The Little General

BY JOHN ROSSI

This November marks the centenary of one of Major League Baseball’s most brilliant but haunted managers – Gene Mauch. Winner of over 1900 games in a career than spanned 26 years, he ranks 19^th among games but is not in the Hall of Fame. Manager Sparky Anderson described him as “the smartest manager ever.”  If he had the better team, Anderson once noted, you had no chance; if you had the better team, he still found a way to beat you.

Largely forgotten today, he was a baseball enigma. Despite his talent as a baseball strategist, he never won a World Series and when he reached postseason play something always went wrong. Twice he lost playoffs where his team lead; once up two games to one, only to lose two in a row and once leading down to the last strike only to lose again. He is often remembered for his Phillies collapse in 1964 when with a 6 ½ game lead the team lost the pennant by dropping 10 consecutive games.

Mauch was born in Kansas in 1926 but raised in the Los Angeles area where he took up sports early and was in particular a talented baseball player. In 1943 when he was 17, Branch Rickey signed him as part of his plan to load up talent for the Dodgers when World War II ended. Rickey became a Mauch admirer early, once observing that he had the makings of a future manager.  “Look at him”, Rickey once noted, “and you think he is 16. Talk to him and you think he is 26. Talk baseball to him and you think he is 36.” He made his major league debut the next year.

At 5’10” and 165 pounds, Mauch was solid defensive player but it soon became clear that his offensive talent was limited. Mauch would go on to play for six different teams, Brooklyn, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, the Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox. His best season was his last with the Red Sox. Playing alongside Ted Williams for two seasons, Mauch hit .275.

In 1953 when he was 27, Milwaukee Braves GM John Quinn who admired Mauch’s baseball knowledge took a chance and hired him to manage the Atlanta Crackers of the AA Southern League. Mauch did a brilliant job and with an 84-70 record, reached the playoffs – but was eliminated in the first round. He didn’t return, recognizing that he lacked the maturity to run a team. He was in constant arguments with league umpires and was too demanding of his players.

After his playing days were over, he was hired to manage the Minneapolis Millers of the International League. His team won the pennant and the Junior World Series in 1958. The next season, his team won the pennant again only to lose the Junior World Series to the Havana in a series played mostly in Cuba due to the heavy snow in Minneapolis. The games were played in the midst of the Cuban revolution with fans and soldiers carrying weapons. Mauch lost game seven and was happy to get out of town.

In 1960 John Quinn hired Mauch to take over the Philadelphia Phillies, a team so bad that manager Eddie Sawyer explained the reason for his resignation: “I’m 49 and want to live to see 50.” Although he would go on to manage four different teams: Montreal Expos, Minnesota Twins, California Angels, it would be the Phillies who he managed for 8 ½ years for whom he would be most remembered.

The Phillies Whiz Kid era was over and Quinn and Mauch literally started from scratch to rebuild the franchise. Two cellar finishes along with a record breaking 23 consecutive losses in 1961 strangely enough laid the ground work for a new team. In 1962 young talents like hitters Johnny Callison, Tony Gonzalez, Clay Dalrymple and pitchers like Chris Short and Art Mahaffey came into their own. Over the next six seasons the Phillies played better than .500 baseball, but the team Mauch is remembered for is the 1964 squad that led the National League for 72 games and then collapsed. Leading the National League by 6 ½ games they lost ten games in a row and lost the pennant.

In 1968 Mauch was fired by the Phillies, joining the young Montreal Expos the next season. This began a stretch over the next two decades that would see him win pennants and reach the playoffs but still come up short and never make it to the World Series. In 1986 an even grimmer version of the ‘64’ collapse took place. With his Angels one strike away from reaching the World Series his usually reliable relief pitcher Donnie Moore served up a home run tying the game. The Red Sox won the game in extra innings and the remaining games of the playoff.  Mauch’s managing career never recovered.  Mauch never blamed Moore who tragically committed suicide some years later with many believing that he never got over that home run. Mauch retired from managing in 1987, the ‘86 loss seemed to take something out of him.

Mauch was something of a baseball enigma, an exponent of small ball, with lots of bunting, hit and running and use of the stolen base when the game was turning in power hitting context. During three years with California (1985-87) he executed 260 bunts, the most in the majors; he liked to say you play for one run and often you wind up with 3 or 4.

His fellow managers admired him, but few loved him for his aggressive style of play – always looking for an edge. Alvin Dark said he was simply “the best manager in baseball.” Buzzy Bavasi long time Dodgers GM put him in the same category of Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston.  Dick Williams, also a Hall of Famer, summed up the prevailing view of other major league managers. “If you were to hold a managerial clinic, and just have managers there, I would say Gene Mauch should run the clinic, that’s how good a manager he was.”

Not a bad epitaph.