So, the other day, I got thinking about baseball managers. You know, the ones who really get fired up. I was watching a game, saw the manager arguing, and it made me wonder who gets tossed out the most.
My mind immediately went to a few names. And yeah, Lloyd McClendon popped into my head. I remember him being pretty intense, especially during his time managing the Mariners and Pirates. He had that famous dirt-kicking incident, right? Seemed like a guy who wouldn’t back down from an umpire.
Digging into the numbers
I figured, okay, let’s see if my memory’s right. I spent some time just digging around, looking up manager stats. It wasn’t super scientific, just me browsing through baseball history stuff online.
- First, I tried searching specifically for McClendon’s ejection record. Found some numbers, definitely saw he got tossed a bunch of times over his career.
- Then I started looking for lists, like “managers with most ejections”. That’s where things got interesting.
Turns out, while McClendon was definitely passionate and got ejected a fair bit, he wasn’t really close to the top of the all-time list. Not even in the top tier, surprisingly.
Who was number one? Guy named Bobby Cox. Managed the Braves forever. The number I saw was wild, like way over 150 ejections. Absolutely blew my mind. Another old-timer, John McGraw, was way up there too.
What I learned
It was kind of funny, really. I went in thinking I had a good guess with McClendon based on memorable moments, but the actual data told a different story. It’s easy to remember the big blow-ups, but the guys who quietly rack up ejections year after year end up higher on the list.
Just goes to show, sometimes what sticks in your memory isn’t the whole picture. You gotta actually look things up. It was a simple little research task, but a good reminder for me not to just rely on gut feelings about stuff like this.
