New Earl Weaver Biography Examines How the Fiery O’s Manager Reinvented Baseball

In the 1970s, no baseball team in the American League won more games than the Baltimore Orioles. The names of the players from that era—Brooks, Boog, Eddie–still resonate throughout the city today, but one holds a special place in the hearts of fans: Earl.

Although Earl Weaver stood just 5-foot-7, the team’s legendarily mercurial manager was a giant in the game. The foul-mouthed, heavy-drinking, deep-thinking Weaver was an innovator, among the first managers to embrace technology as a precursor to today’s analytics.

Journalist John W. Miller grew up in Belgium, but when he visited relatives in Maryland, they’d take him to O’s games and shower him with stories of the team’s glory days–especially those of its fiery manager.

“I was blown away by the pageantry, the excitement, all the drunk guys yelling,” says Miller, 47, who went on to play baseball at Mount St. Mary’s University and work as a Wall Street Journal reporter. “It was very exciting. I spent 10 months of the year in Belgium speaking French. This was my American side blasting out. I fell in love with baseball.”

When Weaver died in 2013 at 82, Miller wrote his obituary for the Journal. That led to his new book, an  encompassing and enlightening examination of one of baseball’s most successful and colorful managers.

Baltimoreans like to think of Weaver as one of our own. But he was actually from St. Louis. How did it shape him?
Deeply. Pre World War II, it was a culture of taverns, barbershops, and corner stores. Earl would play a high-school game and then walk or take the trolley to Sportsman’s Park and watch afternoon baseball. He was raised in large part by an uncle who was a bookie. Earl was like a street hustler in a way: smart and clever.

Many diehard Oriole fans might not even know that he was a minor-league second baseman. What kind of player was he?
He signed out of high school and he had four really good minor-league seasons. He was on an upward progression and made one major league spring training [with the St. Louis Cardinals] in 1952…Weaver had great hands and a great batting eye. He walked a lot, he didn’t strike out a lot, and he hit the ball hard. I don’t think he would have been a great big leaguer, but he wouldn’t have embarrassed himself.

When he became a minor league manager and then took over the Orioles in 1968, what was his relationship with his Black players?
I know from talking to people in the family that his vocabulary and manner before he got to the Major Leagues was racist. He used the n-word. In the minors, he lived in the South, and he behaved like people around him. When he got to the Major Leagues, he changed.

He really needed to win over Frank Robinson. And he did. He brokered a deal so Robinson could start managing in Puerto Rico in the winter and then campaigned for him to be hired as Major League Baseball’s first Black manager. Ken Singleton told me that he loved [Weaver]. Eddie Murray loved him. He had a way of respecting people for being fully human that touched Black players. The capacity for this guy to change is an incredible part of his story. In his own memoir, he says, “I evolved.”

He was ejected from an average of six to eight games per season. Was this just theatrics, or did he have a real anger management problem?
In the minors, he had such a bad temper that he once charged an entire dugout by himself. The opposing team beat him up and broke his arm. He had a temper that he often couldn’t control. He came to realize that [arguing with the umpires] was a way of applying pressure that was strategic. It pressured the umpires to make calls that favored the Orioles, but it also deflected pressure from his own players.

When they had a losing streak, he would start getting ejected more because it was a way of blowing off steam for the team and of getting the fans’ attention away from the way the Orioles were playing. There’s a third element, which is that he realized the crowds loved it, and it brought people to the ballpark.

You manage a high-school varsity baseball team in Pittsburgh. How much do you channel Earl Weaver when you coach?
I think Earl Weaver’s simple approach to baseball is really helpful for high-school players. He believed in throwing the ball over the plate and winning battles by changing speeds and throwing your best pitch. The way he saw baseball was that there’s a few things you have to do, and everything else is bullshit. Throw strikes. Draw walks. Put pressure on the defense. He saw baseball as common sense. So yeah, I feel like his spirit is whispering in my ear sometimes.