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and Joe Torre were voted in, with all three being named unanimously. The Genius When you talk about outsmarting the opponent, Tony La Russa certainly comes to mind. The master of late-inning chess games, La Russa out-foxed opponents for 33 years, with the Chicago White Sox (1979-86), Oakland A’s (1986-95) and St. Louis Cardinals (1996-2011), finishing with 2,728 wins (third most all-time), and a .536 winning percentage. A four-time Manager of the Year, he won everywhere he went, winning six pennants (three with the A’s, three with the Cardinals) and three World Series (one with the A’s, two with the Cardinals). While he didn’t get to the ALCS with the Sox, he still changed the culture, winning 99 games in 1983 to take the A.L. West crown. It was the franchise’s first playoff berth since 1959. He’d similarly turn around the A’s, who would win three straight American League pennant—the last team to do so—turning around a franchise that hadn’t gotten to the World Series since the last AL three-peat, the Swingin’ A’s of the early ’70s. The A’s won 104, 99 and 103 games, the best three-year stretch since 1929-31, when the franchise played in Philadelphia. His final stop would be St. Louis, where he took over for Torre and led the Cardinals to seven division titles and four World Series, splitting the four, including going out on top in 2011. Just One of the Guys Bobby Cox preferred not to take credit for what he did in his 29 years of managing but he quietly did something unlikely to be seen again. He managed the Atlanta Braves to 14 consecutive division championships, from 1991 through 2005. In fact, if you go back to his last managerial job in Toronto, the streak extends to 15. Cox led Atlanta to five NL pennants and took home the grand prize in 1995, the only major championship for the city of Atlanta. He finished his career with 2,504 victories, right behind La Russa and won four Manager of the Year awards. Not that the humble Cox, who played briefly with the Yankees, ever counted. The expression “players would run through a wall for him” perfectly captures the relationship he had with his players. Of course, he knew a lot of the players, as he’d been the general manager of the team in the late ’80s and drafted a lot of them. Cox led Atlanta to six 100-win seasons and eight more 90-win campaigns. After being fired by the Braves, in the early ‘80s, he took Toronto to its first three winning seasons and Maddux JOE MURPHY/WIREIMAGE


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