Earl Weaver was before my time, but growing up an Orioles fan I heard his name frequently. For the most part I knew of Weaver for his famous on-field tirades with the umpires. However, as I got older I was able to look at his managerial record and came to appreciate how great of a manager he was. Baltimore won a World Series under Weaver, but also played in three more during his run as Orioles manager. During his 15 year first stretch as Baltimore's manager, the Orioles finished 1st in the AL East six times, had seven second place finishes, with just one third and one fourth place finish. People should also remember that this was before reallignment, so there were no Wild Cards, and just two teams made the playoffs from each League after every year. There were also more teams in each division, so Baltimore's 90 win 4th place team in 1978 was actually damn good. If Weaver's teams played in the Wild Card era, he could have had even more Pennants and Series wins.

I loved this little prick.

Scrappy, combative, ill-tempered and hard-nosed, he was a throw-back to the old-days of baseball. Too bad his teams didn't gather a few more series rings, but for more than a decade under his command they were one of the most feared teams in baseball.

The reason why I do not give him 5 stars?He won only 1 World series and lost a couple he should have won.Still,no one can deny that he got a lot out of his teams and again was adaptable.