Coaching Career
Following his active playing career, he served two terms (1962–63; 1968–71) as the third-base coach of the Angels and one year (1985) in that role with the San Francisco Giants. He also had a long career as a minor league manager in the Angels, Giants, San Diego Padres and Pittsburgh Pirates organizations. Over 21 seasons stretched between 1964 and 1989, Bridges' teams won 1,300 games and lost 1,358 (.489).
His minor league managerial career is profiled in Jim Bouton's collection of baseball articles and essays entitled I Managed Good, But Boy Did They Play Bad.
The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris, Little Brown & Co, 1973, began a lengthy writeup next to a picture of a baseball card of the square-jawed, crew-cut, tobacco-chewing Bridges on p. 103: "Rocky Bridges looked like a ballplayer. In fact, he may have looked more like a ballplayer than any other ballplayer who ever lived."
Read more about this topic: Rocky Bridges
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)