After His Playing Career
| Jimmie Reese's number 50 was retired by the California Angels in 1995. |
During World War II, Reese served briefly in the Army, from November 1942 to July 1943. Assigned to the 12th Armored Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, he managed the baseball team there.
After the war he scouted for the Boston Braves for two years, then returned to San Diego as a coach from 1948 until 1960.
In June 1960, he was appointed manager at San Diego, and his team went 34–18 for the rest of the season. He started 1961 as manager, but resigned because he felt he was not cut out to be a manager. "I'm best suited as a liaison man, as a coach," he said. "I just am not suited to give a guy hell."
From 1963 until 1970 he coached at Hawaii, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon; then he scouted for the Montreal Expos.
He threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the 1989 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, played at Anaheim Stadium.
Reese never married, had no children, and was mostly estranged from his extended family. In 1972, at age 71, he asked the Angels for a job, and was hired as conditioning coach, whose job was to get the players into shape. Reese's main specialty, however, was hitting fungos in practice, using a bat he made himself. Numerous Angels players remarked on his seemingly uncanny ability to place fungos where he wanted. He even occasionally "pitched" batting practice with his fungo bat, standing at the pitcher's rubber and consistently hitting line drives over the middle of the plate. He was regularly called "the nicest man in baseball", and had a friendship with Nolan Ryan when he was with the team; Ryan would name one of his sons Reese in his honor. He was listed as an Angels coach for 22 years, until his death on July 13, 1994, in Santa Ana, California. He died peacefully of aspiration pneumonia and respiratory failure.
His uniform #50 was retired by the club in his memory. Reese is believed to be the oldest person ever to regularly wear a uniform in an official capacity in the history of organized professional baseball in North America. Ted Radcliffe and Buck O'Neil made appearances in professional games at older ages, but those were one-off ceremonial events.
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