Baseball History: The Short List of Managers Taking Over Pennant Winners

In taking over for retired St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, Mike Matheny becomes the second man in baseball history since 1950 to take over a team coming off of a World Series title. In 1974 Alvin Dark took over the two time defending world’s champion Oakland Athletics after Dick Williams resigned to take over the California Angels. He led them to their third consecutive title.

The list of managers who have taken over teams that have lost the World Series is a little longer and more interesting. Let’s see how each of these follow-up acts did in their first seasons.

In 1954 Walter Alston of the Brooklyn Dodgers made baseball history as the first manager to take over a team coming off of a pennant. Charlie Dressen had managed the Dodgers from 1951 to 1953 and won back to back pennants.

Alston had never managed and there were those with the Dodgers who did not think that he was the man for the job. But he led Brooklyn to a 92-62 record and second place in the National League behind the hated New York Giants. Not a bad first year. Alston would have an even better season in 1955 as he led the Dodgers to their only World Series title in Brooklyn.

The man who he beat in 1955 is known in baseball history as Charles’ Casey’ Stengel. He is the second manager to be replaced after guiding his team to a World Series. After 12 seasons, 10 pennants and seven world’s championships Stengel was fired by the Yankees in 1960.

Ralph Houk took over the team and the Yankees picked right up where they left off. The greatest dynasty in baseball history went 109-53 to win the American League pennant then defeated the Cincinnati Reds in five games to win the World Series. New York came back to win it the next season as well.

In 1963 Houk won his third straight pennant, but lost in the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. After the season he moved into the Yankees front office and was replaced by Yogi Berra in 1964.

It seemed like business as usual as Berra led the Yankees to a 99-63 record and another American League pennant. But management was not satisfied with him and he was replaced by Johnny Keane in one of the strangest deals in baseball history.

Keane managed the Cardinals and defeated Berra in the 1964 World Series then took over as manager of the Yankees in 1965. It did not work out well as the Yankees finished with a record of 77-85 and sixth in the American League.

The stretch of Yankee managerial replacements from 1960 to 1965 has to be one of the strangest sequences in sports history. All of them occurred after New York lost the World Series.