Up on the blog today, my "missing" 1977 All-Star manager, which is former Boston Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson, who led the Junior Circuit in the 1976 "Midsummer Classic" because of his pennant winning 1975 season:
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Funny enough, we'll all remember
that Johnson was shown as the very first manager in Seattle Mariner
history on that special manager/coach card in the 1977 set.
After
his A.L. Championship season of 1975, which saw the Red Sox lose to the
juggernaut Cincinnati Reds "Big Red Machine" team in the World Series,
Johnson came back to manage the Sox the following year, only to be let
go after 86 games, which had the team under .500 at 41-45.
That
was just after the All-Star game, so he did hang around long enough to
be at the helm of the A.L. in the game, which the N.L. won 7-1.
He
would then go on to manage the new Mariner team for the first three
full seasons between 1977 and 1979 before being let go after a 39-65
start to the 1980 season.
He'd be back managing a Big League
team in 1982, taking over the Texas Rangers after Don Zimmer was let go
after a 38-58 start, with Johnson not doing much better, going 26-40 the
rest of the way.
That would be it for the man as a manager,
though he could be considered a baseball lifer, entering pro-ball in
1949 before putting in parts of six seasons as a Major League catcher
between 1952 and 1962, then getting into coaching and managing later on.