A Player's Manager
Houk was known as a "player's manager" — albeit one with a quick temper. Tommy Lasorda, a Baseball Hall of Fame manager, briefly played for Houk at Denver and called Houk the best handler of men he ever played for, and modeled his managerial style on him. The Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, of which Houk is a member, describes Houk as "rough, blunt and decisive" and his tantrums in arguments with umpires earned him 45 ejections as a manager in the majors. Houk is tied with Billy Martin for fourteenth place on baseball's "most ejected" list.
The early 1960s Yankees responded to Houk's leadership; the 1961 team led by Roger Maris (61 home runs), Mickey Mantle (54 homers) and Whitey Ford (25 victories) won 109 games and beat the Cincinnati Reds in five games in the World Series. His 1962 club won 96 games, and were victorious over the San Francisco Giants in the Fall Classic. In 1963, the Yanks won 104 games and rolled to the pennant, but were swept in four games by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Series.
Read more about this topic: Ralph Houk
Famous quotes containing the words player and/or manager:
“If God had an agent, the world wouldn’t be built yet. It’d only be about Thursday.”
—Jerry Reynolds, Sacramento Kings’ player personnel director. Quoted in Newsweek (New York, November 25, 1991)
“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)