Manager Miller Huggins

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“The greatest manager who ever lived.” – Waite Hoyt

The Yankees have come to be known as the gold standard of excellence in baseball, but that wasn’t always the case. The first 15 years of the franchise’s existence was marked by near misses at best and complete futility at worst. Miller Huggins was hired as manager in 1918 to help change those fortunes, and while his impact wasn’t immediate, he eventually would mold the Yankees into a world class team.

Undersized and ultracompetitive as a player, Huggins was the same as a manager and transformed what was a team of mercenaries into a tight-knit group of competitors. More than anyone, Huggins was responsible for setting the foundation of a winning culture in The Bronx.

Born to English immigrants in Cincinnati, OH, Miller Huggins’ first love was baseball, although he had to hide that fact from his Methodist father. He first played professionally with the minor league St. Paul Saints while also earning a law degree at the University of Cincinnati in 1902. Two years later at 26 years old he was signed by the Cincinnati Reds and embarked on a 13-year big league career.

Generously listed at 5-foot-6 and 140 pounds, Huggins made up for his lack of size with an abundance of baseball smarts and an iron will. A light-hitting second baseman, he was an excellent fielder and pulled off the hidden ball trick a remarkable eight times. He was also a self-taught switch-hitter and supplemented his offensive production by outsmarting pitchers, drawing walks and stealing bases with regularity. During these years he earned the nickname “Mighty Mite” and compiled over 35 WAR for middling teams in Cincinnati and St. Louis.

The last four years of Huggins’ playing career, and one year after he retired as a player, were spent as manager of the Cardinals where he put his keen baseball sense to good use. In those five seasons they finished third in the National League twice, the two best finishes in franchise history to that point. Despite an excellent reputation – John McGraw once said, “There is no smarter man in baseball today than Miller Huggins” – new ownership in St. Louis ousted him as manager after the 1917 season.

Huggins was signed by Yankees’ co-owner Jacob Ruppert immediately thereafter to take over his struggling team. An intensely serious man, described by Ruppert as a “grouch”, his transition to New York was far from smooth. In their haste to win a championship, the Yankees were in the habit of spending top dollar for former stars. These stars had little use for a manger of any kind and mostly tuned Huggins out. After two seasons as Yankee manager, Huggins failed to turn the Yankees into a contender in the American League.

Knowing that Yankee ownership wasn’t going to stop pursuing high profile players, Huggins decided to embrace it after the 1919 season and pushed hard for the team to acquire Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox. He saw the transcendent potential of the big slugger and when the Ruth sale to the Yankees was final, Huggins wisely allowed Ruth to do as he pleased off the field. Unfortunately, none of this made things easier for Huggins in New York. With Ruth in the fold, the Yankees improved to 95 wins in 1920, just three games out of first place, and then won back to back American League pennants in 1921 and 1922. However, they lost to intra-city rivals, the New York Giants, in the World Series each year.

The New York press saw nothing more than three failures to win the World Series with the greatest player in the game and pointed to Huggins as the main culprit. The chronically ill and deadly serious Huggins took these criticisms to heart and was nearly a broken man heading into the 1923 season. Luckily, he had his supporters on the team as longtime Yankee pitcher Bob Shawkey once said, “I doubt if the public has ever properly appreciated Huggins. He is not the type that seeks the limelight and many people do not really know him. Huggins is fair at all times. If any player has had trouble with Huggins, it is his own fault.” He also had the assurance of the only two men that truly mattered. Jacob Ruppert, now sole owner of the Yankees, and general manager Ed Barrow publicly declared that Huggins’ job was safe.

Christening their new home in The Bronx, the Yankees responded by dominating the American League, winning it by 16 games over the Detroit Tigers, and beating the Giants in the World Series in their third try. The monkey was finally off Huggins’ back and he deserved much of the credit for securing the first World Series championship in Yankee history. The shrewd manager was instrumental in two under the radar trades that had landed little known pitchers Waite Hoyt in 1920 and Herb Pennock before the 1923 season. They were the two best pitchers on the Yankee staff that year.

