WWTBAM Bored

Too sporty a question to make it into FNGD....

Probably a bit easy for baseball buffs, but here goes....

Which two current major league managers were selectees in the 1968 Expansion Draft, which provided 120 players for the teams entering MLB in 1969?

Cito Gaston and Lou Pinella

I think Daniel's got it.

What this question made me think of was a Stan Hochman column in the Philadelphia Daily News in advance of the 1969 expansion draft.

And how he could imagine John Quinn, then the Phillies' GM, waking up in a cold sweat about the Phillies' losing catcher Buck Martinez and shortstop Larry Bowa.

well there I was right.


One guess and six minutes, to get Cito Gaston and Lou Piniella.

OK, let's make it a little harder.

Which two teams selected Cito and Lou?

Padres and Pilots respectively

Padres (59/60 total selections for SD and MTL.) for Cito Gaston.

Pilots (28/60 total selections for SEA and KC) for Lou. But....

with unerring judgment.....

Seattle traded Lou to KC Royals for Steve Whitaker and John Gelnar, just before the beginning of the 1969 regular season.

So.....

Despite having been an expansion draft selection of the OTHER AL expansion team, Lou Piniella...

was the very first hitter in the very first game (or at least the first KC hitter, as it was a home game), of the KC Royals. And.....

he slashed a double, for the first KC Royals hit, AND Lou Piniella's first major league hit. . And over years, the hits kept a comin, for a total of 1705.

Picture this, it’s the 8th inning of a game between the Mets and the Braves on Sept 14, 1967 in front of 2,963 announced fans at, why did we leave Milwaukee, Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium. Atlanta’s feared offensive dynamo .148 hitting catcher Bob, just a bit outside, Uecker who was replacing Joe Torre for the day was called back and Tito, Terry’s dad, Francona was called upon to pitch hit. After drawing a walk, he was replaced for a pinch runner speedy Clarence “Cito” Gaston in his major league debut.

At the very end of the 1966 season, Cito Gaston played with the Austin Braves, Texas League champions. That championship was ultimately decided in a single-game playoff in Albuquerque. Along with Cito on the 15-hour bus ride there was a teammate, who is now......

Another current big-league manager.

Which one?

guess Bobby Cox he seems the right age

Bobby Cox, indeed.

Cox was a third-baseman in the Braves system, and was a team-mate, as Gaston recounted this year to sportswriter Bob Elliott:

""Bobby was a great third baseman. He'd knock the ball down with his head," Gaston remembered this week. "We won the deciding game of the best-of-three semifinal when he hit a home run off Wayne Granger over a school house in Little Rock."

The league final was against Albuquerque. After a stretch of rainouts, the league decided on a winner-take-all single game for the title.

"We had to bus all the way -- about 15 hours -- and nobody was pleased about that," he said. "I think we beat them 14-2 and we got rings."

The next year Cox moved up to Richmond, and Gaston was slated for a full season in Austin. Among his teammates, Cincy manager Dusty Baker. (And I had forgotten Dusty's early playing background, that he was a Brave until 1975 before heading off to the Left Coast.). However, at the end of 1967, it was Gaston from Austin and not Cox from Richmond who was a September call-up.

Why?

Well, there begins the interesting duality which marked Cox's subsequent career:

There was no particular room for a call-up, or a 1968 competitor for the Brave third base job, since their third-baseman was having his best season ever: Clete Boyer, acquired from the Yankees, good-field no-hit with the Yanks, but a slugger in the smaller Atlanta park: 26 HR and 96 RBI. And with Boyer well in place, the Braves traded Cox to.....

The Yankees, who wanted an insurance policy player to go with highly-touted Mike Ferraro, the planned 1968 third-baseman. Mike went something like zero-for-April, and Bobby Cox wound up as close to regular for two seasons in the Bronx. Later both Cox and Ferraro were big-league managers, Ferraro briefly with Cleveland, and Cox for a longer time with the Yankees, then after,as we all know, back to his original MLB organization....

The Atlanta Braves. Where in his lengthy tenure, he has one a World Series against Cleveland (twerent Ferraro around then), and has lost two to the New York Yankees.

There is at least one more MLB manager of that age, and there is a big connection to Sweet Lou. That question up soon.....

NB edit to say that Mike Ferrarro was touted, not outed......

Cox never managed the Yankees Atlanta then Toronto then back to Atlanta

Cox did manage in the Damnyankees system but only at the minor league level before his first stint with the Braves in 1978.

It was only Syracuse, right.

How in daylights did Steinbrenner hire everyone with any conceivable quality, or even availability, at least once, and never Cox?

That is a major slip of my memory.

Because love him or hate him in those years 76 and 77 Billy Martin was there. When he was finally fired in 78 Cox was gone to Atlanta. However when Atlanta fired him I guess he looked less attractive then the early 80s menagerie as Howard Cosell would say "looking back in retrospect"

Final bunch of questions for now.....

(1) It is said that Lou Piniella played on the same youth league teams in West Tampa (PONY and American Legion), and on an opposing high school team, to this long-time major league manager>

(2) Lou was not known as a great runner towards the end of his career. A stats' site I just visited has Lou among the few MLB players to do this

As a runner on third base, Lou failed to score on....

a - a bases-loaded walk
b - a passed ball not located by the catcher for 10 seconds
c - a 400-ft apparent sacrifice fly to center field
d - a double to right field.

(3) "Sweet Lou" Piniella's famous nickname is said to refer to his swing, and to his gentleness of mood (not), but it also reflects the tradition of nickname recycling. As Piniella's MLB career was starting, that of anothr outfielder nicknamed "Sweet Lou" was ending. And in 1968, this Lou played half-a-season in the Cubbies outfield, wearing the number 41, the same number, which 40 years later, Lou Piniella is wearing as Cub manager

Of which Lou am I speaking?

(4) Traded away for Jimmy (not Jimy) Williams, and Paul Popovich, this Lou was. in 1969, Popovich was involved in a three-way trade in which two of the other players were Maury Wills and Manny Mota.

And, to be a bit circular to end this thread,.....

In 1969, what distinction united Jimmy Williams, Maury Wills and Manny Mota?

I would guess C for 2 but the rest are beyond my ken!

etaoin22 wrote:Final bunch of questions for now.....

(1) It is said that Lou Piniella played on the same youth league teams in West Tampa (PONY and American Legion), and on an opposing high school team, to this long-time major league manager>

Tony LaRussa, which gets mentioned all the time now that Lou's managing the Cubs....

lb13

(1) I heard this story he grew up withTony LaRussa
(2) . Guess d - a double to right field
(3) " Lou Johnson
(4) That must be when these guys came to the Expos for I believe Ron Fairly

To tidy up completely....

yeh, LaRussa and Piniella grew up close. Not as close as Berra ahd Garagiola AFAIK, but close.

Piniella failed to score from third on a Paul Schaal double. I can see this, sorta, if with one out a slow runner parks himself on third base and says "I can't score on a SF", on a wind-blown pop fly to short right. Not what you are supposed to do, of course, but I could see it happen.

"Sweet Lou" Johnson. Afro-American. Didnt get a real chance until the Dodgers of the Koufax-Drysdale era

Manny Mota and Maury Wills were originial Expos via way of the expansion draft, and Jimmy (not Jimy) Williams was an original SD Padre pick. The answer brings us back to the clue of the first question of the thread, the 1968 expansion draft, and thus completes the thread.

Thanks for participating.

I did not know this would turn out to be circular, nor did I know I would write so much,when I started. (as Mr. Eliot maybe said..)