Today, one of baseball's all time great managers, Sparky Anderson, died. Anderson is best known as the manager of the 1970s "Big Red Machine" that he led to four National League pennants and two World Series championships in 1975 and 1976. After leaving Cincinnati in 1978, Anderson moved onto Detroit. While the results weren't nearly as positive, he did have plenty of success in Detroit. In 1984, on the strength of a 35-5 start, he led the Tigers to 104 victories and a World Series title.
Over the years, Anderson was fortunate enough to have managed numerous All-Star and Hall of Fame caliber players like Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Tony Perez, Ken Griffey, Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker, and Jack Morris. This shouldn't be considered as a slight to Anderson. He got the most out of his players year after year. After all, we can all imagine howw difficult it must've been to deal with a pretentious douchebag like Joe Morgan, and an obsessive personality like Pete Rose. He deserves a lot of credit for that.
Anderson finished his 26 year managing career in 1995 with an overall record of 2194-1834 (.545 winning percentage).
No comments:
Post a Comment