Former Detroit Tigers manager Ralph Houk has died, according to the Boston Red Sox. He was 90.
In addition to managing the Tigers, Houk also managed the powerhouse Yankees teams of the early 1960s to two World Series championships, died Wednesday.
Red Sox spokesman Dick Bresciani said Houk’s grandson, Scott Slaboden, told the team Houk died at his home in Winter Haven, Fla.
Slaboden, who lives in the Boston area, told the team in an e-mail that Houk “died peacefully of natural causes after having a brief illness.”
Houk spent parts of eight seasons as a backup catcher for the New York Yankees, appearing in just 91 games.
“People forget that before he was a manager, he was a war hero and he was a catcher for a lot of years,” Tigers radio analyst Jim Price said. “He was a great guy, I knew him very well, and everyone that played for him loved him.”
Tiger great Al Kaline said Houk had a knack for managing players.
“Ralph was a great baseball man who handled his players well and they played hard for him. He was well respected and a fun guy to be around. I enjoyed playing for him during my last year," Kaline said.
Former Tiger Willie Horton said he and Houk remained in touch through the years.
“I respected Ralph as a manager. We had formed a good relationship after we both retired from the game," Horton said.
Houk made his mark as a manager, managing 3,157 games and winning 1,619 over 20 seasons with the Yankees, Tigers and Red Sox.
His best seasons as a manager were his first three. He took over the New Yankees in 1961 and, behind Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, the team won 109 game and a World Series championship.
The Yankees repeated as champions in 1962 and won the AL pennant in 1963, but were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series.
Houk moved into the front office after that series, becoming Yankees general manager in 1964 and ’65.
He returned to managing the Yankees in 1966 and held the job until 1973, but he only had four more winning seasons and never finished better than second place.
He moved on to the Tigers in 1974 and was their manager until 1978, but the team’s only winning season under Houk came in his last season.
He managed the Red Sox in 1981-84 and retired with a winning percentage of .514 overall.
TigersForever Tiger All-Star
Location : Ohio
Subject: Re: Detroit Tigers Managers Wed Nov 03, 2010 4:54 pm
Detroit— Former Tigers manager Sparky Anderson is seriously ill.
In a message released Wednesday by his family, it was learned that the Hall of Fame manager who guided the Tigers to their 1984 World Series championship "has been placed in the care of hospice at his home in Thousand Oaks, California, for complications resulting from dementia" Included in the announcement was an expression of gratitude.
"The Anderson family — wife Carol, sons Lee and Albert, and daughter Shirley Englebrecht — wishes to express appreciation to all friends and fans for the support and kindness they have shown throughout Sparky's career and retirement.
"The family is particularly grateful for the respect for privacy the national and local media have demonstrated during this trying period.
"All requests for future updates should be directed to family spokesman Dan Ewald."
Ewald is the Tigers' former public relations director and longtime friend of Anderson's.
In the same year in which the Tigers' community of fans and followers lost beloved broadcaster Ernie Harwell, this, too, is a sad development.
Anderson is the winningest Tigers manager of all time with 1,331 victories. He was the first manager to win World Series in both the National League and American League, accomplishing the feat with the Cincinnati Reds before winning it all with the Tigers.
With 2,194 victories, he ranks sixth on the all-time list for managers.
Hired in 1979, Anderson remained the Tigers' manager through the 1995 season, but has been a yearly visitor to the Detroit area in his retirement to attend the various functions that benefit CATCH, the foundation he founded in 1987 to improve the quality of life for pediatric patients at Children's Hospital and Henry Ford Hospital.
Anderson attended the 1984 Tigers reunion at Comerica Park in September 2009, at which time he looked at the former players that had gathered for the occasion and said, "Think about this now, there will be four or five of these guys together again, maybe, but never all together again.
"I'm 75. I know I ain't going to make it."
The reunion was a time of reminiscing, of course, but it was also an opportunity for the players of that team, poignantly as it turns out, to discuss what Anderson had meant to them.
That's because Anderson, in their minds, never stopped being their manager. To this day, he's the one they still thank for teaching them to respect the game and play it the right way.
"We all love him for that," said Lance Parrish.
"He taught me to become a pitcher who never wanted to come out of the game, but would yell at me when I didn't want to," said Jack Morris. "He made me the pitcher I was."
"I needed to change from the way I was, initially, and I changed," said Kirk Gibson. "I don't know what I would have accomplished in baseball without him."
