Big Dead Machine

Or
Hooked

Or
Lost its Spark
George “Sparky” Anderson, the only player in major league history to play 150 games or more in a season but never play a game in a season before or after, has died of complications of dementia at the age of 76. After stinking out Connie Mack Stadium with the 1959 Philadelphia Phillies, Anderson went back to the minors for several seasons before figuring out his real place actually was on the bench. Hired from obscurity by the Cincinnati Reds following the 1969 season, over the next 9 seasons, he oversaw the development of the Big Red Machine, which averaged 96 wins a year, won five divisional crowns, four World Series appearances and two world championships. Then got fired for finishing 2.5 games out of first, and for not firing his coaches, 2 years removed from a World Series sweep of the Yankees. After a brief stint hosting a sports call-in show on WKRP in Cincinnati, he took over the Detroit Tigers (picking them over the Chicago Cubs), and in his 5th full season, became the first manager in major league history to win World Series in both leagues. He only managed one more playoff appearance over the last 11 years, but was just too likeable to fire. He ended up with 2194 wins, 6th all-time, probably 6 times that many pitching changes, and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2000. Sparky was a statesman for the game, and a brilliant tactician, and while doing it made about as much sense as Plan 9 From Outer Space translated into Portuguese. After publishing his third memoir, in 1998, the joke became that he was the first man to have written more books than he had read. Known for his homespun style, Anderson was a beat writer’s dream, explaining why he ignored his wife’s suggestion to take grammar lessons: “I told her it ain’t gonna help me. Or should I say, ‘It ain’t gonna help me none?’,” saying the well-chiseled Jose Canseco “looks like a Greek goddess,” saying a struggling player: “He wants to do so good so bad,” defending his fondness for issuing intentional walks by explaining: “Don’t let Superman beat you,” explaining how a team could overcome the loss of a star: “You can go to the cemetery and see where Babe Ruth is buried,” and saying of a pitcher he inaccurately proclaimed would be the next Bob Gibson: “If you don’t like him, you don’t like ice cream.” Anderson was noted for his overestimations, calling Kirk Gibson “the Mickey Mantle,” saying Mike Laga would "make us forget every power hitter who ever lived," proclaiming Johnny Bench wished he could throw as hard as Mike Heath, and expecting greatness for Torey Lovullo, who would appear in 303 games over 8 seasons.