After a thorough going over of Sports Illustrated's profile of Earl Weaver, the former Orioles skipper the Wapella Board of Historians voted Weaver the pro-sport manager most like a Wapella native. Profane, belligerent, crafty as a badger, and the winningest manager in baseball history, Weaver had it all. Weaver said in 1986, "On my tombstone just write, THE SOREST LOSER THAT EVER LIVED."
A few choice bits:
Weaver: [To his team at a closed-door meeting] You guys don't want to win bad enough! I never failed to get a guy in from third base with less than two outs!
Pitcher Dave McNally: Yeah, and you never played higher than Double A.
Weaver: And another thing, if you don't make the last out of the game, you never lose! I never made the last out.
[Pitcher Jim Palmer raises his hand.]
Weaver: What?
Palmer: We all know why you never made the last out, Earl.
Weaver: Why?
Palmer: Because they always pinch-hit for you.
Weaver: Aw, you ruined the mood, Palmer!
**
George Steinbrenner: Earl, what would you do if you're sitting in the hotel lobby at two in the morning and you see your ballplayers walking in?
Weaver: Well, is it a night game or a day game?
Steinbrenner: We played a night game.
Weaver: Two o'clock ain't that bad, George. You got a day game tomorrow? What do you got tomorrow?
Steinbrenner: We're playing an exhibition game in Columbus, Ohio.
Weaver: You've got to let them do something once in a while.
Steinbrenner: Would you come manage?
Weaver won the pennant one year by making only 167 pitching changes in 159 games. Another year he used only 12 pitchers in the entire season. The guy is truly an amazing mind and wordsmith as well.
Here's Earl as vulgar as he can be on video. Full warning Earl is really lit up.
8 comments:
The greatest mgr of all time. Thanks for giving The Earl the respect he deserves. He grew some fab tomatoes in the bullpen in his day as well.
Who can forget his Two Pack managing in the 1979 Series? Who was the relief pitcher who drove him to excess? And whatever happened to Dave McNally?
Some good weekend trivia.
BEP
wish Weaver would have managed the Wapella Blues - he may have been the difference maker. bbd
I hear Walter Cronkite was a one-time race car driver. Did he do any driving in Central Illinois? Your readers want to know.
HG
Walter preferred the short track. He was NASCAR before it was cool.
BEP
"It's nothing but flat black, and that's the way it is"
WC
Cronkite in Farmer City...I'd have paid to see it.
BEP
"Straight, flat black..."
Earl Nelson, the anti-Earl Weaver?
Jim Palmer
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