Longtime GM and Manager Dallas Green Dies

Dallas Green, the first Phillies manager to win a World Series and later the general manager who brought Ryne Sandberg to the Cubs, died Wednesday. He was 82.

A cause of death was not announced, but Green had been receiving dialysis treatment last spring training, according to BA correspondent Jim Salisbury.

Green, who was a righthanded pitcher from 1960-67 for the Mets, Senators and Phillies, was 20-22, 4.26 in his playing career. But the big-bodied—and big-voiced—Green was more notable for his off-field career, beginning as a coach in the Phillies system before becoming the organization’s farm director in 1972.

“The game lost a great baseball man today,” Phillies chairman David Montgomery said in a statement. “Dallas held many different positions in baseball and his passion and love for the game was evident in every role he played.

“He was a big man with a big heart and a bigger-than-life personality. Having known Dallas since 1971, he was one of my first phone calls upon becoming Phillies president because of his perspective and advice. All of us at the Phillies had tremendous respect for Dallas as a baseball man and friend. We will miss him dearly. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Sylvia, and his children, Dana, John, Kim and Doug.”

The 6-foot-5 Green oversaw a system that helped produce three consecutive NL East titles from 1976-78, but the Phillies lost each year in the NL Championship Series to the Reds and Dodgers (1977-78). When longtime manager Danny Ozark was fired in August 1979, Green was brought in to replace him and was quickly branded as a disciplinarian, the complete opposite of Ozark.

Still, Green’s stewardship of the club worked as he drove the Phillies to the 1980 NL East title and finally the pennant as they beat the Astros in a memorable five-game series. The Phillies won their first championship by beating the Royals in six games. The final out of that series saw Tug McGraw throw his glove into the air after striking out Willie Wilson, as you can watch below.

But Green’s bombast could last only so long, a portend of his career. After the strike-shortened 1981 season, Green moved on to become general manager of the Cubs, and shortly after worked a deal to acquire future Hall of Famer Sandberg from the Phillies—he knew the system well—along with Larry Bowa for Ivan DeJesus.

“Very sad news,” Sandberg told BA Cubs correspondent Gordon Wittenmyer.

By 1984, Sandberg was NL MVP and the Cubs were NL East champs. But by 1987, Green and the Cubs decided to move on from each other and in 1989, Green ended up in an ill-fated job—managing the Yankees.

Predictably, Green and George Steinbrenner clashed almost immediately. He called out star outfielder Rickey Henderson, who was famously enigmatic, saying, “Rickey Henderson is not going to run the Yankees in 1989. Dallas Green is.”

Henderson was sent back to Oakland in June in a lopsided deal for the A’s, and Green was fired in August with the Yankees languishing. Green went back to the dugout in 1993 with the Mets, spending four losing seasons there. He returned to the Phillies as an adviser.

Off the field, Green was devastated by the loss of his nine-year-old granddaughter, Christina Taylor Green, who was one of the six people killed in the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., in January 2011 that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

“They say time heals,” Green said in 2013. “Time, I don’t think, will ever heal that part of my life. I still tear up when I see something that reminds me of Christina.”

He admitted that he would never fully recover from the tragedy and later became an advocate for gun control.