Whatever happened to Earl Weaver?
The diminutive former manager of the Baltimore Orioles who
smoked Lucky’s (unfiltered) and drank Schlitz (anything but Light)
departed from the Major League Baseball scene years ago and took
with him the old school baseball wisdom that seems to be sorely
lacking in modern baseball. Weaver had a formula for sure-fire
success that modern “sabremetrics” and “small ball” could never
hope to equal:
3RHR+GP=WINS
A three-run homerun and good pitching equal wins.
Weaver understood that most winning teams scored more runs in
one inning than most losing teams score in nine innings. He
single-handedly proved the “brains over brawn” theory false. He
always said that a three-run homerun you traded for in the
off-season always beats out brains. There were two tested rules
that Weaver managed by: You win games in December and you try not
to lose them in July. This simply meant that he saw his job as
trading and drafting players that could help him win, in the
off-season, and putting them in positions to actually win during
the season. That’s pretty simple and most managers try to do the
same things now.
But it’s just different. Weaver had a little something else. He
had more heart. He managed in a time when the manager’s word meant
more than a player’s word and where hard work spoke louder than
dollar signs. He was around when Nolan Ryan became the first
million-dollar athlete and he predicted that it would be a sign of
things to come. A sign of bad things to come, actually. Weaver had
a vested interest in every inch of ground Orioles gained or lost in
every pennant race. He wore his emotions on his sleeve and that is
something that you just don’t see anymore.
Heck, he once said that he gave one of his pitchers, whose name
myself and history have long since forgotten, more chances than his
first wife.
There is just nothing like old-time managers and their verbal
assaults on pretty much anything that breathed, including, but not
limited to, umpires, opposing pitchers, their own pitchers, hot dog
vendors, team owners and team mascots. Sure “sweet Lou” Pinella
gets in his fair share of scrapes on the baseball diamond, but
nothing like Weaver.
Sure, Pinella kicks some dirt, shouts at any umpire in earshot
and stomps on his hat, but that’s nothing like what Weaver did.
This is the guy who once got kicked out of a game during the
exchange of lineup cards BEFORE THE GAME EVEN STARTED! You just
don’t get that anymore.
When Michael Lewis penned the book “Moneyball: The Art of
Winning and Unfair Game,” he didn’t say anything revolutionary. He
simply put into words what most of us had seen coming for years and
that was this: The highest-price players will ALWAYS be ace
pitchers and sluggers and the bigger the gap becomes between
smaller market payrolls and larger market payrolls, the more they
are going to have to search for alternative ways to win games.
Enter: “small ball” and “sabremetrics.” These were the ways that
small teams could compete. All they had to do was develop good,
young pitching (and a lot of it) and learn ways to manufacture runs
(stolen bases, bunts, sac flies and walks). Weaver would just roll
his eyes. He’d rather pay one slugger half his payroll, and give
two pitchers the other half and rely on a little bit of luck to get
some runners on base. Baseball is all brains and no brawn. It’s
calculations and match-ups. It used to be hunches and heart. But it
might be making a comeback.
I see a lot of Earl Weaver in some of the things the Cardinals
are doing this year. The Yankees employed it to a T in the late
90’s and still use it, to varying degrees of success, but the Cards
might have found the key. Tony LaRussa and his MENSA membership
notwithstanding (no joke), the Cardinals look as if they have
decided to go back to basic Weaver-esque baseball, too: homeruns
and quality starts. But lots of homeruns.
