Mundane, obscure baseball question

Not sure why there's two threads on this topic, but in case the original poster doesn't see it on the other one, I'll repost:

 

Reposting from the other thread:

 

Granted, an odd juxtaposition.

But I'll take "What is pre-9/11 Dennis Miller humor?" for 300.

 

but that would be half...

 

I'd like to add another totally unrelated question.

Is there a formal reason why the person in charge of a college baseball team is referred to as the "head coach" and not the "manager"?

 

There may be a better reason, but here's my shot-in-the-dark theory:

The term "manager" came into play in pro baseball, in the 19th century, because the team captain's role was as a field manager -- making tactical decisions, substitutions, strategy changes, etc. And most "managers" then were player/managers, whereas the title "coach" was used for people who didn't have an active role on the field, more of an instructor's job given to retired players as a favor to keep them employed.

The managerial role, of course, evolved into an almost exclusively nonplaying role after World War II or so, but originally it referred to players on the field who managed the game.

College coaches, meanwhile, were never players, even in the old days. Team captains would be trusted to make some strategy decisions around the turn of the century, but by and large, college baseball teams almost always had a veteran "instructor" in charge of the squad, for teaching purposes as well as conditioning. (Usually an old ballplayer like Smoky Joe Wood at Yale or Andy Coakley at Columbia or Ray Fisher at Michigan or Bibb Falk at Texas.) So that person was technically a "coach," not a "manager," by the old way those terms were used.

And it just stayed that way, in the same way baseball managers still wear uniforms on the field instead of suits/street clothes like every other sport.

 

Do they have to wear uniforms? I know Connie Mack didn't, and that was into the '50s.

 

You have to be wearing a uniform to be able to step onto the field. Mack never, for example, went to the mound to make pitching changes.

 

OK, here's what I'm looking for. Buck ... hellllllp.

A list of the winningest active minor-league managers.

 

Umm, not really.

Rule 3.15:

Plenty of people are allowed on the playing field without being in uniform.

As far as OTD's question, I can't find anything that says a manager must wear a uniform -- but coaches have to. (See Rule 2.0).

Rule 1.11a says that "All players on a team shall wear uniforms identical in color, trim and style, and all players uniforms shall include minimal six-inch numbers on their backs." Again, nothing about managers.

Seems to be more of a unity thing than anything else -- not many managers would want to wear something different than just about everybody else in the dugout. Connie Mack was a rare exception, but he was also the owner.

 

Burt Schotton and George Stallings also used to wear suits in the dugout.

 

Active? Hmm. Tough one.

Here's the all-time list:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Minor_League_Wins_by_a_Manager

(And an <a href="http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1119791/index.htm">SI Vault story</a> from 1985 on Stan Wasiak setting the record.)

It's gotta be out there. Here's <a href="http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080313&content_id=359267&vkey=news_milb&fext=.jsp">an MiLB.com story</a> from 2008 that says Marc Bombard is the winningest active manager. And <a href="http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090318&content_id=526293&vkey=news_milb&fext=.jsp">one from 2009</a> that says Dave Huppert is the third-winningest, actively.

I'm looking.