Books: ‘The Last Manager’

I recently finished reading The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball by John W. Miller.

Long time Baltimore Orioles’ manager Earl Weaver is best remembered as a feisty, larger-than-life (but smaller than most men) character, going literally toe-to-toe with MLB umpires in legendary rants that fans loved and journalists loved to write about.

But this chain-smoking, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed cartoon character was also a Baseball genius ahead of his time. Long before the era of Moneyball and Sabermetrics, Weaver prioritized pitching, defense, on-base percentage, and the importance of making every single out count.

John W. Miller (not the well-known Baseball announcer) presents both a biography of the working class man from St. Louis, and a look at the strategies and tactics that made him a great manager.

Goodreads gives The Last Manager an average rating of 4.42. I enjoyed it very much and recommend it for Baseball fans of all ages — well, adults anyway.