Bill Virdon: Gold Glove outfielder, tough-luck manager

Bill Virdon played for 12 seasons and 1,583 major-league games and managed for 13 seasons and 1,918 games, a baseball career as full as it was balanced. He was skilled at both jobs — a Rookie of the Year and Gold Glove centerfielder as a player, a two-time Manager of the Year and the Astros’ all-time winningest manager — if a tad overrated as the former and perhaps underappreciated as the latter. But he was decidedly luckier as a player in the postseason than he was as a manager, and that by the margin of one of the Yankees’ three wins over Virdon’s Pirates in the 1960 World Series (for the record, they were 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0). Virdon, who died last month at age 90, reached the postseason four times in his dual career. As a player he was a world champion in the most unlikely of World Series; as a manager he lost three excruciating series in deciding games, two in circumstances just as unlikely as his greatest triumph. The biggest moments of his career were evidence of just how random the game can be, how delicious the victories, how devastating the failures. Virdon was just 34 and still a starter when he retired from his first career after the 1965 season to get on with his second (he had a cameo three years later while coaching with the Pirates when he had his last three at-bats, including his 91st home run). He might have extended his playing days had he imagined the pitfalls of managing. Virdon was a Pirate for the entirety of his playing career but for his Rookie of the Year season with St. Louis in 1955 (.281/322/433, 17 homers) and his slow start to the next one. Frank Lane, never known for his patience, traded Virdon to Pittsburgh when the latter hit .211 in his first 24 games of 1956. Virdon hit .334 over the next 133 games for the Pirates and .319 overall in his most productive season. He was rarely that good again — he never had an average within 40 points (.279 in his final season), never hit as many as the 10 homers he hit in 1956, never came within 74 points of his .806 OPS that year. In his 11 full-time seasons, 1956 was the only one in which Virdon topped an OPS+ of 100, at 118. In fact, he reached 100 in only two other seasons. Despite his defensive reputation (see headline above), he won only one Gold Glove. (In Virdon’s defense, the Gold Gloves weren’t awarded until 1957. For the first year, they were one award for both leagues. For the first four years, outfields were broken down by position, and Willie Mays was pretty steep competition at center field in the National League. Even after 1961, when outfield positions were abandoned, Mays, Roberto Clemente and Curt Flood were tough to supplant. Virdon’s single Gold Glove is more impressive in that context.) In the Pirates’ world championship season of 1960, Virdon batted .264 in 120 games, scored 60 runs, walked 40 times, stole 8 bases in 10 attempts and played center field well (0.9 defensive WAR rating). The Series the Pirates won was perhaps the most illogical ever. The Yankees outscored the Pirates by more than 2-1, 55 runs to 27, outhomered them 10-4, and outslugged them by 173 points. Yet they won one fewer game. Virdon, who was originally signed by the Yankees before they traded him to St. Louis, had a lot to do with that. He had a direct hand in three of the Pirates’ four wins — in Game 1, he doubled in a run and took two away with his catch of Yogi Berra’s fly ball, with a bump from Clemente, with two Yankees on base in the fourth inning; in Game 4 he drove in two runs and saved two more, and the 3-2 win, with another great catch off Bob Cerv with two on the seventh (link here at 4:38); and in Game 7 he drove in two runs, scored one and helped set up the Pirates’ five-run eighth with one of the most fortuitous bad hops ever. The Pirates trailed, 7-4, in the eighth with a runner on first when Virdon stung a two-hopper at shortstop Tony Kubek. It was going to be a 6-4-3 double play as sure as Tinker to Evers to Chance when it caromed off Kubek’s throat. Instead of two outs and none on, the Pirates had two on and none out. Bill Mazeroski, who had something to do with the Pirates winning the game and the Series, will forever be appreciative. Virdon wasn’t so fortunate as a manager. He lost three best-of-five series over a decade in Game 5s, the first two in his opponent’s final at-bat, the third after the Astros took a 2-0 series lead and scored two runs in the final three games. It was the kind of postseason frustration that probably had Gene Mauch feeling sorry for Virdon. None of it was much Virdon’s fault. In 1972, the Pirates took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth at Cincinnati, and Virdon had closer Dave Giusti (1.93 ERA, 22 saves, .549 OPS against, .279 slugging percentage against) to finish. Giusti had faced 295 batters that season and 10 in the series and allowed just three homers. Naturally the first batter, Johnny Bench, homered. (Giusti faced 95 batters in five postseasons; Bench’s homer was the only one he ever allowed). The Reds then went single, single and Virdon did well to go to Bob Moose, who might have taken the game to a 10th inning but for a wild pitch (Virdon relieved starter and 1971 World Series hero Steve Blass at arguably precisely the right moment with one out and a runner on second in the eighth, summoning lefty Ramon Hernandez to get the Reds tough lefties Joe Morgan and Bobby Tolan. That worked. Giusti didn’t.) In the 1980 NLCS against the Phillies, Virdon’s Astros won two of the first three games, both in extra innings. In the final two games they took leads into the eighth inning, lost them, fell behind, rallied and lost in the 10th. Twice. By modern standards Virdon might be criticized for leaving his starters in too long. In Game 4 Vern Rhule, having outpitched Steve Carlton, took a five-hit shutout into the eighth, and in Game 5 Nolan Ryan took a five-hitter, five straight scoreless innings and a 5-2 lead into the eighth. Ryan had signed a four-year, $4.5 million contract the previous offseason (that might not seem like much today but it was big money in 1980) to join the Astros and prevailing wisdom was that’s where he was to earn it. Where was Kevin Cash when the 1980 Astros needed him? In 1981 the Astros took a 2-0 lead despite scoring just four runs against the Dodgers in the strike-induced divisional series, but they scored just six runs in five games and lost a 4-0 Game 5 with Ryan starting. In his three postseasons Virdon was 3-3 in one-run games and 2-2 in extra innings. Sometimes, as in the old joke about the American tourist, anticipating a scrumptious meal of the bull after the bullfight, the bull wins, as the server informs him. So it went for Virdon in the postseason. There were no Grady Little moments in Virdon’s postseason losses, just tough luck. Sometimes the ball doesn’t take the bad hop your team needs. Enos Cabell, according to the Houston Chronicle, said he played for four Hall of Fame managers (Earl Weaver, Frank Robinson, Sparky Anderson and Tommy Lasorda), “and Bill was my favorite. He was one of the best baseball minds of anyone that I played for.” (We could quibble with Cabell’s designation of Robinson as a Hall of Fame manager, since that probably wasn’t Robbie’s entrance point. But Cabell’s point stands). And the most successful manager in the 21st century, the Giants’ Bruce Bochy, was a backup catcher on Virdon’s ill-fated 1980 Astros. (It was Bochy who took a forearm to the face as Pete Rose scored the winning run in the 10th inning of Game 4.) Tweeted The Athletic’s Giants writer Andrew Baggerly after Virdon died: “Whenever someone asked Bruce Bochy about his managerial influences, he’d begin his response with Bill Virdon and how he treated his players fairly with an even temper yet firm expectations.” That seems a fairer legacy for the manager Virdon than the postseason was to him. Career numbers: .267 average, 1,596 hits, 735 runs, 91 homers, 502 RBIs, 237 doubles, 81 triples (led NL with 10 in 1962), 47-101 stealing (that’s not a misprint; that’s how they played in those days), .696 OPS, 19.6 WAR, 995-921 as a manager with the Pirates, Yankees, Astros and Expos, 6-9 in postseason.