Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, The by Bill James Read Free Book Online Page B

years managing in the majors, most of them in New York City. McGraw and Robinson claimed credit for inventing everything except shoe leather, and the simple fact that it wasn’t true (many of the things they claimed the old Orioles invented existed before 1890, and others were clearly in use in Boston before they were invented in Baltimore) wasn’t going to prevent any sports-writer from making use of a good story.
    Selee was a gentleman; Hanlon, a ruffian. Selee’s philosophy as a manager was “if I make things pleasant for the players, they reciprocate.” He expected his players to be temperate and responsible, and he wouldn’t take on players who were not. Nonetheless, while I like Selee a great deal more than Hanlon, Selee has no real legacy in the modern major leagues, while Ned Hanlon is the great-grandfather of most modern major league managers.
    All major league managers, essentially, come from one of three families—the Connie Mack family, the Branch Rickey family, and the Ned Hanlon family. The Hanlon family is the largest of the three; most major league managers today can be traced back to Ned Hanlon. Let us take, for example, Lou Piniella.
    Lou Piniella was probably most influenced, as a potential manager, by Billy Martin. Billy Martin was unquestionably most influenced by Casey Stengel. Stengel was probably most influenced by John McGraw, and John McGraw was the chief proponent of the legend of the old Orioles in the days of Ned Hanlon.
    Stengel never actually said that he was most influenced by John McGraw. What Stengel actually said on the subject, in his autobiography Casey at the Bat , was this:
    Some ballplayers, when they get a chance at managing will copy another manager. That’s a very serious mistake. You can take some of a man’s methods, but don’t ever think you can imitate him … I played (for) John McGraw, and when I started managing, everybody said, “I’ll bet he’s going to copy McGraw.” Well, there’s been anywhere from fifteen to fifty men that tried to imitate McGraw and never made it.
    But if not McGraw, who else? Stengel came to the majors with Brooklyn in 1912, where he played for Bill Dahlen, who had played for Cap Anson—and Ned Hanlon. Dahlen was replaced by Wilbert Robinson, McGraw’s longtime teammate and erstwhile buddy, and the other major source of the legend of the old Orioles; Stengel played for him for four seasons.
    After he left McGraw and the Giants, Stengel played for Dave Bancroft, who had been McGraw’s shortstop. So anyway you cut it, Stengel, as a manager, is the grandson of Ned Hanlon. Billy Martin is the great-grandson of Ned Hanlon, as a manager, and Lou Piniella is his great-great-grandson.
    Or take Tony LaRussa. LaRussa was probably most influenced, as a manager, by his fellow Tampa native, Al Lopez. I don’t know that; that’s a guess. Anyway, Lopez has said many times that he learned more about baseball from Casey Stengel than from anyone else. Lopez played for Stengel in both Brooklyn and Boston, and managed against him for many years, with some success.
    Apart from Stengel, the largest influence on Lopez as a manager was probably the man who brought him to the major leagues in 1930 and managed him his first couple of years: Wilbert Robinson.
    But maybe LaRussa wouldn’t cite Lopez as his number one managerial influence. He might cite his own first major league manager. That would be Ed Lopat—who had his best years in the majors with the Yankees in the early fifties. For Casey Stengel. Or LaRussa might cite Bill Rigney, of whom, I know, he is also very fond. Rigney came to the major leagues in 1946, and played for three years for Mel Ott, who had been more or less adopted, as a seventeen-year-old, by John McGraw.
    Rigney later played several years for Leo Durocher. The only major league managers Rigney played for were Ott and Durocher, and he eventually replaced Durocher as manager of the Giants. A December 1955 article in the Baseball