The Wizard of Waxahachie: Paul Richards and the End of Baseball As We Knew It

by Warren Corbett

One of the most influential—and controversial—figures in baseball of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, Paul Richards was a player, manager, and general manager, a participant in many of the historic changes that marked "the end of baseball as we knew it." Richards managed the Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles—laying the foundation for the Orioles’ championship clubs of the 1960s and 1970s—and built the expansion Houston team from scratch. Best known for inventing the giant mitt for knuckleball catchers, Richards was also the first manager to track on-base percentage and the first to monitor pitch counts. He constantly experimented with tactics and strategies, and he preached the need for constant practice of the game’s fundamentals.

Drawing on Richards’s writings and personal papers, plus previously undiscovered audio recordings, Warren Corbett chronicles the life and times of the baseball wizard who left an indelible mark on America’s national pastime.

Genres: Baseball, Sports

430 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2009

Reviews

[M Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is far more deeply researched than most baseball biographies and sheds much needed light on a fascinating figure in baseball history. What kept it from a 5* ranking for me was (a) more input from people who found Richards to be a complete weasel, which he seems to have been (b) more insight into some of his more idiosyncratic decisions, particularly with regard to the knuckleball, which survived into the modern day because of Richards (c) more on the old boy network in baseball and why Richards could only get jobs with bad organizations - as opposed to the more congenial and equally brilliant Al Lopez (d) some explanation of how he never used the man with the highest batting average in MLB history (Terry Forster) as a pinch-hitter while managing the White Sox in 1976.

Clearly, if my complaints are mostly that the booked needed "more" of something, it was pretty far along the right track, but it was 400 pages and left questions unanswered because the topic was so fascinating.

[Craig McGraw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography of one of baseball’s unheralded figures. As an Oriole fan I am indebted to Richards for starting the Oriole Way which was his way to winning games and to getting Weaver and Ripken to continue his philosophy