Who would be on your top 5 best and top 5 worst lists?
Best:
1. Tito
2. Dick Williams
3. Bill Carrigan
4. Jimmy Collins
5. jimmy Williams
(McNamara/Kennedy/Cronin)
Worst (My lifetime)
1. Joe Kerrigan (He once wanted Manny to change his swing.)
2. Bobby V.
3. Butch Hobson
4. D Johnson (Hated Bill Lee- I mean, come on!)
5. Joe Morgan
(John Farrell)
Cora is going to win one WS before the cliff happens. Then as the team is plummeting off the cliff, he's going to sprout wings like an eagle and help the team soar to another one. I just can't put him above Tito yet, because he'd need to win at least 4 WS titles and he'd probably only win 3. The 2004 title is basically double credit for Tito.
This to me is more credible than moonslav's list. To be perfectly honest, even though I was a solid Sox fan as early as 1949, I was mostly oblivious of the managers because I was literally unable to watch or listen to Red Sox games--except for the 1953 and 1954 seasons when I lived in western Massachusetts--until 2003 or 2004 when I could get them on satellite TV.
But like almost every Sox fan, I know about the 86 year drought which John Henry ended. Tito did a good job, but he also had awfully good hitting anchored by Manny and Papi for both WS titles and good enough pitching. Ditto for Farrell in 2013 but without Manny.
Johnson was named 1975’s Major League Manager of the Year by The Sporting News. And once again he was given the St. Louis Brownie of the Year Award by those who still kept the faith. Sportswriters covering the World Series noted that Johnson had become more bitter, was livid regarding the Armbrister incident, and was observed as becoming “surly and quick-tempered in his relations with the World Series press.” Former Red Sox manager Dick Williams empathized with Johnson, noting the pressure, and called him an “intense, inward” but “outstanding” person who simply hadn’t adjusted as well to dealing with the press as Williams himself had.7 Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee had his criticisms, expressed in the immediate aftermath of the World Series: “Johnson has been falling out of trees all summer and landing on his feet.”8