Career As Player, Coach and Manager
In his 14-season Major League Baseball career, Bauer had a .277 batting average with 164 home runs and 703 runs batted in in 1,544 games played. Bauer played on seven World Series-winning New York Yankees teams, and he holds the World Series record for the longest hitting streak (17 games). Perhaps Bauer's most notable performance came in the sixth and final game of the 1951 World Series, where he hit a three-run triple. He also saved the game with a diving catch of a line drive by Sal Yvars for the final out. At the close of the 1959 season, Bauer was traded to the Kansas City Athletics in the trade that brought them the future home run king Roger Maris (1961). This deal is often cited among the worst examples of the numerous trades between the Yankees and the Athletics during the late 1950s - trades that were nearly always one-sided in favor of the Yankees.
In 1961, the year Maris broke Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, Bauer, at 38 years of age was coming to the end of the line in his playing career. On June 19, Bauer was named as the playing-manager of the Athletics, and he retired from the baseball field one month later. In Bauer's first stint as the Athletic's manager - through the end of the 1962 season, the Athletics won 107 games and lost 157 (0.405), and his teams finished ninth in the ten-team American League twice.
After his firing at the close of the 1962 campaign, Bauer spent the 1963 season as first-base coach of the Baltimore Orioles. He was elevated to manager at the end of the season, as the Orioles sought a firmer hand in command of the team. The move was successful: Baltimore contended aggressively for the 1964 American League pennant, finishing third, and then — bolstered by the acquisition of the future Hall of Fame outfielder, Frank Robinson, its first AL pennant and World Series championship in 1966. However, when the Orioles, hampered by an injury to Robinson, finished in the second division in 1967 and then fell far behind the eventual champion Detroit Tigers in 1968, Bauer was dismissed as the manager on July 12, in favor of Earl Weaver, then the Oriole's first-base coach.
Weaver proceeded to forge a Hall of Fame career over the next 14½ years as the Orioles' pilot.
Bauer then returned to the Athletics, now based in Oakland, for the 1969 campaign. He was fired for the second and final time by Finley after bringing Oakland home second in the new American League West Division. Overall, his regular-season managerial record was 594-544 (0.522).
Bauer managed the Tidewater Tides, the AAA affiliate of the New York Mets, in 1971–72. The Tides made the finals of IL Governors' Cup playoffs each season, winning the playoff title in the latter campaign.
Bauer then hung up his uniform, returning home to the Kansas City area, where he scouted for the Yankees and for the Kansas City Royals.
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