McAdam: Former Red Sox manager John McNamara, once close to glory, dies at 88

John McNamara, who died Wednesday at the age of 88, may not have been the last "old school'' manager in the game of baseball, but in many ways was the very embodiment of that term.

McNamara, who nearly held an esteemed place in Red Sox lore when he had the team one strike away from winning the 1986 World Series at New York's Shea Stadium, instead was condemned to be remembered by many -- fairly or not -- as the person at least partly responsible for the team allowing what would have been the franchise's first title in 68 years to slip away.

As manager of that team, he made two moves -- one by commission, the other of omission -- which backfired in the worst possible way. First, he pinch-hit for Roger Clemens in the eighth inning of Game 6 with the team leading 3-2. Later, he declined to take first baseman Bill Buckner out of the game with the lead in extra innings in favor of defensive substitute Dave Stapleton.

Instead of being immortalized, McNamara became reviled, turning increasingly bitter and was fired less than 19 months later, unable to disassociate himself from what, at the time, was the most disheartening loss in modern Red Sox history.

In his tenure with the Red Sox -- from the start of 1985 through the All-Star break in 1988 -- and with his other managerial stops in Oakland, San Diego, Cincinnati, and Anaheim beforehand and Cleveland and Anaheim again after Boston, McNamara performed his job the way a major league manager was expected to perform it in the 1970s and 1980s.

He tended to favor veteran players, often had little use -- or time -- for younger ones, made out the same lineup nearly every day and played the percentages by trusting his gut instincts. He could be cantankerous and taciturn, and failed to understand why he owed anyone -- least of all reporters he barely knew -- an explanation for why he stayed with a pitcher or why he chose to bunt or not.

McNamara was hired by former Red Sox president/GM/owner Haywood Sullivan, who tended to embrace baseball lifers like McNamara.

In retrospect, the wonder wasn't that McNamara got two more managerial jobs after being fired the Red Sox. Rather, it's worth asking why the Red Sox hired him in the first place.



True, he was an experienced hand in the dugout, but it would be a stretch to call him a successful one. If you toss aside his first managerial season, when he replaced Hank Bauer with 13 games to go in the Oakland A's 1969 season, McNamara had managed 10 seasons, had finished first just once and had a total of just three winning seasons.

At the time, however, McNamara was a member in good standing in the mythical Old Boys Club, and as such, was consistently being recycled when major league managerial openings arose. McNamara seemed to come to typify managers of that era: when he had good rosters (Cincinnati in the early 1980s), he won; when he had less talented players available, he didn't.

It wasn't as though McNamara was particularly poor at his job. It's just that he wasn't particularly good at it, either, as his .485 career winning percentage attests. He just was. It's impossible, in 2020, a manager of his pedigree, getting chance after chance after chance. But McNamara, having spent nearly his entire adult life in the game, always seemed to have a benefactor in high places, poised to offer him his next opportunity.

Like many before him in the Red Sox dugout, McNamara grew tired of hearing about the team's previous near misses, of the seemingly bad fate that hung over the franchise like a storm cloud. McNamara consistently argued -- not without some logic -- that what had befallen previous Red Sox players in 1949, 1967, 1972, 1978 and in other close calls with greatness, had nothing to do with the present bunch he was managing.

But by denying the pressure to overcome the franchise's tragic past, McNamara seemed to give it even more life, resulting in a cycle that neither he nor his players could overcome. In denying that he was carrying the team's burden of history, he actually sunk further under its weight.

It didn't help that, in the aftermath of the 1986 Series, McNamara offered conflicting explanations for his controversial moves. He denied an account in general manager Lou Gorman's book that he had declined to remove Buckner because he wanted the veteran to be on the field to celebrate the historic last out. And for years, he and Clemens offered dueling rationales for the pitcher's removal. McNamara alleged that Clemens told him in the dugout that he was gassed, which Clemens, to this day, vehemently denies.

Predictably, McNamara's popularity with the fan base declined precipitously after the World Series debacle. With Sullivan's staunch backing, he survived a 78-win season in 1987, but when the team just a game over .500 at the All-Star break, John Harrington stepped in and fired McNamara and replaced him with the far folksier Joe Morgan.

Morgan's lighter tough proved to be the perfect tonic for a team that had taken on McNamara's wariness as its own and underachieved in the process. Freed from McNamara's gruff reign, the 1988 Red Sox ripped off 12 straight wins (and 19-of-20) en route to a division title.

Having started on the Red Sox beat full-time beginning in 1989, I only covered a handful of games with McNamara as manager. At the time, young reporters were expected to be seen and not heard, a dictum I was only too happy with which to comply given McNamara's reputation as a curmudgeon.

While McNamara would occasionally indulge some politely-worked second-guessing by the veterans on the beat, he took far less kindly to others attempting to do the same. Any questions of his in-game strategy or lineup choices would often by met with a contemptuous: "Where are you from?''

In that regard, he was like the figure behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, boldly questioning the right of an inquisitor.

Like I said: a different time.