Don Baylor: Playing for Earl Weaver

An Interview with Baseball Legend Don Baylor - By Norman L. Macht

What was it like to play for legendary Orioles manager Earl Weaver?

Find out in our interview with Don Baylor - by baseball writer Norman L. Macht

Baseball icon Don Baylor

April 23, 1994

Mile High Stadium, Denver

Don Baylor played 17 full seasons (1972-1988) with six American League teams – including three consecutive World Series with three different teams – before managing for nine years for the Rockies and Cubs.

Behind his desk hung a large framed poster with the word ATTITUDE and “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” 

The poster showed a drop of water landing in a pond and beginning to make ripples.

It was, he said, a constant reminder of Earl Weaver, the manager who had influenced him the most, when we met in his office at Mile High Stadium in Denver on April 23, 1994. – Norman L. Macht

The Best Time of My Life

Breaking in playing for Earl Weaver and the Orioles was a favorite time in my life. Weaver instilled winning in everybody around him.

He gave me a foundation of being tough, enjoying winning, thinking about winning all the time. It became an obsession.

I probably had it as a youngster but being around all those great players and Weaver helped me to carry it through my entire career. I was not as boisterous as Earl.

He played hunches a lot, and never did anything by the book. When I’m getting ready to play a hunch, I think about Earl.

He knew his players, knew what they were capable of doing. I played for some great managers, but he was the guy who had the knack of putting in a guy at the right time.

He also knew how to piss guys off, which he did to me a lot. I was 17 for 22 at one time and he calls me into his office and says, “You’re not facing Stan Bahnsen today because you’ve never faced him.”

I said, “Earl, I’m 17 for 22 on this trip. I got eight straight hits.” But I didn’t play.

He knew how to get you just enough upset that the next day you were going to show him, and the next day Terry Forster is pitching and he threw a lot harder than Bahnsen and I ended up 2 for 4 and Earl is the first guy standing there to shake my hand and I just walked right by him.

That’s what we did to Earl in those days. I went 4 for 4 one day in Milwaukee – 2 home runs and 2 doubles – and we go to Fenway and I’m not playing.

He says to me, “You know, those four balls you hit in Milwaukee would be singles off the wall here.”

“I said, “Yeah, Earl, but the bases could be loaded.” He says, “But you’re not playing.”

So I go to the outfield and I’m standing there during BP and I wouldn’t pick up a ball and guys like Blair are chasing them down and I’m just getting out of the way of line drives. There was no DH then.

I’m our first pinch hitter off the bench and I hit for McNally and hit one into the screen and Earl wanted to shake my hand but I just ignored him. Then he let me play for a month. That’s the way he was.

A guy will foul off a ball and it should have been strike three but it falls out of the catcher’s glove and Weaver always used to say, “After something like that happens, something bad is sure to follow.

Somebody will get a base hit or hit a home run.” And I see it happen all the time.

Learning from All Managers

So the first part of my foundation was built around Earl. I bought his book on strategy and a couple other books of his when I became a manager, to see what I had missed.

But I picked up something from every manager I was around. From Tony LaRussa: organization. For years, Tony would write down things that came up in a game on the back of the lineup card.

I did the same in my first year. It helped me this winter when I was putting my spring training things together, what we should go over. I keep them all the time, have them here in a desk drawer.

Billy Martin: some people said he was a little fanatical, crazy in some of the things he did, but one thing you can’t take away from Billy is that he won.

Being a National League manager, one thing I have to be on guard against that Billy did is develop your own doghouse. If a certain player fell out of favor with him, that guy wouldn’t play for two or three days.

In the AL with the DH, you can have a couple guys in the doghouse, but in the NL you have to use everybody. I learned that.

Gene Mauch was always studying the game. I see him in the winter and I ask him about a lot of things. I get an honest answer.

He was never afraid to try something. He would always play his game before the game was played.

In BP he would be out by second base watching guys. I asked him what he was watching for.

He would say, “I see guys who hit the ball the other way so if I need somebody to hit the ball the other way to move a runner over later in the game I know who can do it because I’ve watched them doing it during practice.”

Now I do that just about every day. A lot of people probably think I’m trying to get away from the press by standing out there and that’s part of it, too.

[What surprised you most about managing?]

I find myself doing a lot more teaching now of what used to be taught in the minor leagues.

I never thought it was going to be the ongoing, bang-em-over-the-head every single day. I expected it, but I didn’t think it was going to be every day.

Players today are a lot different from those Orioles teams of the ‘70s. They were talented. They knew how to win.

Now we’re kind of teaching that process. I always tell people that the three greatest organizations coming up as far as the fundamentals are the Orioles, Dodgers and Cardinals. They were all the same.

Once you learned from the bottom -- A ball – up to the major leagues was the same. So when Weaver threw you into a situation, you knew from Bluefield, West Virginia, on up what to do and how to do it.

Now you have guys from 22 different organizations on one team. There is a lot more teaching has to be done now at this level.

I was also surprised by the amount of time you have to put aside for the media.

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