Atlanta Braves Franchise best managers: #7 Billy Southworth
By Fred Owens
Moving on up
After the 1945 season, Perini called Cardinals owner Sam Breadon and worked out a deal to acquire Southworth and players from the Cardinal system,
"The Braves also imported enough players from St. Louis, including Danny Litwhiler, Ray Sanders, and Johnny Hopp, that some wags called the team the Cape Cod Cardinals."
Southworth believed Spring Training meant getting in shape. He ran a tough, no-nonsense camp for the Cardinals; they spent more time getting fit and practicing skills than any team in the league.
When he played, managers used a platooning system made popular by the Braves manager from 1912 through 1920, George Stallings. The system dropped out of favor in the 1930s, but Southworth used it successfully in St Louis and brought it to Boston where it became known as the Southworth Shuffle.
Braves players were in better shape than the rest of the league, and the Southworth Shuffle worked well with a team short of star players. In his first season, the Bostons finished fourth with an 81-72 record, the first time the club finished above .500 since 1938, but Southworth was determined to do better.
In 1947 he introduced the minor league managers to an organized way of getting players into shape.
". . . managers in the Braves farm system were indoctrinated into the “Southworth System.” Billy divided his team into groups and rotated them from task to task. He’d keep his players running and work them from 10:30 in the morning to well into the afternoon."
The 1947 season wasn’t a worst-to-first run like that of the 1991 Atlanta Braves, but the club finished third with an 86-68 record.
Champions
The Braves started their 1948 campaign by going 5-7 in April, but a 12-10 May made them a .500 club in fourth place but only three games back. They gained a tie for first on June 11, with a 7-3 win over St Louis, but slipped back to second after losing two to the Reds.
Two days later, they regained a tie for first, and on June 15, The Braves beat the Cubs 6-3 to take a half-game lead. They finished June with an 11-6 run, and a stretch of 10-2-1 from July 5 through July 18 put them eight games up.
The Braves didn’t play badly, but their opponents played better, and on August 30, their eight-game lead had morphed into a one-game deficit as the Braves dropped into second place.
Southworth turned the team around, leading them to a 21-7 record in September and October that put the club 6.5 games up and made them NL Champs.
The Braves beat Cleveland 1-0 behind Johnny Sain in game one, but the Indians took the next three. The Braves rallied in game five, beating the Tribe 11-5 and taking the series back to Boston, but Cleveland eked out a 4-3 win in game six to win the World Series.