Bobby Cox

[edit] Biography

Robert Joseph "Bobby" Cox (born May 21, 1941 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA) is a former player — and current manager — in Major League Baseball. He is currently the manager of the Atlanta Braves, who he first led from 1978 to 1981, and later rejoined in 1985 as general manager. He moved back to the manager's role during the 1990 season, and as of the 2006 season, Cox is the manager with the longest current tenure in major league baseball. He also managed the Toronto Blue Jays from 1982 to 1985.

Bobby Cox has been named Manager of the year four times (1985, 1991, 2004, and 2005) and is only one of two managers to have won the award in both the American and National League. He is also the only person to have won the award in consecutive years. Cox has also been named Manager of the Year by The Sporting News eight times (1985, 1991, 1993, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005). By almost all accounts, Cox is one of the best managers in baseball history and a near lock for the Hall of Fame.

Cox is the fifth winningest manager in major league history, with a record of 2255 wins and 1764 losses through the 2007 season; his Braves won their division every year from 1991-2005, excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season. He has won one World Series championship, in 1995. In 2001 he became the most successful manager in Braves history. Cox's .563 winning percentage is 14th all time among managers with at least 1000 games managed, and is the 2nd highest among those who managed the majority of their career after the creation of divisions within each league in 1969.

Cox is also known, somewhat dubiously, for his short temper with the umpires. Cox is currently first for ejections in a career and first among all active managers (Cox was ejected for the 132nd time in his career on August 14, 2007, pulling ahead of Leo Durocher and John McGraw). Cox is also the only person, player or manager, to be ejected from two World Series games (once in 1992, and again in 1996). He was ejected in the ninth inning of game three of the 1992 World Series for throwing a batting helmet onto the field at the Toronto Skydome. Cox was trying to slam the helmet against the lip of the dugout and missed, throwing it onto the field. For his action, he was ejected. Cox was again tossed in the final game of the 1996 World Series, protesting an out call of Mark Lemke on a steal at second base. Although video replay showed Lemke was safe, the umpire called Lemke out, and Cox was tossed when he argued with the umpire.

As a player, Cox played two seasons, mostly at third base, for the New York Yankees. Traded from the Braves December 7, 1967, Bobby was plugged in right away as the starting third baseman for the Yankees. Thanks to bad knees, Cox became the second in a string of four stop-gap players between greats Clete Boyer and Graig Nettles. He played with Mickey Mantle during "The Mick's" final season in 1968 and then saw the major league debut of another Bronx legend, Thurman Munson, in 1969.

In 1995, Cox was charged with battery on his wife and spent a night in jail, although the charge was retracted by his wife the day after the allegation was made, and the case was dismissed after the couple underwent couples counseling and Cox was ordered to complete violence counseling and an alcohol abuse evaluation.

[edit] Successes

Cox's career has been marked by both sensational success and heartbreaking failure. He replaced Dave Bristol as manager of the Atlanta Braves prior to the 1978 season. He inherited a disastrous team that had finished last the previous two seasons and had a worse record than 1977's two expansion teams, the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners. Building from the ground up, the Braves finished last in both 1978 and 1979. Entering 1980, Cox made one of the unsual moves for which he is known, moving power-hitting first baseman-catcher Dale Murphy to center field. Murphy had developed a throwing block as a catcher that hindered his ability to play. It was a fantastic strategy as Murphy went on to win two Most Valuable Player Awards and five Gold Gloves and become one of the premier players of the 1980s. That first year, 1980, the Braves finished fourth with their first record above .500 since 1972. But Cox was undone by the 1981 baseball strike when the Braves finished fifth and owner Ted Turner reluctantly fired him. Asked at a press conference who was on his short list for manager, Turner replied, "It would be Bobby Cox if I hadn't just fired him. We need someone like him around here."

Ironically, Cox had built the team that would pay huge dividends for Joe Torre, his replacement as manager. The Braves won the NL West division title in 1982, and finished second in both 1983 and 1984. But Cox was managing the Toronto Blue Jays by that time. Toronto had improved and in Cox's fourth season, 1985, the Blue Jays won the American League East. After elimination from the 1985 American League playoffs, Cox received a call to come back to Atlanta as a general manager. After going through two managers over the course of less than five years and disastrous results in attendance and outlook, Cox fired Russ Nixon in June of 1990 and appointed himself manager. Cox had spent the prior four seasons accumulating talent including Ron Gant, Tom Glavine, Steve Avery, Pete Smith, and David Justice.

His efforts paid off in 1991 when the Braves (along with the Minnesota Twins) became the first team to go from last place in one season to first place the next. The two teams met in the 1991 World Series, considered by some to be the best of all time. Although the Braves lost, they have continued to win division titles for a total of fourteen consecutive seasons. On five separate occasions, the Braves have won the National League pennant and played in the World Series, including 4 in a 5 season stretch (1991, 1992, 1995, and 1996). In 1995, the Atlanta Braves won Cox's only world championship to date. Cox's 15 division titles is a major league record for a manager.

