Bobby Cox Wins 2,000th with Braves

Bobby Cox won his 2,000th game as the Braves' manager in an exciting 7-6 win over the Pirates on Monday night in Atlanta. The win wasn’t an easy one, as the game lasted 15 innings and four hours and 46 minutes.

Cox only played two years in the major leagues, playing for the Yankees in 1968 and 1969.

Even as a player, he was a good manager. Baseball-reference.com compares his stats to those of such immortals as Emil Huhn, Zinn Beck, and Lou Klimchock.

He was born in Tulsa, Okla., on May 21, 1941. Now that he is 68, it will be interesting to see how much longer he wants to manage the Braves.

It was 1978 when he became manager of the Braves and led them to a 69-93 record in his first year. He went on manage the Braves through 1981 and had his first winning season in 1980 with a 81-80 record.

He then took over the helm of the Toronto Blue Jays and in his first year, 1982, the Blue Jays finished six games under .500. By his fourth year, the Blue Jays finished 37 games over .500 and played in the ALCS.

The Royals beat the Blue Jays in seven games in the ALCS as the Blue Jays could only hit two homers in the series, encompassing 242 at-bats.

Cox returned to the Braves as a general manager after the 1985 season and returned as a field manager in 1990. He led them to 14 divisional championships before the team had a losing record in 2006 with a 79-83 record.

The 2006 Braves had the worst record of a Cox-managed team since the his first two seasons in Atlanta.

He now has a total of 2,355 wins, including his years as the Blue Jays' manager.

Only Connie Mack with 3,731 wins, John McGraw with 2,763, and Tony LaRussa with 2,492 have more wins than Cox.

Cox is second in winning percentage among active managers and 24th all time with a .556 mark, with only Ken Macha actively having a better percentage of .569.

LaRussa is far down the list—62nd all time with a .534 percentage.

 

Note: This will be the last post this month, since we will be traveling to Texas to see my daughter and her family, and I will probably be staying till the end of the month.

I will be helping Matthew, my baseball-playing grandson, as he gets ready for the Little League All-Star games. It was an accomplishment for Matthew to make the All-Star team after moving to Texas.

The biggest surprise was that he didn’t make the All-Star team for the 10-year-olds, but made it on the the 10/11-year-olds team.

One of his coaches said he is one of the best 10-year-old fielders he has ever seen.

In one of the last games of the season, he kept the winning run from scoring three times. He caught a fly ball that would have scored the winning run if he dropped it.

Then he was called in from outfield to pitch. He struck out the first batter then when the ball got past the catcher twice he tagged the runners out at home both times to save the game again.