Walt Weiss played for four managers, two of them Tony LaRussa and Bobby Cox. The other two were connected to LaRussa. |
Cox: His managerial progeny includes Ned Yost of the Kansas City Royals and Fredi Gonzalez, who succeeded him with the Atlanta Braves. Walt Weiss, just named to the Rockies job, also played a couple of seasons for Cox, but I'm putting him in LaRussa's group, for reasons I'll detail later.
Lou Piniella managed for 23 years, but spawned few managers. |
In an odd way, Piniella may have been indirectly influential on Ozzie Guillen, who never played for or worked with Piniella; Joey Cora spent the bulk of his career with Piniella, and Guillen leaned as heavily on Cora as any manager has relied on a coach in recent memory.
LaRussa: He's got literally generations of managerial progeny — too many, probably, to accurately recount. Consider this this: Jim Leyland was LaRussa's right-hand man during LaRussa's first job, with the White Sox in the early 1980s; Leyland's been managing pretty much forever himself. Heck, Gene Lamont spent eight seasons with managerial jobs in between coaching stints with Leyland.
Mike Matheny led the Cardinals back to the NLCS in his first year as manager. |
- Mike Redmond, new Miami manager; he clearly regards Leyland as a crucial figure in his career;
- Weiss broke in under LaRussa in Oakland, then played one season for Rene Lachemann in Florida (Lachemann is to LaRussa what Lamont is to Leyland — a coach who left periodically for managing jobs only to return after losing those jobs). Then Weiss moved on to Colorado, where he played for Don Baylor, who had played for LaRussa himself, although it would be difficult to claim LaRussa as a primary influence on Baylor. (More likely influences on Baylor would be Earl Weaver and Gene Mauch.)
- Mike Matheny, who succeeded LaRussa in St. Louis.
- Robin Ventura of the White Sox played three-plus seasons for Lamont, the longest period for which he had a specific manager. Ventura also played for shorter periods for Torre, Bobby Valentine and others. I'm not sure which of them was most influential on him.
There are 30 big-league managerial jobs; at least eight of them are now held by the managerial descendants of LaRussa, Cox and Torre.
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