Player-Managers

[FrankWakefield]

Cap Anson?

[FrankWakefield]

Or Fred Clarke? I think he was player-manager for Louisville and Pittsburg (or Pittsburgh).

[BobC]

Great job Frank, you got them both. Anson is the all-time leader in seasons spent as a major league player-manager at 23 seasons. That is insane! In the history of major league baseball there have only been 36 players to have played that many seasons, let alone play and manage at the same time as well. Anson is also tied for the major league lead in most seasons ever played at 27, along with Nolan Ryan.

Second place on the list of most seasons ever as a player-manager does indeed go to Fred Clarke with 18 seasons. So Hornsby and Comiskey's 12 year stints as player-managers only puts them in a distant third on the all-time list.

Let's try one last major league player-manager trivia question. And hopefully this one won't be so easy.

To the best of my knowledge, in the entire history of major league baseball there have been four occasions where a team's manager apparently shared their recognized name, either intentionally or coincidentally, with the actual or popularly known name for their team. And all four instances were of persons that were their team's player-managers at the time. Can you name the four player-managers, and their namesake teams, without having to go look it up? One fourth of this question should be fairly easy. The other three-fourths, maybe not so much.