Atlanta Braves Franchise best managers: #7 Billy Southworth
The next manager on the list of Atlanta Braves Franchise top-10 managers led the Boston Braves to their first World Series in 34 years.
Resurrection of a franchise
After winning the 1914 World Series, the franchise now known as the Atlanta Braves languished in the bottom half of the National League for 31 years. Lou Perini, Joe Maney. and Guido Rugo took control of the team in 1943 but had to wait until WWII ended to make their first big change.
Perini was the driving force behind the resurrection of the Braves and owner of a successful construction company. He knew that excellence required proven leadership, so he made his first priority hiring the best manager available, Billy Southworth.
Southworth managed the Cardinals from 1940 through 1945 winning, the World Series in 1942, NL Pennant in 1943, and a second World Series in 1944.
Atlanta Braves underpaying Snitker?
According to the Arizona Republic, Atlanta Braves Manager Brian Snitker’s base salary in 2018 was $800K a year.
Southworth’s SABR biography says agreed to join a team his biographer described as the laughingstocks of the senior circuit because Perini paid him very well. Perini’s SABR bio added the details of the deal.
. . . he lured former St. Louis Cardinals manager . . . with a record $35,000 annual salary for three years plus bonuses of up to $20,000 for finishing third, second, or first.
In today’s dollars, Southworth’s base contract was worth $1.53M – $535K a year – and included bonuses of up to $305.6K a season.
Brian needs a new agent,
Boston Braves New Boss
William H. Southworth was born in Harvard, Nebraska, on March 9, 1893, and according to his daughter, was named after a family friend, Buffalo Bill” Cody.
Billy and his family moved back to Ohio when he was nine, settling first in Saranac before moving to Columbus in 1902. He played Sunday ball and worked for the railroad until Portsmouth signed him in 1912.
Over the next 18 years, he played for Cleveland, the Pirates, Braves, Giants, and Cardinals, became a manager in the Cardinals system in 1927, and took his team to the Minor League Junior World Series twice. His showing there earned him the job for St Louis in 1929, where he posted a 43-45 record before being replaced.
Southworth bounced around the minors for the next 11 years, winning the Minor League Junior World Series twice and a league championship on three other occasions. In 1940, Southworth returned to St Louis and managed them through the war years.
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.
Bonus Babies and low pay
The Atlanta Braves’ first-round pick in 2022 was high school pitcher Owen Murphy. Imagine your Murphy, and you have to sit on the bench with an appearance non-and-then in relief for two years. Now imagine if Murphy was making more money sitting there than anyone else on the roster.
Post-war baseball saw a bidding war for prospects like Antonelli, with the richest teams paying huge sums to sign the best players. That sounds vaguely familiar. . . I digress.
Baseball decided that they needed to keep the Yankees rich teams from signing all of the best prospects, and created the Bonus-Baby Rule,
. . . when a Major League Baseball team signed a player to a contract in excess of $4,000, the team was required to keep that player on the 25-man roster for two full-seasons.
The rule wasn’t good for anybody and created the most significant problem Southworth faced in 1948 that didn’t make headlines. At The All-Star game, Johnny Sain threatened a sit-down strike, but the Braves were headed to the World Series, and other players talked him out of it. However, by Spring Training 1949, the pot was about to boil over.
Fines, punches, and black-eyes
While the team tried to spin Spring Training into a happy-families setting, the truth was less idyllic and always going to come out.
Dave Egan of the Daily Record, (wrote)another story, one of a ballclub in revolt. Outfielder Jimmy Russell was fined for staying out past curfew. Sain and Southworth weren’t speaking. Spahn wanted to be traded and didn’t care (where) . . . two near-fistfights involving Southworth, one with a radio announcer and one with a player. . .
Southworth was 55 and an old-school manager who expected players to do what he asked of them to win. The new breed of players didn’t respond well to it, and the veterans who usually smoothed things over in the clubhouse issues weren’t happy with the way they were treated.
They argued with Southworth and Quinn, fights took place between players, and Southworth went after a reporter as he tried to shield the team from their questions. He made it to August but had no idea how to handle the modern player and lost control of the clubhouse.
The team sent him on a medical leave of absence, citing recurring headaches, and hurriedly sent him away on a private plane before the press could corner him. Johnny Cooney took over, scrapped platooning, and the team finished 75-79-3, fourth in the NL, 22 games out.
A short comeback
The headaches and weakness Southworth felt were probably stress related. Medical doctors cleared him to return in 1950, and results improved. The Braves finished 83-71-2, eight games out but still in fourth place.
The Braves’ last year in Boston was also Southworth’s last year as a manager. The clubhouse and roaster didn’t feel the same, he didn’t feel the same fire to win, and he resigned in June.
Southworth joined the Braves again in 1952, this time in Milwaukee as a scout, and spent time as an instructor at the Braves Minor League camp in Georgia. He left the game for good when his contract ended in December 1956 and died in 1969.
Epilogue
Hall of Fame voters ignored Southworth’s six 90-win seasons, four NL Pennants, two World Series Championships, a career record of 1044-704, and .597 winning percentage for 50 years. In 2007 a Hall of Fame Veteran’s Committee corrected this snub and finally enshrined Billy Southworth and Dick Williams.
The most appropriate epitaph for Southworth is quoted by Harold Kaese (in The Milwaukee Braves), coming from the Boston Globe: “The Braves were an old club, crabby, bitter, set in their ways. Players who could no longer deliver blamed their ineptness on Southworth. Victory, which sugar-coated the bitterness underneath last season, eluded the crippled Braves and left bare the acrid taste of defeat, futility and animosity. Southworth, one of the great managers, could not cope with the situation. Perhaps he was too aloof, too domineering, too cocky, and while he did not need the friendship of his players, even he could not afford to lose their respect.”
That’s a wrap.
Billy Southworth’s story is a rollercoaster of success at all levels of the game and devastating personal losses that resulted in depression and occasional reliance on alcohol.
dark. Next. Honest John
The Atlanta Braves Franchise has had its share of colorful managers and great managers, Billy the Kid has a place on both lists. His record as a manager includes 340 more wins than losses, and his plaque on the wall in Cooperstown say Southworth was one of the best the game’s seen.