Miller Huggins finally found success as a manager in the early 1920's.

Library of Congress George Grantham Bain Collection 1922 LCCN 2014713281 jpg # 34,333 / 41,453

The Yankees would fail to repeat as champions in 1924, falling short by just two games behind the Washington Senators, mainly because they lacked fire power in the lineup outside of Ruth. The following year Ruth would be the culprit for one of the more disappointing seasons in team history. With his self-sabotage at its peak, he reported to spring training grossly overweight and soon landed in the hospital with a curious abscess in his stomach.

When Ruth did return to the team, he was perpetually late for pre-game activities and Huggins finally put his foot down. He fined, suspended, and verbally reprimanded his star player in front of his teammates which initially blew a fuse in Ruth. When he ran to ownership crying foul, they backed his manager instead and a week later an apologetic Ruth re-joined the team, performing well even though the season was already a lost cause.

Huggins now had the full respect of his star player who at least somewhat changed his ways. It would pay off in the ensuing years, as would another pivotal decision Huggins made that year. With his former star first baseman Wally Pipp struggling, he replaced him with potential slugger Lou Gehrig and patiently allowed his bat to develop. In Gehrig, he finally had protection for Ruth in the lineup and in 1926 the Yankees returned to the World Series against the Cardinals. They would lose the series infamously as Ruth was caught stealing to end Game Seven.

All of the pieces that Huggins patiently put together aligned perfectly for the 1927 season. The pitching staff he helped construct was still top notch, including the newly acquired Wilcy Moore who Huggins deployed primarily as a relief pitcher, a novel concept at the time. He also had successfully developed a crop of youngsters in Earl Combs, Tony Lazzeri and Mark Koenig that were dependable run producers in his lineup. Together with Ruth and Gehrig they were dubbed “Murderers’ Row” as they were deadly to all competition in the American League.

The Yankees stampeded to 110 wins and easily swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. To this day they are considered by many to be the best team in major league history. Harvey Frommer, in his retrospective on the Yankees’ 1927 season, underscored Huggins’ importance when he wrote, “There was greatness on that Yankee team, but the sense of community Huggins helped forge made it even greater. Complimenting and complementing each other’s strengths, compensating for each other’s weaknesses, pushing each other to be even more successful…” Koenig put it more bluntly, “He made you feel like a giant.”

The road to the World Series was rougher in 1928 as the Yankees won a tight race with the Philadelphia Athletics to take the American League. However, they swept the Cardinals in the Fall Classic to seal back-to-back championships. Despite the on-field success, Huggins was cracking under the constant pressure – from both himself and others – to continue to win.

During the 1929 season Huggins' health continuously declined and the Yankees were well behind Philadelphia by mid-September. He reported to Yankee Stadium for a game against the Cleveland Indians with a large red blotch beneath his left eye which he initially shrugged off as no concern. A few days later it got no better and he checked himself into the hospital where it was revealed that he was suffering from a bacterial skin infection in his eye that rapidly spread through his entire body. Just days later he was dead at 51 years old.

Huggins' monument was the first one dedicated in Yankee Stadium

Silent Wind of Doom/Wikimedia Commons

Everyone associated with the Yankees mourned the loss as Huggins' body publicly laid in state at Yankee Stadium following his death. Lou Gehrig praised him as his best mentor aside from his parents while Ruth said, “You know what I thought of Miller Huggins, and you know what I owe him. It is one of the keenest losses I have ever felt.”

In 1932 the Yankees placed a monument for Huggins in center field of Yankee Stadium. It was the first of what would be many monuments and plaques honoring prominent Yankee figures over the years in what is now called Monument Park at the stadium. Miller Huggins was both literally and figuratively the building block off which all subsequent Yankee success stands on.