At the time of the reunion, though, it was inescapably evident that Anderson was frail — a condition that became even more obvious during his 2010 visit to the Detroit area for CATCH's summer golf outing. But, true to his respect for his place of honor in baseball, he went to Cooperstown to attend the Hall of Fame's annual induction ceremonies before returning home to California.
Last month, however, his health took a turn for the worse.
The white-haired genius who helped make red the pre-eminent color in the National League in the '70s and directed the American League team that roared the loudest in the '80s has passed. Sparky Anderson, the chatty Hall of Famer given to outrageous success and outlandish predictions, joined the great majority on Thursday, two days after he was placed in hospice care at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., where he had spent most of his adult life. Death came at age 76 for a man who had spent 42 years in professional baseball, 26 as a manager.
Readily identified throughout the game simply by his nickname, George Lee Anderson was the first man to manage a World Series champion in each league. He steered the Big Red Machine to victory against the Red Sox in the wonderful and rain-protracted seven-game Series in 1975 and to a sweep of the Yankees the following October. Eight years later, his Tigers team won 35 of its first 40 games, led the American League East wire to wire and won seven of eight postseason games. The '76 Reds, the only team in the divisional-play era to sweep a postseason, remain the last NL team to repeat as World Series champions.
Anderson left the game following the 1995 season and was inducted into the Hall of Fame -- he is depicted on his plaque wearing a Reds cap -- in the summer of 2000. His 2,194 regular-season victories rank sixth all-time, his .545 winning percentage fifth all-time among those who have managed at least 3,000 games. His Reds won at least 92 games in seven of nine seasons, producing 210 victories in 1975-76. His Tigers teams averaged 91 victories from 1982-1988. The '84 team won 104 games before its postseason rampage.
He finished his career with seven division championships, five pennants, a .631 postseason winning percentage and with this distinction: he was the only man to have the most career victories for two franchises. His career in the dugout was far more successful than his brief run as a player -- one season, 1959, with the last-place Phillies, in which he batted .218 with 34 runs batted in and 12 extra-base hits, none of them home runs, in 477 at-bats.
Anderson's family announced Wednesday that he had been placed in hospice care due to complications from dementia. He hadn't been well for some time, but he had remained content, grateful and generous even in the face of severe illness.
Traveling had become a chore for him in recent years. There were times when he looked and sounded his age, but flashes of the sharp-eyed manager were evident at times, too. He made it to Dodger Stadium in May when the Tigers were playing an Interleague series there. It was a rare ballpark visit for him. He wanted to make the trip to see two other legendary managers, Jim Leyland and Joe Torre, as well as one of his former players, Tom Brookens. Anderson said he considered Brookens managerial timber.
At one point, he stared out onto a field and later looked into the eyes of a young player, Tigers rookie Austin Jackson. He called Jackson over in the dugout. Jackson might not have known much about the older gentleman, and vice versa, but for a few moments, the two bridged generations as managers and players do.
"There's something about him that makes him bright," Anderson said of Jackson. "Look at that face. Can he play? Oh, he can play."
His final on-field appearance in Detroit was in 2009, during ceremonies marking the 25th anniversary of his World Series champion team. Nearly all his players made it back, many of them -- from Kirk Gibson to Alan Trammell to Lance Parrish to Jack Morris to Brookens -- returning to see fans show their appreciation for the former manager.
"It was a journey of a life experience for a lot of us," Morris said. "We came up as young kids out of high school and college who had a dream but didn't know how to put that dream together. Sparky was kind of the bond that knew how to put it together. He taught us how to play the game, how to win. We ultimately did that, and now we get to share the memories."
More recently, Parrish said: "He was always pushing and cracking the whip. He just pushed the right buttons all the time. If there was ever, in my collection of my baseball career, a guy who always seemed to know the buttons to push or things to say, he did it. It's a real tribute to him as a manager, but he seemed to know the personality of everybody on the team and who to delegate what to, when to put the right guy in the right situation. Everything worked out."
For all he did for the Tigers, Anderson felt a debt of gratitude to the Reds and, in particular, former club president Bob Howsam, who hired him to manage in 1970, shortly after Anderson had accepted a job as a coach with the Angels in the offseason. He had five years' experience as a manager, all in the Minor Leagues. Hence, his preference to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as a Red.
