In December of 2010, a blogger for the New York Times wrote that Orioles’ Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver had died and gone to heaven. He was, in fact, at home in Florida.
“Well I’ll be damned,” said Weaver when contacted by a reporter in Pembroke Pines.
Heaven was also relieved.
Some three years later, on January 19, 2013, the feisty bantam of 33rd street could not be reached for comment when news broke that he had died on a cruise for Orioles fans at age 82. This time it was true. Earl was gone.
“The smartest baseball man I ever met,” eulogized baseball writer Tim Kurkjian. “The great Earl Weaver.
Orioles’ fans – la famiglia di negro e aroncione as the late groundskeeper and Earl’s gardening friend Pasquale “Pat” Santarone might say – arrived early at Camden Yards on April 20 to pay their respects.
The ceremony was held between games of a double-header against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Speakers included Earl’s son Mike, a spitball image of the old man in stature and voice, baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson – who said Cooperstown once offered tomato plant “starter kits” in honor of Weaver and Santarone’s Memorial Stadium love apple patch – and the immortal third baseman Brooks Robinson.
“When Earl would come out on the field to argue
Earl Weaver was a card – Rick Dempsey said the 5 foot 7 inch manager once stood on a box to better scream in his face – but he was no joke. His winning record in 17 years of managing, all with Baltimore, was 1480 wins and 1060 losses. He won four American League pennants and the 1970 World Series.
In Earl’s last World Series, 1979 against Willie Stargell and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Birds were down to their last inning. The Orioles had won 102 games that year, were favored to win all the marbles and had jumped out to a three games to one Series lead. But on October 17, 1979, with just a few at-bats left for the Os in game seven, the outlook wasn’t brilliant in Crabtown.
“Earl knew by the 8th inning they were going to lose,” said William Bertazon, 67, then a Baltimore City police officer assigned to the home team. “He was pacing the dugout cursing and some of the players were laughing at him.
“He sat down and pushed his hat all the way back on his head and said to me, ‘You know what? We’re gonna lose this game cuz these guys don’t have any heart.’”
As a memento of that autumn shipwreck – the Orioles lost the game 4 to 1 and the Series along with it – Earl gave Bertazon a copy of that day’s line-up card, which the aging cop still cherishes at home in Belair.
The 1979 World Series was a tragic collapse, just like the team’s loss to Pittsburgh in the 1971 World Series after being up 3 games to 1; just like the improbable calamity of the 1969 Series when Gil Hodges and the Amazin’ Mets ran over the Birds in five games.
And Earl – according to Dempsey “one of the toughest, most miserable human beings” to don a major league uniform – hated every moment of it.
“When I die,” Weaver once said, “put on my tombstone, ‘The Sorest Loser Who Ever Lived.’”
[…] By Rafael Alvarez on April 24, 2013No Comments […]
This was a great read. Thanks!