigers in ’68 as primarily a pinch hitter for the eventual
Series champs. Eddie then retired with a .271 average with 512 homers, 1,453
RBI’s, 2,315 hits, and a .376 OBA. In the post-season he hit .200 with a homer
and seven RBI’s in 16 games with a .385 OBA. He was an All-Star nine times and
defensively ranks in the top ten for third basemen in putouts, assists, and
double plays.
For a couple years after
playing Mathews was a salesman for a couple firms but he wasn’t a big fan of
that work. So in ’71 he returned to baseball as a Braves coach and then assumed
the manager position in ’72. By then he had a pretty serious drinking problem
and that problem was part of what led to his dismissal in ’74. He was 149-161
as a manager which would turn out to be significantly better than his immediate
successors. He then worked briefly with the Brewers – where he turned down the
manager job – before moving to San
Diego and having a run as a scout. He would return to
formal coaching with the Rangers, Oakland
(’81-’83) and Atlanta
(’88-’89) around his scouting work. He was admitted to the Hall in ’78 and in
’92, a couple years after retiring, he had a second serious attack of
pneumonia, his first being while with the A’s. He was nearly better by ’94 when
he wrote his autobiography and was attending card shows on a regular basis. He
did that through ’97 when he was in a bad boating accident that shattered his
pelvis. Thereafter things were very tough for him physically and in early 2001
he passed away from complications of pneumonia and heart problems. He was 69.
He has a detailed SABR bio.
Jim Busby grew up in rural Texas and in ’45 went to
TCU on a football scholarship. I have read that he was in the Army during WWII
but since he had just turned 18 when the war ended that doesn’t seem right. By
his junior year he was TCU’s starting QB and in ’47 he took his team to the
Cotton Bowl. He also hit over .500 as a fleet outfielder and ran track as well,
setting the school record in the 100-yard dash. In ’48 he was signed by the
White Sox and that summer hit .305 in a season split between B and A ball. In ’49
he hit .306 at those same levels and missed about half the season so it was
most likely that then was his Army time. In ’50 he moved up to Triple A where
he hit .310 with 17 stolen bases around his few games in Chicago. In ’51 he made the team in spring
training as its starting center fielder and as a rookie hit .283 with 68 RBI’s
and 26 stolen bases. He was also an excellent fielder who over his career would
only post 16 errors. Early in ’52 he went to Washington for Sam Mele and there his
average slid a bit before rebounding the next two years when he averaged .306
with 81 RBI’s and 15 stolen bases per season. After a slow start in ’55 he
returned to the Sox where he finished out the year. He then went to Cleveland as part of a
deal for Larry Doby where his .235/12/50 line was a bit of an improvement. In
early ’57 he was on the move again to Baltimore
for Dick Williams – I guess he liked being traded for future managers – where
he hit .250 but his power stats depleted a bunch. By ’58 he was a reserve guy
and he filled that role for the Red Sox, back in Baltimore,
and in Houston
before he finished as a player during the ’62 season. Jim put up a .262 average
with over 1,100 hits and 97 stolen bases during his career. He is in the top 50
all-time for putouts in center and the top 100 in assists and double plays. He
remained with Houston
as a coach the duration of the ’62 season and stayed there through ’67. He then
moved on to Atlanta (’68-’75), the White Sox
(’76), and Seattle
(’77-’78) before going 37-27 as a manager in ’79 in the Inter-American League.
After that league folded he moved to Florida
full-time where he ran some orange groves he’d acquired earlier. He then
retired in Georgia
where he passed away in ’96 at age 69.
Connie Ryan was born in New Orleans where he
would be a star athlete at the same high school later attended by Rusty Staub.
Ryan then earned a baseball scholarship to LSU, where he remained through his
sophomore year of ’40 when he left to sign a minor league contract with Savannah, a B-level
affiliate of the Atlanta Crackers, an independent team. After hitting .302 that
year as s econd baseman, he moved up to the A-level Crackers in ’41 and hit
.300 there. In ’42 he was sold to the Giants where he had a tough time in NY
before returning to Double A, hitting .243 that season. Immediately prior to
the ’43 season he was sent to the Braves as part of a deal for Ernie Lombardi
and as the regular guy at second Connie hit .212. He improved that
substantially in ’44 when he was hitting .295 with 13 stolen bases before he
enlisted for WW II after D-Day. Named to the All-Star team that year, he
remained in the service through ’45 and returned to Boston as the starting second baseman in ’46
and ’47, hitting .241 and .265 with 69 RBI’s respectively. In ’48 Boston acquired Eddie
Stanky and Connie became a reserve, getting only 122 at bats that year and
limited time in the Series. In ’49 he was a utility guy, playing all infield
positions, which he continued through early in ’50 when he went to Cincinnati for Walker
Cooper. With the Reds he returned to a starting role that season and for all of
’51, hitting .246 during that time. He then moved to the Phillies in a big
trade for the ’52 season, where he retained the regular role, hitting .257,
until he was placed on waivers in ’54 (despite hitting .296 at the time). The
ChiSox took him and Connie finished out his career that year and the next with Chicago and then back in Cincinnati with a .248 average with just
under 1,000 hits. He went 0 for 1 in his only Series at bat and is in the top
100 all-time in putouts at second. He remained in baseball in a bunch of roles.
