Interview With Journalist John W. Miller About His Book On A Baseball Managing Great, Earl Weaver

1. Earl Weaver last managed a game nearly four decades ago. Why a book now about him? 

His influence on the modern game — he was the first manager to use data analytics in the dugout and the first to use a radar gun, to cite two examples — is so important. He’s in the book Moneyball and in all these other books, but no book had properly considered his legacy.  

2. The NYT, WSJ, Kirkus Rrviews, Ken Burns, and George F. Will each praised your new book, The Last Manager. What is it about your book, do you think, that will resonate with so many baseball fans? 

Weaver is one of the great characters in baseball, and American cultural, history. He was smart. He was hilarious. He was a winner. And his story moves through all these amazing places, from 1930s St Louis and its taverns and bookies to minor league teams in the Deep South in the 1950s to Baltimore and even the California tech sector in the 1980s, when he helped design a famous video game.  

3. He was raised by a mobster uncle. How did that influence him? 

Earl’s Uncle Bud, a baseball bookie, is who took Weaver to ballgames in St Louis when he was a kid. Weaver loved to gamble, although there’s no evidence he bet on baseball during his career. It’s clear he saw decision-making through the prism of odds and probabilities. He talked like a bookmaker, according to one baseball executive. All that came from Uncle Bud.  

4. He never got to play in the Majors. How did this impact his managerial style? 

He came so close that it gave him a great capacity for evaluating talent. He knew where the bar was between majors and minors because he was the bar.  

5. He only had one full losing season out of 17 seasons — but won just one World Series. Why do you think his teams choked in the postseason, only winning one ring? 

There’s no question to me that’s unfair. His teams went 26-20 in postseason games. They won 4 of the 6 ALCS they played in. The perception is skewered by bad breaks in the 1971 and 1979 World Series. Those both went to 7 games. In both series, you can point to just 1 or 2 plays that made the difference.  

6. How do you compare him to the other top managers of his day: Billy Martin, Dick Williams, Tommy Lasorda, and Sparky Anderson? 

He was better! He still has the highest winning percentage of any manager since 1969 with over 1,000 wins. He was smarter, funnier and more honest than those guys. Who else could pull out lines like “we’ve crawled out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi”? 

7. Do fans miss seeing his kind of managing — a guy who would argue anytime, anywhere on the field — or has instant replay, the polite corporatization, and reliance on technology-driven analytics of the game pushed feisty guys like him to the sidelines? 

Yes! For younger readers, I think only professional wrestling can offer a sense of what Weaver going out to argue with an umpire was like. It was a spectacle of the highest order. I think we all miss that. He spoke his mind, too, in a way that pro sports teams now would never allow. He and Billy Martin would say things to reporters like “next time I see that guy I’m going to punch his f—-Ing teeth out.” And they meant it! 

8. President Trump recently said baseball is dying, and indeed ratings are in decline over the years, but the sport made a record amount of money. What is baseball’s future? 

People have been predicting baseball’s demise since the 19th century! I coach high school baseball (at Allderdice HS in Pittsburgh) so I see young people passionate about the game. But Major League Baseball has some problems for sure. Too many strikeouts. Too corporate. It should be more of a spectacle. More fun and spontaneous. Like Earl. I think people like the book because it reminds them how much fun baseball can be.  

9. What are three take-aways from your book? 

1. America has changed more than we realize. When Earl went to play pro ball in 1948, he took a train from St Louis to Albany, Georgia. You could get from any town in America to any other town by rail. 

2. Failing at your childhood dream like Earl did (he wanted to be a big league player) can lead to great things.  

3. Never be afraid to change your mind or evolve. That was Earl Weaver’s superpower.  

10. How do the Baltimore Orioles look in their division against defending AL champ Yankees, an improved Boston Red Sox, and a solid Toronto Blue Jays team? 

They’re still a very good baseball team. 

The pitching staff is a question mark but they’ll muddle through. Gunnar is a top-10 player. Jackson Holliday’s looked terrific in spring training. Most importantly, they have a healthy Adley Rutschman. He doesn’t play on losing teams. Prediction: 93 wins. 2nd place. Wild card. Lose in ALCS.

About The Author:

John W. Miller is a writer, baseball coach, and contributing writer at America Magazine. He has reported from six continents and over forty countries for The Wall Street Journal and has also written for Time, NPR, and The Baltimore Sun. Miller is the codirector of the acclaimed 2020 PBS film Moundsville and the founder of www.Moundsville.org.

“Vivid...Most sports books are pop flies to the infield. Miller’s is a screaming triple into the left field corner.”

—The New York Times

 

 “An illuminating, entertaining biography of a mercurial tactician who changed the national pastime.” 

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Baseball books don’t get any better than this.” 

—George F. Will

“A special book that reminds us why we love baseball.” 

—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

“Miller expertly shows just how long Earl Weaver’s shadow still is. Weaver was the last of a breed of men, stunning geniuses all—profane, indefatigable, genuine characters—who shaped the golden age of baseball, in striking contrast to the careful, calculating corporate men who try to manage today.” 

—Ken Burns, Emmy Award–winning documentarian of Baseball

“Earl Weaver was an old school archetype—a heavy drinking, chain smoking, foul mouthed, umpire baiting terror—and a visionary statistical analyst long ahead of his time. John Miller’s fascinating and entertaining portrait shows us how his genius was formed. A great read.” 

—Ron Shelton, writer and director of Bull Durham

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For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

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