Multi-franchise World Series managers

With San Francisco’s pennant winning victory on Saturday night, Bruce Bochy joined an exclusive club: managers who won pennants with multiple teams. In 1998, Bochy’s San Diego Padres made the Series, and now (obviously) the 2010 Giants will as well.

Welcome back to the World Series, Mr. Bochy.

Bochy is only the 15th member of this club. Below is the full list, in order of when they joined the club by guiding their second team to the postseason. To the side are the teams they took to the World Series (and please note that in two cases the skipper later took a third team to the game’s biggest stage. Here they are, organized in fives so it’s easier to read:

Pat Moran, PHI and CIN
Bill McKechnie, PIT, STL, and CIN
Joe McCarthy, CHC and NYY
Joe Cronin, WAS and BOS
Bucky Harris, WAS and NYY

Billy Southworth, STL and BOB
Leo Durocher, BRK and NYG
Al Lopez, CLE and CWS
Dick Williams, BOS, OAK and SD
Yogi Berra, NYY and NYM

Alvin Dark, SFG and OAK
Sparky Anderson, CIN and DET
Tony LaRussa, OAK and STL
Jim Leyland, FLA and DET
Bruce Bochy, SD, SFG

In all, this bunch has claimed 51 pennants, and gone 24-26 in the World Series. We’ll have to see how the 2010 Giants do to see if the record becomes 25-26 or 24-27.

Ten of the above are in Cooperstown: two as players (Cronin and Berra) and the other eight as managers (McKechnie, McCarthy, Harris, Southworth, Durocher, Lopez, Williams and Anderson.

As for the other five, LaRussa clearly will make Cooperstown when he’s eligible. Leyland is on the bubble and my hunch is he’ll be on the outside looking in. Pat Moran would’ve been a Hall of Fame manager if he hadn’t drunk himself to death.

The only really poorly regarded guy on the list is Alvin Dark. His pair of pennant-winning teams, the 1962 Giants and 1974 A’s, actually hurt his reputation. Dark got into an ugly incident where he made unflattering and stereotypical comments about blacks and Hispanics with the Giants. With the A’s, the team won back-to-back championships without him and the players nearly mutinied on him because they thought he was too deferential to the team’s hated owner, Charles Finley.

Dark or no Dark, it’s a very good club to be a member of.

Including Bochy, only four of the managers listed never won a world title (and of course Bochy’s only had the one World Series under his belt so far, so it’s not fair to compare his record with that of the others). The other three are Cronin, Lopez and Berra. Pat Moran’s only victory came when the opposing team threw the World Series (that of course was the 1919 Black Sox losing to Moran’s Reds).

Then again, only four of the managers above won their first World Series: McKechnie, Harris, Southworth,and Leyland (all but Southworth won in a Series than went the full seven games). That said, only two of the managers were ever swept in their first World Series: Al Lopez and Bruce Bochy. Only two others were ever swept later on: Tony LaRussa and Bill McKechnie (who suffered two sweeps). None of this means anything. Only the games themselves later this week really matter.

One last bit while we’re on this theme: There have been nine World Series pitting members of the club against each other. Here they are, with their results (divvied up into bunches of three):

1925 Bill McKechnie’s Pirates beat Bucky Harris’s Senators, four games to three.
1939 Joe McCarthy’s Yankees beat Bill McKechnie’s Reds, four games to none.
1942 Billy Southworth’s Cardinals beat Joe McCarthy’s Yankees, four games to one.

1943 Joe McCarthy’s Yankees beat Billy Southworth’s Cardinals, four games to one.
1954 Leo Durcoher’s Giants beat Al Lopez’s Indians, four games to one.
1972 Dick Williams’s A’s beat Sparky Anderson’s Reds, four games to three.

1973 Dick Williams’s A’s beat Yogi Berra’s Mets, four games to three.
1984 Sparky Anderson’s Tigers beat Dick Williams’s Padres, four games to one.
2006 Tony LaRussa’s Cardinals beat Jim Leyland’s Tigers, four games to one.

Leyland and LaRussa can prepare the initiation ritual for the newest club member this week.