Dallas Green, boisterous baseball lifer who led Phillies to 1980 title, dead at 82

Anybody who knew Dallas Green would tell you, he was a man with opinions. And he was a man who didn’t hold back those opinions. As an MLB manager, that meant sometimes he clashed with players who didn’t like his old-school style. As an executive later, that meant occasionally he’d clash with his peers, for mostly the same reason.

But anybody who knew Dallas Green would also tell you this: they loved him. And he loved baseball. He was a lifer, who brought a championship to the Philadelphia Phillies as a manager, who helped rebuild the Cubs in the mid-’80s and traded for Ryne Sandberg as a general manager. He also played a few years with the Phillies, Mets and Senators before that. He worked in the Phillies front office on more than one occasion. He managed the Mets and Yankees at other points of his career. But he was always around baseball.

Until Wednesday, that is. Green died at age 82. He’d been fighting kidney disease.

Depending on the team for whom you root, Green will either be remembered as the man who made the 1980 Phillies realize their potential and win a World Series or the GM who built the Cubs into division winners in 1984 and whose groundwork enabled them to win it again in 1989.

That Phillies team was probably his most combustible. He was installed as manager for one reason: The front office thought those talented Phillies needed to toughen up and they thought Green was the man to do the toughening. They won the World Series in his first year.

 

From Bill Lyon at Philly.com:

In the Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, Dallas Green was voted the most controversial skipper of the 1980s, with this trenchant assessment: “Dallas Green was the last of the hard-ass managers, surviving from the pre-free agency era.”

It is generally agreed that without Green lashing them on, the 1980 Phillies would not have brought the franchise its very first championship. His peel-the-paint-off-the-walls tirades rallied them and unified them, lit that fire in the belly he was always talking about.

And when it was over, Green waded into the champagne-soaked bedlam of the champions’ locker room and sought out each player and bestowed bear hugs and tear-streaked thank-yous. He knew exactly how much this meant, for the city and the fans and his players.

Green never changed, not when it came to baseball and building baseball teams. He clashed with people, sure, but didn’t harbor grudges and admitted when he was wrong. Like this story from CSN Philly’s Jim Salisbury:

He ended up back with the club in 1998 as a front office adviser. He remained outspoken, clashing with Scott Rolen and Charlie Manuel. But one of the things about Dallas was that he spoke his mind, said what he had to say, and the next day it was over. After he and Manuel had clashed over Manuel’s managing style, the two men talked out their differences. Green admitted that he was wrong, that he saw the merits of Manuel’s managerial style, and a wonderful friendship developed between the only two men to lead the Phillies to a World Series championship.

Green had a famous quote that a lot of stories about him will mention now that he’s passed: “I’m a screamer, a yeller and a cusser. I never hold back,” Green said.

That’s true. And baseball was better for it.

In recent years, Green was in the news for the most tragic of reasons: His granddaughter Christina was killed in the 2011 shooting that also injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She was 9.

“They say time heals,” Green told the New York Times in 2013. “Time, I don’t think, will ever heal that part of my life. I still tear up when I see something that reminds me of Christina.”