When the Orioles name a new manager, they can only hope he'll turn the last-place team around as quickly as did the man who took the same job 118 years ago.
Ned Hanlon was 34 years old when he became Baltimore manager early on in the 1892 season. The Orioles were then the laughingstock of the National League, an undisciplined bunch who'd lost 14 of their first 15 games when Hanlon stepped in.
It was too late to stop the bleeding that summer: The Orioles finished last in the 12-team league, 54-1/2 games off the pace. Then Hanlon went to work rebuilding the team.
"I decided we had too many big, clumsy fellows," he said. Most of the Orioles thought they were the mighty Casey, said Hanlon, who replaced most of them via deft trades for scrappy, aggressive players, including three future Hall of Famers (Willie Keeler, Hugh Jennings and Joe Kelley).
The new Orioles ascribed to Hanlon's mantra of playing "scientific" baseball – the bunt, the hit-and-run, and the squeeze play – in addition to more than a little chicanery, like running from first base to third, when the lone umpire's back was turned.
Sure enough, the Orioles perked up. In 1893, they finished eighth. Then, in 1894, they won the NL pennant – the first of three straight championship flags that would fly over their field at Union Park. In 1897, the Orioles finished second, but still won the Temple Cup, precursor of the World Series.
Baltimore's upturn was sweet revenge for Hanlon, who'd been fired as Pittsburgh's manager in 1891 for trying to discipline his boozing players. Perhaps the smartest move he made here was to loan the Orioles' owner $7,000; in return, he was named club president. Hanlon was supreme boss of the franchise; the team owner wore a lapel button that said, "Ask Hanlon."
A masterful judge of talent, Hanlon drove his players to scrap for every base and scrounge for every run. Success earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame in 1996 – the same year that Cooperstown enshrined another headstrong Orioles' manager, Earl Weaver.
"Had the Orioles had less of that aggressiveness, we would never have won any pennants," Hanlon once said. "Players are only human, and when they are (not hustling), their hearts will go down in their boots, they will become indifferent, the game will go glimmering and the public will leave in disgust."
Then, as now.