The return of HOF'er Tony LaRussa
ernie11
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in Sports Talk
If LaRussa gets 36 more wins in 2021 with the White Sox, he will move into 2nd place in wins, behind only Connie Mack.
https://espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30218070/chicago-white-sox-name-tony-la-russa-76-new-manager
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We'll see how it goes.
Anyone know how the fan base is reacting to this hire?
Over the last ten years it seems that the role of MLB Manager has changed dramatically. And that has influenced who gets hired. Specifically, teams have been more likely to go with younger unproven guys to be Manager. Tied in to this is the front offices/GMs using analytics etc to make a lot of decisions which used to be left up to someone's gut or the knowledgeable bench coach.
very interesting. Has a current HOFer ever returned to be an active player/manager before?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
here's the question i have....................has anyone in the history of sports ever come back to manage/coach the same team 35 (or more) years later?
you'll never be able to outrun a bad diet
I remember Jim Palmer tried to make a post-HOF comeback, but he didn't make it out of spring training.
I had either forgotten about that or never knew. I just did a little reading on his comeback try. Very interesting.
Guy Lafleur played three years after his induction.
And Connie Mack holds that record only because he was the manager for a century (exaggeration) and stayed WAY beyond his prime to the detriment of the Philadelphia Athletics franchise.
thats right. forgot about that one. i think it was 1990 or so. I also know that some teams tried to get wilt chamberlain to come out of retirement in the 80's but he wouldnt. seems like the 83 sixers tried to get him to play during the playoffs.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
He did it to maximize profits, not to chase pennants. Too many owners do that in all sports.
Yes, that was part of his strategy, probably in the 1930s. He once said that it was better to finish fourth, in an eight team league, and contend for a part of the season, than win the pennant because it cost too much to pay the players after a championship season. He may have been thinking of 1929-30 when he put together a team that was almost as good as the 1927 Yankees.
The trouble was, in the 1940s and ‘50s, the Athletics were terrible under Mack’s leadership. They were consistently in last place. Mack admitted that he could not follow the games as well as he once could. I read about an outfielder who got a signal from Mack from the bench, in the mid 1920s, about how to position himself in the outfield when a certain player came up. Sure enough that player hit a fly to him in that spot. Mack admitted he didn’t follow the players as well as he once did.
My dad related a story about one of his visits to an Athletics game in Philadelphia in the late 1940s. Nellie Fox, a future Hall of Fame second baseman, came up with the A’s. According to my dad, he made a great play in the field.
A short time later, Mack traded him to the White Sox for a journeyman catcher who was with the A's for little over a season. For my dad, that was evidence that Mack had lost it.
A player and a manager are two different things. A player needs tremendous physical ability. A manager needs excellent mental ability and lots of knowledge about the players in today’s game. LaRusa will need to do some catching up, but there is no reason to think he can’t do it.
Wasn't Connie Mack the team owner for all those years? Nobody looking over his shoulder.
Ben Shibe owned the controlling interest in the the team early on. Mack gradually got more and more of the team until he owned it all. So, yea he was the owner and manager at the end. Mack was the manager from 1901 to 1950. He had a record of 3,731 wins and 3,948 losses for a 48.1 winning percentage. He won five World Series and nine American League pennants, but he finished last 17 times. He managed the team for 50 years.
He was a great baseball man, but he stayed around until he was 87 and way over the hill.
Not the sport you're looking for, but Jack Nicklaus was inducted into the World Golf HOF in the 1974 inaugural class (at 34 years of age), pretty sure he had a few good years after that. Mickelson was class of 2012, Tiger will be class of 2021 since the recent rules just require 45 years old OR 3 years inactive.
Thoroughbred and Standardbred jockeys/drivers continue to compete in horse racing while in the HOF.