John McNamara

John Francis McNamara (June 4, 1932July 28, 2020) was an American professional baseball player, manager and coach.

His father, an Irish immigrant who was a railroad worker, died in 1944; his mother worked at the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

McNamara attended Christian Brothers High School, where he was selected as an All-City player in both basketball and baseball.

At Sacramento City College (SCC), he led his team to the 1951 California Community College Athletic Association state championship and later was inducted to the SCC Athletic Hall of Fame.

A right-handed batter and thrower who stood 5 ft tall and weighed 175 lb, in his playing days he was a peripatetic, weak-hitting catcher who originally signed with the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 1951.

He rose as high as the Open-Classification Pacific Coast League during 1956 as a member of his hometown Solons, but he hit only .171 in 76 games played.

McNamara began his managing career with the Lewis-Clark Broncs in Lewiston, Idaho, of the Class B Northwest League in 1959, and when the club became an affiliate of the Kansas City Athletics in 1960, McNamara joined the Athletics' farm system.

After helming the Triple-A Dallas Rangers in 1964, he won Southern League pennants at Kansas City's Double-A affiliates, Mobile (1966) and Birmingham (1967), where he groomed many future members of the Oakland Athletics' early-1970s dynasty — including Hall of Famers Rollie Fingers and Reggie Jackson, as well as Sal Bando, Blue Moon Odom, Joe Rudi and others.

At the same time, McNamara also mentored future Hall of Fame manager (then an infielder) Tony LaRussa and future pitching coach (then catcher) Dave Duncan.

Jackson, in particular, credited McNamara with helping him through his time with Birmingham, with the racial tensions that existed in the Deep South at the time.

After spending over 15 years in the minor leagues as a catcher and player-manager, McNamara helmed six Major League Baseball (MLB) teams for all or parts of 19 seasons between 1969 and 1996.

McNamara served as a coach at the major-league level for Oakland from 1968 through September 18, 1969, when A's owner Charlie Finley fired manager Hank Bauer and promoted McNamara, then 37, to succeed him.

The Athletics were in second place in the American League West Division, nine games behind the Minnesota Twins.

They went 8–5 under McNamara for the rest of the campaign, then finished second to the Twins again in 1970 with an 89–73 mark.

Finley replaced him with Dick Williams at season's end, and the A's would go on to win five successive division titles and three straight American League pennants and World Series titles under Williams and Alvin Dark.

McNamara returned to the coaching ranks from 1971–73 with the cross-bay San Francisco Giants before he took over the struggling San Diego Padres as their manager in 1974.

Buzzie Bavasi had been the president of the Padres when McNamara became their manager in 1974, and had moved to the California Angels after the 1977 season as general manager.

After World Series titles in 1975 and 1976, the Reds finished second to the Los Angeles Dodgers for two consecutive seasons in the National League West Division, and Anderson had been fired amid controversy, reportedly because he refused his front office's order to fire members of his coaching staff.

The Padres improved incrementally, winning 60, 71, and 73 games through 1976, then signed free agents Fingers and Gene Tenace away from McNamara's old team, the A's. Expected to dramatically improve in 1977, instead the Padres stood at only 20–28 on May 28 when McNamara was fired and replaced by Dark.

He spent 1978 as a coach for the California Angels, then was hired to succeed Sparky Anderson, also a future Hall of Fame manager, as skipper of the Cincinnati Reds in 1979.

Along with then-manager Dave Garcia, he had hired McNamara as an Angels coach in 1978, before the Reds job opened up.

McNamara's 1979 Reds, minus legend Pete Rose, who had defected to the Philadelphia Phillies as a free agent, won 90 games—two fewer than Anderson's 1978 team.

But they edged the Houston Astros by 1 games to win the NL West and became McNamara's first postseason entry.

In the 1979 National League Championship Series, however, the Reds dropped the first two games at home in extra innings to the Pittsburgh Pirates, then were swept out of the playoffs in Game 3.

Pittsburgh went on to win the 1979 World Series.

McNamara's 1980 Reds won 89 games but finished third, 3 games behind Houston.

Then came Cincinnati's frustrating 1981 season: the Reds compiled the best overall record in the National League West (66–42, .611), but the split-season format adopted because of the 1981 Major League Baseball strike denied them a place in the playoffs because they finished second (initially to the Dodgers, then to the Astros) in each half-season.

The 1981 campaign became all the more distressing because the 1982 Reds unraveled, losing 58 of their first 92 games, falling into the division basement.

McNamara was fired on July 20, 1982, with Cincinnati 23 games out of first place.

After the 1982 season, when the Angels lost a heart-breaking ALCS to the Milwaukee Brewers, their veteran manager, Gene Mauch, retired.

Bavasi then hired McNamara a third time, this time as skipper of the 1983 Angels, although that team dropped precipitously in the standings, winning only 70 games – 23 fewer than in 1982 – and finishing 29 games behind the Chicago White Sox.

The following year, the 1984 Angels clawed back to .500 at 81–81, but came within three games of the division champion Kansas City Royals, who won only 84 contests all season.

McNamara clashed with pitcher Tommy John that year, not listening to John when the 41-year-old pitcher told him he was tiring in games.

Late in the year, he moved John to the bullpen, then forbid him to practice throwing because he wanted to keep the pitcher's arm fresh in case he needed him.

Wanting practice to get his problems straightened out, John practiced throwing anyway, much to McNamara's displeasure.

Frank Pastore had the same issue with McNamara during the manager's time with the Reds.

When Ralph Houk, 65, retired as Boston's manager at the close of the 1984 season, the Red Sox approached the Angels about McNamara's availability for the opening; he and Haywood Sullivan, the Red Sox' chief executive officer and co-owner, had managed together in the Athletics' organization in the mid-1960s.

With Mauch ready to return to the dugout, the Angels agreed to let McNamara go to Boston, and in 1985, he led the Red Sox to another .500 season; but at 81–81, they finished 18 games behind the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East Division.

He directed the 1986 Boston Red Sox to the American League pennant, and was named his league's "Manager of the Year" by both the BBWAA and The Sporting News.

McNamara was born in Sacramento, the fourth of five children of John and Josephine McNamara.