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Al Lopez with the South Siders |
This assumed that the reader knew who
Al Lopez managed in 1963, and knew that Lopez did not earn the
initial right to manage the AL 1964 All-Stars by winning the '63 AL
pennant. This I knew, but I made the answer too complex- I actually
skipped ahead a year, the reason of which is actually fascinating,
and we'll get to that in a bit.
First, about Al Lopez. Al Lopez could
have gone down in history as one of the most successful managers of
all-time, but he happened to manage in the American League in the
1950's and 1960's, when that team from the Bronx had a historical run
that will never be duplicated again: The New York Yankees won 14
American League pennants in 16 years. They didn't just repeat; they
five-peated, then they four-peated, and then they five-peated again.
Only two teams prevented the Yankees from 16-peating (think about
that for a second- 16-peating): the 1954 Cleveland Indians, who won
a then-AL record 111 games, and the 1959 “Go-Go” Chicago White
Sox. Both of those teams were managed by... and you may have
figured this out already... Al Lopez.
That much I knew before I went to the
interwebs to get the correct answer to the trivia question. There I
discovered several statistical anomalies about Al Lopez as a manager.
(I would have written “interesting statistical anomalies,” but
in the minds of baseball statheads, all statistical anomalies are
automatically interesting.) Also, I then realized that every
baseball player and manager has a statistical anomaly that stands
out. Obviously the big ones are career numbers for your Hall of
Famers, but the reason SABR (the Society for American Baseball
Research) exists and that Bill James has a career and that Moneyball
is now a front office strategy is because of statistical anomalies.
Even if a baseball players' statistics are perfectly average, he
becomes a statistical anomaly because no baseball player is perfectly
average. Mind. Blown.
Anyway, Lopez has several statistical anomalies as a manager. First, that
he finished second seven times in his first nine years as a Major
League manager, all to the same team, those Yankees. From 1951 to
1959, with the Indians and Sox, Lopez finished second except in those
years he won the pennant, in '54 and '59. That means he also
four-peated... he just did it in second place, and with two
different teams, as he left Cleveland for the South Side of Chicago
after the '56 season.
But, more important to this particular
trivia question is that he is (as far as I can tell) the only man to
twice be chosen as a “replacement” All-Star game manager- and it
happened in consecutive years. You see, the rule for the All-Star
game is that the manager who won the pennant the previous year gets
to coach the game for his league. Lopez had already taken the helm
twice the normal way, in 1955 and 1960. However, the Sox finished
third in that 1960 season, meaning that Baltimore's Paul Richards
became the first American League “replacement manager” when Casey
Stengel retired/got fired after the Yankees lost the 1960 World
Series in dramatic fashion to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 7 games.
The Yankees replaced Stengel with Ralph
Houk, who won the next three AL pennants. However, he was already
scheduled to move to be Yankees GM after the '63 season ended so Yogi
Berra could become manager in 1964. And that happened, allowing
Lopez- whose South Siders came back to finish second in '63- to
manage the AL All-Stars in 1964. Thusly, the correct answer to the
initial trivia question.
However, the biggest All-Star game
managerial statistical anomaly (see? I told you everybody in
baseball is part of one) happened in 1965. It started when Yogi and
the Yankees won the AL pennant in '64, and played the St. Louis
Cardinals, managed by Johnny Keane, in the World Series.
Well, the Yankees lost in 7 games. And
even though this was pre-Steinbrenner, the Yankees still knee-jerked
their way to a decision, firing Yogi (even though these Yankees were
aging rapidly- most of them were at least ten-year veterans, Mantle's
weakening knees and boozing and pill-popping were increasing rapidly
in opposite directions- and the Cardinals were the up-and-comers,
with Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, who would help the Cards make back to
back series appearances a few years later).
And, in a bizarre twist, to replace
Yogi, the Yankees hired Johnny Keane, who had just beaten them in the
series. So both the managers of the pennant winning teams were gone.
As a result, for the first and only time (again, so far as I can
tell) both All-Star game league managers were replacements.
Lopez, who of course finished second to the Yankees again in '64, got
the gig again for the American League, the becoming the only man to
twice be a replacement manager and do it in consecutive years.
However, in the National League, a much
darker turn. In 1964, the Philadelphia Phillies collapsed in
historic proportions late in the season, allowing the Cardinals and
Keane to overtake them for the pennant. The Phils actually tied for
second with Cincinnati, however the Reds manager, Fred Hutchinson,
died days after the season from lung cancer at just 45 years old,
meaning that the NL spot went to the third tie-breaker, as it were.
So Phillies manager Gene Mauch became the National League's manager
in 1965 after all, although you know it's not the way he wanted it to
happen.
As for that 1965 regular season, his
final full year as a big league manager, Al Lopez and the Chicago
White Sox finished.... second. Of course. Lopez managed 15 full
years in the bigs, and never won fewer than 82 games (which in a 154-game season was ten games over .500). (He's also
fourth in all-time winning percentage for managers who got to at
least 2,000 games.) In 12 of those 15 seasons he won at least 88
games, in ten of them hit at least 90... and only has two pennants to
show for it, that '54 season (111 W's) and '59 (94). He finished
second ten times, which has to be a record (even the great
Connie Mack, who managed 50 years, only finished second eight times).
His final three years, he won 94, 98, and 95 games, and finished
second all three times. (And yes, he's in the Hall of Fame.) So he started with three consecutive second
place finishes, and finished with three consecutive second place
finishes. A three-peat, a four-peat, and a three-peat. Now that's a
statistical anomaly.
Photos courtesy: thefamouspeople.com, wikipedia.org
Al Lopez Field in Tampa, demolished for Raymond James Stadium |
Photos courtesy: thefamouspeople.com, wikipedia.org
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