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Book Summary and Reviews of The Last Manager by John W. Miller

The Last Manager by John W. Miller

The Last Manager

How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented, and Reinvented Baseball

by John W. Miller

  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2025, 368 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The first major biography of legendary Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver—who has been described as "the Copernicus of baseball" and "the grandfather of the modern game"—The Last Manager is a wild, thrilling, and hilarious ride with baseball's most underappreciated genius, and one of its greatest characters.

Long before the Moneyball-era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History's feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968–1982.

When Weaver was hired by the Orioles, managers were still seen as coaches and inspirational leaders, more teachers of the game than strategists. Weaver invented new ways of building baseball teams, prioritizing on-base average, elite defense, and strike throwing. Weaver was the first manager to use a modern radar gun, and he pioneered the use of analytical data. By moving 6'4" Cal Ripken, Jr. to shortstop, Weaver paved the way for a generation of plus-sized superstar shortstops, including Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. He foreshadowed almost everything that Bill James, Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and hundreds of other big brain baseball types would later present as innovation.

Beyond being a great baseball mind, Weaver was a rare baseball character. Major League Baseball is show business, and Weaver understood how much of his job was entertainment. Weaver's outbursts offered players cathartic relief from their own frustration, signaled his concern for the team, and fired up fans. In his frequent arguments with umpires, he hammed it up for the crowds, faked heart attacks, ripped bases out of the ground, and pretended to toss umpires out of the game. Weaver also fought with his players, especially Jim Palmer, but that creative tension contributed to a stunning success, and a hilarious clubhouse. During his tenure as major league manager, the Orioles won the American League pennant in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1979, each time winning over 100 games.

The Last Manager uncovers the story of Weaver's St. Louis childhood with a mobster uncle, his years of minor league heartbreak, and his unlikely road to becoming a big league manager, while tracing the evolution of the game from the old-time baseball of cross-country trains and "desk contracts" to the modern era of free agency, video analysis, and powerful player agents. Weaver's career is a critical juncture in baseball history. He was the only manager to hold a job during the five years leading up to, and five years after, free agency upended baseball in 1976.

Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. In his retirement, he even admitted that "if he had been an umpire, he would have thrown himself out of more games than he actually was." Belligerent, genius, infamous—The Last Manager tells the story of one man who left his mark on the game for generations.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Showman, scrapper, innovator, champion—this baseball manager did it all... . Unlike many of today's relatively mild, predictable managers, Weaver was a crowd-pleasing ham and a rule-flouting trailblazer. An illuminating, entertaining biography of a mercurial tactician who changed the national pastime." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A long overdue, humanizing reassessment of a near-mythic baseball figure." —Booklist (starred review)

"The Last Manager is a fantastic biography—with deep reporting, great writing, and one irresistible anecdote after another. John Miller brings to life one of the game's great characters in all his fiery glory. He also makes a rock-solid case for Earl Weaver as one of baseball's underrated pioneers. A special book that reminds us why we love baseball." —Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life, Ali: A Life, and Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

"Earl Weaver was an old school archetype—a heavy drinking, chain smoking, foul mouthed, umpire baiting terror—and a visionary statistical analyst long ahead of his time. John Miller's fascinating and entertaining portrait shows us how his genius was formed. A great read." —Ron Shelton, writer and director of Bull Durham

This information about The Last Manager was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

John W. Miller

John W. Miller is a writer, baseball coach, and contributing writer at America Magazine. He has reported from six continents and over forty countries for The Wall Street Journal and has also written for Time, NPR, and The Baltimore Sun. Miller is the codirector of the acclaimed 2020 PBS film Moundsville and the founder of Moundsville.org. He has coached two Brussels teams to Little League World Series tournaments and has scouted for the Baltimore Orioles. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife.

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