In 2006, Cox won his 2,158th game, which moved him past Bucky Harris for fifth on the all-time mangerial wins list.

[edit] Failures

Cox's success has been rivaled only by an unusual sequence of failure that overshadow many of his accomplishments. In 1985, the playoffs expanded to a best-of-seven format after sixteen seasons of a best-of-five format. That difference ultimately made the difference when Cox's Blue Jays became only the fifth team to lose a playoff series after leading 3 games to 1 to the Kansas City Royals. In 1992, Cox's Braves held a 3-1 lead against the Pittsburgh Pirates before losing games 5 and 6, though they did win Game 7 on Francisco Cabrera's two out ninth inning pinch hit two run single. In 1993, the Braves had the best record in baseball after an exciting pennant race where the Braves overcame a ten-game deficit in August to beat the San Francisco Giants by going 51-17 over the last two and a half months of the season to win the division by one game. But they lost in six games to the upstart Philadelphia Phillies.

In 1996, the Braves were the defending world champions as they again won the division title. After sweeping the Dodgers in the division series, the Braves' stellar pitching fell behind the Cardinals, three games to one. Facing elimination, the Braves offense went on a tear, outscoring the Cardinals 33-1 over the final three games and winning the pennant. Bobby Cox is thus the only manager in history to lose a series leading three games to one and win a series trailing three games to one. The scoring continued into the first two games against the Yankees as the Braves took a two games to none lead by winning with scores of 12-2 and 4-0. In game four, the Braves led 6-0 in the fourth inning, but the Yankees clawed their way back into the game. Cox was blamed for bringing in All-Star closer Mark Wohlers in to try and record the final six outs rather than the customary three. Jim Leyritz homered to tie the game, and the Yankees tied the series with a win in eleven innings, 8-6. However, this seems to be unfair criticism, as Wohlers was Cox's best reliever and it is now customary for managers to bring in their closers in the 8th inning in playoff games. It also should be noted that the Leyritz home run resulted in the only runs Wohlers allowed in the entire 1996 playoffs and entering the game he had only allowed two hits in the previous 7 post-season games he had pitched.

That loss seems to have been a turning point in Cox's post-season fortunes. The Braves have managed to lose to two heavy underdogs, the Florida Marlins in 1997 and the San Diego Padres in 1998, in the NLCS. In 1999, the Braves made it back to the World Series, but their injury riddled roster was no match for the defending World Series Champion New York Yankees, losing in four straight games. They have not been back to the World Series since 1999.

In 2000, the Braves lost (for the first time) in the first round to the Cardinals. Cox was commended for his 2001 team that surprisingly won the division title and upset the favored Houston Astros in three straight games in the division series. However, the Arizona Diamondbacks would defeat the Braves in 5 games and then went on to win the World Series.

Cox's Braves have not advanced past the first round of the playoffs each of the last four seasons. In 2002, the Braves won over 100 games and led the Wild Card San Francisco Giants two games to one before dropping the last two. The Giants would go on to lose the World Series in 7 games. In 2003, the Braves pushed the Cubs to a fifth game before falling. The Cubs would go on to lose to the Florida Marlins in 7 games in the 2003 NLCS. The following year, the Braves put up an exciting fight for four games only to lose the deciding 5th game of the Division Series for a 3rd straight year. In a rematch with the Astros in 2005, the Braves again lost a heartbreak, the finale taking eighteen innings to decide. The Astros would go on to defeat the Cardinals and win the National League pennant.

[edit] Legacy

Cox is one of the most successful managers in baseball history, having won 15 division titles, 5 pennants, and a World Series. He has officially named the Manager of the Year 4 times in three different decades and 8 times by the Sporting News. He's won in both the National and American Leagues, in both the pre and post 1994 Strike eras, and with different players (his ealy teams were young, his middle era teams were filled with veterans, and his later teams went back to being youth dominated) and emphasis (His early teams were dominated by great starting pitching, while his later teams were driven by offense and a solid bullpen). However, his successes and the successes of the Braves have been overshadowed by repeated post-season failures, the 1995 World Series the lone exception. Because the Braves have only won one World Series championship out of five World Series appearances and 14 division titles since 1991, they are sometimes referred to as the "Buffalo Bills of baseball", referring to a stretch where the Bills won four straight AFC titles from 1990 to 1993, but could not win a single Super Bowl.

[edit] Managerial record

[edit] External links

• Baseball-Reference.com - career statistics (as player)
• Baseball-Reference.com - career statistics (as manager)
• Georgia Sports Hall of Fame

[edit] Statistics

<stats> Player=Bobby Cox Type=Batting </stats>

[edit] References

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