The Last Manager
Author: John W. Miller
Release: March 4, 2025
Tagline: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: Biography, Baseball, Coaching
ISBN-10: 1668030926
ISBN-13: 978-1668030929
Declassified by Agent Palmer: Earl Weaver and the evolution of baseball take the field in The Last Manager
Quotes and Lines
Most importantly, he had thought he was going to make it, and when he didn’t, suffered a deep psychological bruise, on his way to learning that destiny is not a childhood dream but a complex mix of desire, ability, and reality.
Earl Weaver’s desire that his epitaph be “the sorest loser who ever lived.”
Playing minor-league baseball can crush a person psychologically.
[Paul] Richards’s rules: Make the simple play. Never beat yourself. Run out every ball. Throw strikes.
The empowerment of players would upend the baseball manager’s job. He could no longer threaten players with benching, banishment to the bushes, or punches. If a manager antagonized a player, an agent would be on the phone to complain, and call other clubs looking for a place where their client would play. Instead of acting like a dictator, the post-1976 manager would have to learn to flatter and cajole ballplayers like a realtor showing off a three-bedroom.
When Earl cursed, said Reggie [Jackson], “it was like poetry.”
It was all worth it, because Earl Weaver delivered some of the best copy in baseball history this side of Yogi Berra.
“The Chinese tell time by the ‘Year of the Dragon.’ I tell time by the ‘Year of the Back,’ the ‘Year of the Elbow.’ Every year Palmer reads about a new ailment, he seems to get it. This year, it’s the ‘Year of the Ulnar Nerve.’”
“Don’t worry, the fans don’t start booing until July.”
“We’ve crawled out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi.”
“This ain’t a football game. We do this every day.” (This was to Boswell of the Washington Post, who was worried he’d overstayed his welcome during the pregame national anthem. Weaver then added: “Those horseshit cameras are always trying to catch me smoking during the anthem.”)
“A baseball manager has no chance. If 30,000 people are in the stands, 15,000 will always think you’re a moron.”
“We’re so bad right now that for us, back-to-back home runs means one today and another one tomorrow.”
“The judge gave me custody of both of them,” he said, pondering a feud between Palmer and DeCinces.
“No manager belongs there more,” concluded Tom Boswell in the Washington Post. “As much as any one person in a generation, Weaver encapsulates the fire, the humor, the brains, the childishness, the wisdom, and the goofy fun of baseball.”