Anderson is a member of the Reds' Hall of Fame, and the No. 10 uniform he wore from 1970-78 has been retired in his honor.
He is beloved in the Queen City. "He never has a harsh word for anyone. He was always gracious to the fans. He's a very special person in how he relates to people and how they relate to him," longtime Reds announcer Marty Brennaman said Wednesday after learning of Anderson's failing condition. "I compare him to Joe Nuxhall, eminently successful people with no ego at all. Their popularity is off the charts because they were so good to people.
"Sparky would look you in the eye, answer all your questions. It was as if you were the most important person in the world to him. Knowing him for 37 years, it was not an act. People could wonder if it wasn't the real George Anderson, but it was. He loves people. He laughs easily and has a great sense of humor. He's just the kind of person that anybody with a semblance of celebrity would aspire to be like."
As a manager, Anderson was "one of the all-time greats," Brennaman said. "I laugh at anyone who says they could have managed those Reds teams. The hell they could.
"There were a lot of egos in that clubhouse. They had to find a way to make it work before they got on the field. There were players like [Pete] Rose, [Johnny] Bench, [Tony] Perez and [Joe] Morgan -- all superstars. They made it work. He could manipulate a pitching staff better than anybody around. The proof is in the pudding. After he left Cincinnati, he won in Detroit."
The way Anderson handled his pitching staff prompted good-natured ridicule. Never one to hesitate summoning his bullpen, he was nicknamed "Captain Hook." Some consider Anderson the innovator of the way bullpens are used today. He cackled about his "hook," once saying he was the polar opposite of the real Captain Hook's antagonist Peter Pan. "That SOB never got old," Anderson said. "I've never looked young."
Anderson's hair had turned gray before he took over the Reds in 1970. He was 36. His locks turned silver, then white. But he declined to consider himself distinguished-looking. "I'm just an old skipper from South Dakota," he said during one of his many moments with the media during the '75 World Series. Games 5 and 6 were separated by four days of rain. Anderson seldom took a breath. He could fill a notebook while hitting fungoes. And his tales were good and well presented, even though the grammar was flawed.
Anderson was direct when he thought he needed to be.
• He insulted Yankees catcher Thurman Munson after the Reds' sweep in 1976. "Don't embarrass someone by comparing him to Johnny Bench," he said. Munson had batted .529 with two RBIs in the four games.
• "If I hear Bowie Kuhn say just once more he's doing something for the betterment of baseball, I'm going to throw up." (April, 1988).
• "It's a terrible thing to have to tell your fans, who have waited like Detroit's have, that their team won't win it this year. But it's better than lying to them." (July, 1979)
• "Problem with [John] Wockenfuss getting on base is that it takes three doubles to score him."
Anderson suffered a nervous breakdown in 1989 when the Tigers floundered. He took a three-week leave of absence, saying he was "completely worn out, completely exhausted."
He and fellow Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver, a contemporary, were two of the game's foremost dugout characters in the '70s and beyond. Anderson was known for his hyperbole and less-than-perfect grammar. His wife Carol urged him to take grammar classes in the mid-'70s when the Reds were a regular television attraction. "I told her it ain't gonna help me," he once said. "Or should I say 'It ain't gonna help me none?'"
A double negative was twice as good as a single, right?
His predictions for Kirk Gibson, Don Gullett, Mike Laga and Barbaro Garbey were historic.
• "Kirk Gibson is the next Mickey Mantle."
• "Don Gullett is going to the Hall of Fame."
• "Mike Laga will make you forget about every power hitter that ever lived."
• "Barbaro Garbey is another Roberto Clemente."
"People learned not to take me too serious," he once said during Spring Training in the late '80s. "I wanted my players to know I believed in them." But opponents always took Anderson's teams quite seriously. They often were loaded with talent. Morgan and Bench (twice each), George Foster and Willie Hernandez won Most Valuable Player Awards for teams Anderson managed.
The manager's gift of gab and unwavering support of his players hardly hurt the candidates' chances. Sparky had influence, and his teams' successes enhanced the players' chances as well. "There's nothing like success to bring more success," he said before the '76 World Series.
Ray Shore, the Reds advance scout at the time, had publicly stated he would be surprised if the favored Reds didn't sweep the Yankees. And Anderson didn't back away from that statement. He said, "I can't say I'd be surprised. We're good."
Marty Noble is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
Thu Jul 22, 2010 12:18 am
