Sad news this morning as Gene Mauch loses his battle with cancer.
A big league skipper for 26 years, Mauch was named National League manager of the year three times. He ranks sixth in baseball history with 3,938 games managed, and is 11th on the career victories list.
But Mauch was perhaps most famous for his teams’ legendary collapses. He led the Philadelphia Phillies in 1964 when they collapsed down the stretch and were edged out by the St. Louis Cardinals for the NL pennant.
The Phillies were 6 1/2 ahead with 12 games to play before losing 10 in a row — and the pennant. St. Louis won it instead.
I remember Mauch as being the master of the first inning one-run strategy. He would use bunts and steals to get men in scoring position because he felt scoring first was very important to winning a game. I always wondered how many runs all those first inning outs cost him in his career.
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
It was a shame that he felt like such a bad guy in Anaheim and didn’t attend any of the WS games in 2002.
re: Gene Mauch
about the one run strategies.
Mauch was managing in the 1960s, when runs were scarce, and ERAs were in the 2s and 3s, and when a run often won a ballgame. The runs per game were as low in the 60s as they ever were since the dead ball era.
It’s harder to justify this in the 70s and 80s, yet he managed the Angels to two division pennants in 1982 and 1986, and but for a collapse in the 82 series (I was living in CA that year and rooting for Mauch, being a Philly bloke) to the Milwaukee Brewers, the Angels would have made the World Series, and in 86, you had the Donnie Moore/Dave Henderson thing in Game 5 when the Angels were up 3-1 on the Royals.
Mauch had the satisfaction of seeing the Phils win in 1980 and the Angels win a couple of years back.
I have to think he passed away a little bit happier knowing that Mike Sciosia, a Philly guy, got over the hump of Angels doom of the 82 and 86 series.
Mauch was a great manager. What he did for the 64 Phillies was awesome. If the season had been 154 games long, he would have been remembered forever. Unfortunately, expansion had brought the 162 game schedule, and with it, collapse.
Interestingly, the 1950 phillies almost collapsed as well but won a key game against the dodgers to win in the stretch run.
The NL was tough in those days.
It makes you wish there weren’t divisons but were real pennant races these days.
Gene Mauch, by the way, according to Philly obits, was a big fan of Stan Kenton and Anita O’Day, a really big fan of Anita O’Day.
Jazz fans everywhere should know that Mauch was a huge Kenton/Anita O’Day fan.
Anita O’Day can be seen on Jazz on a Summer’s Day, the DVD account of the Newport Jazz Festival of 1959. She’s the one who can sing her ass off.
–Arthur John Kyriazis