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Legendary baseball manager Sparky Anderson dies

Sparky Anderson
Roger Blevins
/
Creative Commons
Sparky Anderson (right) during his days with the Cincinnati Reds.

From the Associated Press:

Family spokesman Dan Ewald says Anderson died from complications from dementia.

Anderson guided the Cincinnati Reds to World Series championships in 1975 and 1976 and then led the Detroit Tigers to the 1984 title.

You can see photos of Sparky at the Detroit Free Press

Fanhouse.com has an article about Anderson. Here are two of Anderson's quotes from that article:

"Let me tell you this, and get it straight, and I hope every manager that follows me will listen very carefully: players earn this, by their skills. Managers come here, as I did, on their backs, for what they did for me. I never believed different, I will never believe different, and I think that's what made my career so lucky."
"There's two kinds of managers. One that ain't very smart. He gets bad players, loses games, and gets fired. Then there was somebody like me that was a genius. I got good players, stayed out of the way, let 'em win a lot, and then just hung around for 26 years. It was a lot of fun."

John Lowe from the Detroit Free Press writes:

With his native baseballwisdom, ungrammatical eloquence and perpetual charisma - plus that tanned, vibrant face topped by silver hair - Sparky Anderson became the most compelling and enduring figure ever to manage the Tigers.

Lowe writes, "Anderson is survived by his wife, Carol; sons Lee and Albert; daughter Shirley Englebrecht; and nine grandchildren. At the request of Anderson, there will be no funeral nor memorial service."

 

Mark Brush was the station's Digital Media Director. He succumbed to a year-long battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, in March 2018. He was 49 years old.