When the Orioles fired manager Hank Bauer July 11, 1968, they handed over the reins to their first base coach, a 37-year-old ex-minor league second baseman named Earl Weaver. Weaver had been added to Bauer’s staff prior to that season after managing in the Baltimore farm system for 11 years. When the change was announced, most fans nationally said “Who?” Some reporters, referring to Earl’s short stature, called him “pixyish.” We learned better over the years. Weaver, of course, went on to a Hall of Fame career, winning four AL flags and the 1970 World Series.
There was a similar reaction when Dave Trembley was announced as Sam Perlozzo’s successor. Dave still carries the “interim” label, and likely will for some time, but if Andy MacPhail truly wants to show fans he’s committed to the old time Oriole Way of doing things, Trembley could end up in the dugout for quite a while.
As a minor league manager, Weaver’s clubs never finished out of the first division, but when Earl was in the bushes, winning on that level was far more important than it became later on. Trembley’s minor league experience is far more extensive than Weaver’s, though he has an all-time won-lost record below .500. The winning percentage is really of little consequence, however; you’d be hard-pressed to find any of his minor league charges to speak a bad word about him. Most praise him for his upbeat demeanor and teaching abilities.
Measuring the true worth of a manager is difficult. Most in the game agree that the best managers coax only a handful of additional wins out of their rosters over the course of a season. When the Yankees were winning almost annually in the 1950s, their Hall of Fame skipper Casey Stengel famously fell asleep on the bench during games. He had the best players in the game, and merely had to stand back and let them play.
The Orioles at the dawn of divisional play were somewhat the same. Weaver didn’t have to be a genius to fill out a lineup card with those names.
In some cases a managerial change is little more than cosmetic. The club’s been struggling and putting a new guy in that role will give some fans the impression that wheels are turning upstairs, and someone has their finger on the problem. Had Joe Girardi accepted Baltimore’s offer to take over, there would have been a honeymoon period over the last 90 games of the season, but real results would be expected next year, based purely on Girardi’s manager of the year season in Florida. Beyond a desire not to uproot his family, I’m quite sure those high expectations played a role in his decision.
The 2007 Orioles roster didn’t look like a post-season contender to me in April.
They looked like a work-in-progress, a potential .500 team with a small margin for error. If the fans can accept the arrival of MacPhail as perhaps the most significant event of the Angelos regime, perhaps they can also accept Trembley as more than just an interim skipper, a hire that harkens back to the beginning of the glory days of this franchise.
Contact Phil Wood at [email protected]
