Earl to Bed, Earl Won’t Rise, 3-Run Homers Made Him Smise

Earl Weaver, who rode pitching, defense and 3-run home runs to 4 pennants, a World Series championship, and the 9th-best winning percentage by a manager in baseball history, died of a heart attack while on an Orioles fan cruise in the worst sea-going trip not planned by Carnival Cruise this year. The irascible, chain-smoking Oriole spent most of his 17 years on the Oriole bench arguing with his players – cultivating a decades-long feud  with fragile ace Jim Palmer, and umpires, earning 94 ejections in his career, most of them protracted dirt-kicking, hat-throwing, obscenity-laced affairs. Three times he was ejected from both ends of a doubleheader, twice he was ejected before a game even started. During one argument, Weaver announced he was going to the dugout to check the rule-book. The umpire offered to show him his, to which Weaver responded, "That's no good - I can't read Braille." He was one of the first managers to study statistics to create the best match-ups for his team and argued that his most valuable possessions in a game were his 27 outs and he wasn’t about to give them away with a sacrifice bunt.