As a minor league manager he went a combined 403-383 for the Braves (’55-’56,
’68-’69), Cincinnati (’58), Houston
(’62), and Kansas City
(’67). He was also an MLB coach for Milwaukee/Atlanta (’57, ’71, ’73-’75) and Texas (’77-’79) and
manager for both going a combined 11-22 in interim roles for the Braves (’75)
and the Rangers (’77). In between and thereafter he scouted for Houston (’61, ’63-’66), Kansas City/Oakland (’67, 70, 71,
and in the Eighties), the Braves (’69-’70), and Texas (’76). He would then retire to the New Orleans area where he
passed away in ’96 at age 75.
Ken Silvestri grew up in Chicago where he was an
all-state football player for two years and then went to Purdue on a football
scholarship (this has been a very educated coaching group thus far). He spent
two years at Purdue, playing both baseball and football, before being signed by
the White Sox in ’36. He spent his first two years in D ball, hitting .270 and
.307, with 23 homers that second year. He moved up to Double A in ’38 and spent
more time there in ’39 – both years hitting .272 - around his debut in Chicago. He hit lightly
his rookie year, batting just .173 in minimal plate appearances. He raised that
to .250 in ’40 with ten RBI’s but in just 24 at bats. After that season he went
to the Yankees where he took on the Ralph Houk role – almost zero plate time –
before Houk got there. Ken again hit .250, this time in 40 at bats, and won a
Series ring, before enlisting for WW II, which would take him away from
baseball the next four years. He returned in ’46 to hit .286 again in limited
time before Houk assumed his role and Ken spent the bulk of the next two years
in the minors, hitting a combined .226 but with a .377 OBA. He then moved to
the Phillies via the Rule 5 draft for the ’49 season, returned to the Series in
’50, and finished his MLB time in ’51 with a .217 average in just 203 at bats
over eight seasons. He returned to the service in ’52 and ’53 in Korea and then
came back to baseball in ’54 as a player and then player/manager in the Yankees
system, which he did through ’58. He went 255-242 his four seasons as a manager
and won two league titles and finished his minor league playing career with a
.268 average. He would then get a bunch of MLB time as a coach with the
Phillies (’59-’60), the Braves (’63-’75), and the White Sox (’76, ’82). In
between he coached in the St. Louis system
(’61-’62) and Chicago’s
(’77-’81) before going into semi-retirement as a scout for the ChiSox beginning
in ’83. He was still scouting for the team when he passed away in ’92 at age
75.
Herm Starrette grew up in Statesville, North
Carolina, where he was a big deal pitcher and
basketball player. His brother George would be a pro hoops player and Herm was
offered a basketball scholarship to Wake
Forest but opted to go to local Lenoir-Rhyne College where he pitched his freshman
and sophomore seasons of ’57 and ’58 before signing that June with the new
Orioles. That summer he went 7-9 in C ball before improving at that level in
’59 to go 17-7 and 9-7 in ’60 around some military time. Up until then a
rotation guy, in ’61 in B ball he went 11-7 as a spot starter and in ’62 became
a reliever, going 14-10 with a 2.65 ERA in 61 games in A ball. The next three
years he would pitch well out of the pen in Triple A, going a combined 14-7
with a 2.14 ERA. He also got three looks in Baltimore over that time-frame and although
he threw well – 1-1 with a 2.54 ERA in 46 innings – he never stuck. Back in
Triple A in ’66 he hurt his arm and was done as a pitcher, finishing with a
minor league record of 72-50 with a 3.32 ERA. He then became a pitching coach
in the Orioles chain, succeeding George Bamberger in ’68 as director of
pitching and continuing the Baltimore
streak of developing premier starters. He did that through ’73 when he became
the Atlanta
pitching coach. He remained with the Braves through ’76 and then moved on to San Francisco (’77-’78 and ’83-’84), Philadelphia
(’79-’81), Milwaukee (’85-’86), the Cubs (’87),
and Baltimore
(’88). He then became minor league pitching coordinator for the Expos (’89-’92)
and Boston
(’93-2002) both while working closely with Dan Duquette. After Duquette was
replaced as Boston GM following the 2002 season, Herm retired to Florida where he still
resides.
I’ll skip over Watergate
stuff this post and go straight to the double hook-up. For Eddie Mathews as a
manager:
1. Mathews managed Ralph Garr
on the ’72 to ’74 Braves;
2. Garr and Dave Hamilton ’76
to ’77 White Sox.
That was pretty good. Now for
Eddie as a player. I am just going to add a step to the above:
1. Mathews and Sonny Jackson ’67 Astros;
2. Jackson and Ralph Garr ’72
to ’74 Braves;
3. Garr and Dave Hamilton ’76
to ’77 White Sox.
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