Managerial/coaching Career
Strickland worked as a scout for the Indians in 1961. He spent the following year on Sam Mele's coaching staff with a Minnesota Twins team that finished in second place, five games behind the eventual World Series Champion Yankees. He returned to Cleveland to serve as third-base coach under three managers (Birdie Tebbetts, Joe Adcock and Alvin Dark) from 1963 to 1969.
He became the Indians' interim manager at the beginning of the 1964 campaign when Tebbetts suffered a heart attack near the end of spring training on April 1. Strickland's managerial debut was a 7–6 loss at home to the Twins in the season opener on April 14. The ballclub made it to the top of the AL standings by the end of the month and would spend thirteen days in that position, the latest being on May 16. His stint ended with the team on a six-game losing streak, culminating in a 9–1 defeat on the road to the Detroit Tigers on July 2. The Indians were in eighth place with a 33–39 record and thirteen games behind the league-leading Baltimore Orioles by the time Tebbetts returned to the club the next day.
Strickland was called upon to lead the ballclub on an interim basis again after Tebbetts was dismissed on August 19, 1966, with the 66–57 team in third place and trailing the eventual World Series Champion Orioles by fourteen games. Going 15–24 under Strickland, the Indians ended the campaign in fifth place at 81–81, seventeen games off the pace. The final contest he managed was a 2–0 loss to the California Angels in the season finale at Anaheim Stadium on October 2. His career record as a major league manager was 48–63 (.432).
When Strickland joined the Kansas City Royals coaching staff in 1970, he was reunited with former Indians teammate Bob Lemon, who would be promoted to manager in early June. The most successful of the three years he spent in Kansas City was 1971 when the Royals vaulted into second place in the AL Western Division with an 85–76 record in only the franchise's third season of existence. Strickland retired from baseball in 1972 after a fourth-place finish with a 76–78 mark cost Lemon his job.
Read more about this topic: George Strickland (baseball)
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)