"The Last Manager", by John W. Miller

This is an excellent biography of Earl Weaver (1930-2013), the legendary manager of the Baltimore Orioles, published just this year. Weaver grew up in the 1930s in a working class St. Louis niehgborhood located less than a mile from Sportsman's Park, home at that time to both the NL Cardinals and the AL Browns. His father, a dry cleaner, had the contracts to clean the uniforms of both the Cardinals and the Browns, so Earl was in and out of major league clubhouses at an early age.

Earl avidly followed the "Gashouse Gang", consisting of Dizzy and Paul Dean, Joe Medwick, Pepper Martin, and Leo Durocher. This was a time when the Cardinals were known as "America's Team"; it was both the southernmost and westernmost MLB team, so it was the closest MLB city for the whole western half of the country.

Even as a boy Earl learnd to think through strategy decisions the managers had to make. His uncle was a bookmaker, so Earl learned to apply probability theory to basic decisisons like the sacrifice bunt, the hit-and-run, and the stolen base. It took many decades for the rest of the baseball world to catch up, as by the 2010s the new science of sabemetrics, developed during the 1980s, had finally become widely accepted in the baeball world.

Earl was a standout player in high school, and upon graduation his father contacted the Browns about signing his son, but was told he was a "class-A player, tops", because he "couldn't throw or run". The Cardinals were more positive, offerng Earl $175 a month plus a $1,500 bonus. Earl signed, making him a pro at age seventeen.

Earl spent thirteen years in the minors, never cracking the show. His best chance was in 1952, when he seemed set to make the Cardinals as a back-up second baseman. But 35-year-old Eddie Stanky had been hired as the player-manager, and Stanky chose himself over Earl as the back-up second baseman.

Earl started managing in 1956 while still a player. He managed eleven and a half seasons in the minors. He major legue managerial career began in 1968 mid-season when he took over as the Orioles manager. He retired after the 1982 season, but came back two years later for two final lackluster seasons. Despite the last two disappointing years, his lifetime major league winning perentage was .583.

Weaver was a managerial genius, prioritizing on-base average, strike throwing, and elite defense before these things were fashionable. He got the most out of his entire roster with masterful platooning, always working to get the right people in the right positions to excel. Miller's biograophy superbly captures the essence of Weaver's remrkable life.