Bobby Bragan

Robert Randall Bragan (October 30, 1917 – January 21, 2010) was an American shortstop, catcher, manager, and coach in Major League Baseball and an influential minor league executive. His professional baseball career encompassed 73 years, from his first season as a player in the Class D Alabama–Florida League in 1937, to 2009, the last full year of his life, when he was still listed as a consultant to the Texas Rangers' organization.

Bragan played eight seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, before going on to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cleveland Indians and Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves in the late 1950s and 1960s. He also managed in the Cuban League, leading Almendares to two championships.

On August 16, 2005, Bragan donned a uniform to manage the independent Central League Fort Worth Cats for one game, making him—at 87 years, nine months, and 16 days old—the oldest manager in professional baseball annals, besting by one week Connie Mack, the manager and part-owner of the Philadelphia Athletics from 1901 through 1950. Always known as an innovator with a sense of humor—and an umpire-baiter—Bragan was ejected in the third inning of his "comeback", thus also becoming the oldest person in any capacity to be ejected from a professional baseball game.

Bragan died on January 21, 2010, of a heart attack at his home in Fort Worth.

Bragan was born in Birmingham, Alabama. After three years of minor-league seasoning, he began his seven-year (1940–44; 1947–48) Major League playing career as a shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies, but by 1943, his first season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he had learned how to catch and was for the most part a backup receiver for the Dodgers for the remainder of his MLB playing days. A right-handed batter listed as 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) tall and 175 pounds (79 kg), Bragan hit .240 in 597 games, with 456 hits and 15 career home runs. Bragan missed the 1945–46 seasons performing military service. He was commissioned a lieutenant in the United States Army and was stationed at Camp Wheeler, Georgia. In his only World Series appearance, in 1947 against the New York Yankees, he appeared in Game 6 as a pinch hitter; batting for Ralph Branca in the sixth inning with the game tied at five all, he doubled off Yankee relief pitcher Joe Page to drive home Carl Furillo with the eventual winning run. Bragan's hit gave him a perfect 1.000 career batting average in World Series play.

During his Major League managerial career, Bragan never skippered a game past his 49th birthday. He managed the Pittsburgh Pirates (1956–57), Cleveland Indians (1958), and Milwaukee / Atlanta Braves (1963–66), each time getting fired in the mid-season of his final campaign. In Cleveland, he lasted a total of only 67 games of his maiden season before his dismissal—at the time of his firing, his was the shortest managerial stint in team history. His career big-league managerial won–lost record was below .500: 443–478 (.481). He was the Braves' pilot during the transitional period when they relocated from Milwaukee to Atlanta. Bragan also was a Major League coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers (1960) and Houston Colt .45s (1962).

Despite his lack of success in the majors, Bragan was highly respected as a minor league manager, winning championships in 1948 and 1949 with Fort Worth of the Double-A Texas League during a successful 41⁄2-year run, and with the 1953 Hollywood Stars of the Open-Classification Pacific Coast League. A photograph of Bragan lying at the feet of an umpire who had ejected him, still arguing, was published in Life magazine at the time. Baseball Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams, who played for Bragan at Fort Worth from 1948 to 1950, lauded Bragan in his Cooperstown induction speech in 2008, and wrote, in his autobiography: "There should be a note under every one of my [managerial] records that says 'See Bobby Bragan.' Because a bit of every one of my wins belongs to him."

Bragan was a protégé of Branch Rickey, the Hall of Fame front-office executive, who hired him as an unproven young manager at Fort Worth in 1948. Then 30 years old, Bragan had started the 1948 season with the Dodgers but played sparingly, getting into only nine games (starting two) through June 27, and collecting only two hits in a dozen at-bats. When Rickey wanted to make room for Roy Campanella, who was starring in the minors, he offered Bragan the Fort Worth managerial job; he took over in July 1948, and remained with the Cats through 1952. Then, in 1953, Rickey, by now heading the Pittsburgh front office, brought Bragan to Hollywood and the Pirates' organization.