MLB Catcher and Manager
Sullivan's professional baseball playing career—derailed by military service (causing him to miss the 1953 and 1954 seasons) and back surgery that cost him the entire 1958 campaign—was largely confined to the minor leagues for its first eight seasons. Finally, in 1960, he made the big leagues as Boston's second-string catcher (mainly playing behind Russ Nixon). But he batted only .161 and was left exposed in the 1960 Major League Baseball expansion draft. The new Washington Senators franchise picked him up, then traded him to the Kansas City Athletics for pitcher Marty Kutyna in December 1960.
Sullivan played for 2½ seasons with the A's, and was the club's semi-regular catcher in 1961 and 1962. For his MLB career, Sullivan batted .226 with 13 home runs in 312 games over all or parts of seven seasons.
In 1964, Sullivan was named manager of the Athletics' Birmingham Barons farm club in the AA Southern League. His team just missed the pennant, by one game, earning him a promotion to the AAA Vancouver Mounties of the Pacific Coast League in 1965. But after only 25 games in Vancouver, Sullivan was called up to manage the A's on May 16, 1965, succeeding Mel McGaha. At age 34, Sullivan was the youngest manager in Major League Baseball that season. Kansas City had lost 21 of its first 26 games and was lodged in last place in the ten-team American League when McGaha was fired, and they remained in the cellar for the rest of the 1965 season, winning 54 and losing 82 (.397) under Sullivan.
Read more about this topic: Haywood Sullivan
Famous quotes containing the word manager:
“Nothing could his enemies do but it rebounded to his infinite advantage,—that is, to the advantage of his cause.... No theatrical manager could have arranged things so wisely to give effect to his behavior and words. And who, think you, was the manager? Who placed the slave-woman and her child, whom he stooped to kiss for a symbol, between his prison and the gallows?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)