Don Zimmer Dead At 83

St. Petersburg, FL (SportsNetwork.com) - Don Zimmer, a baseball lifer who spent 12 seasons in the major leagues as a player and more than four decades as a manager, coach and advisor, has died, according to the Tampa Bay Rays. He was 83.

The 1976 Red Sox never got on track under Johnson, and he was fired in July. Zimmer was named acting, then permanent, manager and he led them to a winning record, but a disappointing third-place finish in the AL East 9 The Red Sox would win more than 90 games in each of Zimmer's three full seasons (1977–1979) as manager, only the second time they had pulled off this feat since World War I. His 1978 team won 99 games, still the fourth-best record in franchise history.

You suggest that his team would be in the same place it is now without him. How is that possible? The Oakland A's have three starters with a total of 57 wins, and all three are ranked in the top ten in the AL in ERA, innings, wins, strikeouts, they have arguably the best three pitchers in all of baseball. The Texas Rangers have Kenny Rogers at 13-8, Chan Ho Park at 9-8, and Ismael Valdez at 6-9. That's 28 wins from their top three starters. That 29 win difference is almost exactly how far back the Rangers finished behind the A's.

You know that great baseball conversation you wish you could have with Bill James? This is it. Nine-hundred player comments provide James a forum for a free-wheeling and fascinating discussion in which he proves himself not only the game's greatest analyst, but its ablest historian and keenest practical observer. Some people assume James knows abstract numbers but they know actual baseball. In fact, James runs rings around his critics as a student of "actual" baseball. No one watches the game like he does, or at least no one watches it like he does and can also connect what he sees to the game's larger contexts. The guy is a genius. Perhaps the best baseball book ever published.

Don Zimmer Dead At 83 2014-06-06T03:47:00-07:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: Unknown