NEW YORK – Frank Lucchesi was the first Phillies manager during my lifetime, though I’m not familiar with his body of work. Oh sure, I’ve seen the numbers and they aren’t very good, and I heard the story about Lenny Randle pulling a gun on the manager when they were with the Texas Rangers, but as far as Lucchesi goes, he’s just a name in the record books.
Lucchesi (1970-1972), 166-233.
However, when I first learned about what baseball was, Danny Ozark was the manager of the Phillies. Better yet, when I was a kid Danny Ozark took the Phillies to the playoffs every year.
It was because of Ozark, who died Thursday morning in Florida at age 85, that I also learned the time-tested idiom of baseball that managers are hired to be fired. In August of 1979 Ozark was released from his job as manager of the Phillies, which at the time was baffling to me. My youthful naïveté just saw the three consecutive playoff appearances and the back-to-back 101-win seasons, which is a feat never duplicated before or since in team history
I can’t say I have too many memories of Ozark’s work other than the time I went to game at The Vet when I was a kid and he came onto the field to argue a call or maybe he got ejected. I can’t recall though through the magic of the web site that is Baseball-Reference, I dug up the box score.
Anyway, it seemed as if Ozark was the right man at the time to build up the Phillies to a playoff caliber team. He took them right up to the crest of the hill, but had to step aside so Dallas Green could push them over the top.
From the sound of things, Charlie Manuel nailed it when describing Ozark before Thursday’s game against the Mets.
“I knew Danny Ozark and I considered him a friend of mine,” Manuel said. “He used to talk to me a lot. I was a player when he managed in the minor leagues. He was great guy – a great baseball guy. He was a dedicated baseball guy. He was a good teacher, too. He loved the game and had a good personality about him, too.”
Calling someone a “good baseball man” is one of the highest words of praise from the baseball fraternity. When one hears another call someone a baseball man, well, you can tell a lot about that guy immediately. So it sounds like Danny Ozark was a good guy and Philadelphia was lucky to have him for a few glorious years.