John Francis McNamara (June 4, 1932July 28, 2020) was an American professional baseball player, manager and coach. After spending over 15 years in the minor leagues as a catcher and player-manager, McNamara helmed six Major League Baseball (MLB) teams for all or parts of 19 seasons between 1969 and 1996. He directed the 1986 Boston Red Sox to the American League pennant, and was named his league's "Manager of the Year" by both the BBWAA and The Sporting News.
Early life and playing career
McNamara was born in Sacramento, the fourth of five children of John and Josephine McNamara. His father, an Irish immigrant who was a railroad worker, died in 1944; his mother worked at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. McNamara attended Christian Brothers High School, where he was selected as an All-City player in both basketball and baseball. At Sacramento City College (SCC), he led his team to the 1951 California Community College Athletic Association state championship and later was inducted to the SCC Athletic Hall of Fame.
A right-handed batter and thrower who stood tall and weighed , in his playing days he was a peripatetic, weak-hitting catcher who originally signed with the St. Louis Cardinals organization in 1951. He rose as high as the Open-Classification Pacific Coast League during 1956 as a member of his hometown Solons, but he hit only .171 in 76 games played.
Managing and coaching career
Minor leagues
McNamara began his managing career with the Lewis-Clark Broncs in Lewiston, Idaho, of the Class B Northwest League in 1959, and when the club became an affiliate of the Kansas City Athletics in 1960, McNamara joined the Athletics' farm system. After helming the Triple-A Dallas Rangers in 1964, he won Southern League pennants at Mobile (1966) and Birmingham (1967), Kansas City's Double-A affiliates, where he groomed many future members of the Oakland Athletics' early-1970s dynasty (Hall of Famers Rollie Fingers and Reggie Jackson, as well as Sal Bando, Blue Moon Odom, Joe Rudi and others). At the same time, McNamara also mentored future Hall of Fame manager (then an infielder) Tony LaRussa and future pitching coach (then catcher) Dave Duncan. Jackson, in particular, credited McNamara with helping him through his time with Birmingham, with the racial tensions that existed in the Deep South at the time.
Oakland Athletics
McNamara served as a coach at the major-league level for Oakland from 1968 through September 18, 1969, when A's owner Charlie Finley fired manager Hank Bauer and promoted McNamara, then 37, to succeed him. The Athletics were in second place in the American League West Division, nine games behind the Minnesota Twins. They went 8–5 under McNamara for the rest of the campaign, then finished second to the Twins again in 1970 with an 89–73 mark. Finley replaced him with Dick Williams at season's end, and the A's would go on to win five successive division titles and three straight American League pennants and World Series titles under Williams and Alvin Dark.
San Diego Padres
McNamara returned to the coaching ranks from 1971–73 with the cross-bay San Francisco Giants before he took over the struggling San Diego Padres as their manager in 1974. The Padres improved incrementally, winning 60, 71, and 73 games through 1976, then signed free agents Fingers and Gene Tenace away from McNamara's old team, the A's. Expected to dramatically improve in 1977, instead the Padres stood at only 20–28 on May 28, when McNamara was fired and replaced by Dark. He spent 1978 as a coach for the California Angels, then was hired to succeed Sparky Anderson, also a future Hall of Fame manager, as skipper of the Cincinnati Reds in 1979.
Cincinnati Reds
After World Series titles in 1975 and 1976, the Reds finished second to the Los Angeles Dodgers for two consecutive seasons in the National League West Division, and Anderson had been fired amid controversy, reportedly because he refused his front office's order to fire members of his coaching staff.
McNamara's 1979 Reds, minus legend Pete Rose, who had defected to the Philadelphia Phillies as a free agent, won 90 games—two fewer than Anderson's 1978 team. But they edged the Houston Astros by 1 games to win the NL West and became McNamara's first postseason entry. In the 1979 National League Championship Series, however, the Reds dropped the first two games at home in extra innings to the Pittsburgh Pirates, then were swept out of the playoffs in Game 3. Pittsburgh went on to win the 1979 World Series. McNamara's 1980 Reds won 89 games but finished third, 3 games behind Houston.