As a young boy I grew up watching the Orioles as my hometown team. I knew that Earl Weaver argued a lot with umpires and got thrown out of a lot of games, but I never realized how astute he was in managing a baseball team and how exceptional was his baseball acumen. He was the most successful manager of his era and he built the Orioles around top-notch pitching and teams with great depth. Arguably, Weaver was the best at assessing players and matching their capabilities and strengths to specific roles/positions on the team and to specific situations in games. Frank Robinson emphasized this talent when he said of Weaver, “Nobody in baseball can put all those elements together better than Earl Weaver because nobody can judge talent as well as he can.”
The book was also great for me to read as an Orioles fan because it summarized each MLB season that Weaver managed the Orioles and brought back such great memories of the players on those teams and special moments of those seasons. I really enjoyed this book.
Great trip down memory lane for an O's fan. Provides insight into Weaver's personal history of growing up in the game, his confrontations with umpires, relationship with Orioles players, and philosophies on baseball. Weaver was a brilliant and energetic manager who was ahead of his time with analytics and manipulating the game to players' strengths.
Another very readable time capsule - this one from an always entertaining, very direct, lifetime baseball man - Earl Weaver. Funny how money drives all - today, it causes pitchers to not go more than 100 pitches a game (guaranteed contracts); in Earl's day (book is 1982), the pitchers didn't want to come out, so they proved their value (shorter-term, small contracts)! All about incentives!