American baseball player and manager
Baseball player
Ray Blades
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|
Left fielder
/
Manager
|
Born:
(
1896-08-06
)
August 6, 1896
Mount Vernon, Illinois
, U.S.
|
Died:
May 18, 1979
(1979-05-18)
(aged 82)
Lincoln, Illinois
, U.S.
|
Batted:
Right
Threw:
Right
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|
August 19, 1922, for the St. Louis Cardinals
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September 25, 1932, for the St. Louis Cardinals
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|
Batting average
| .301
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Home runs
| 50
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Runs batted in
| 340
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Managerial record
| 107?85
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Winning percentage
| .557
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---|
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|
As player
As manager
As coach
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|
|
Francis Raymond Blades
(August 6, 1896 ? May 18, 1979) was an American
left fielder
,
manager
,
coach
and
scout
in
Major League Baseball
(MLB).
Scouted on the sandlots by Rickey
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A native of
McLeansboro, Illinois
, Blades was first scouted as a baseball player as a teenager in 1913.
Branch Rickey
, then the business manager of the
St. Louis Browns
, spotted Blades during a sandlot game for the St. Louis city championship. Seven years would pass, however, before Rickey would sign
World War I
veteran Blades to a contract; by that time, 1920, however, Rickey was working for the Browns’
National League
rivals, the
St. Louis Cardinals
.
Blades threw and batted
right-handed
, stood 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m) tall and weighed 163 pounds (74 kg). After apprenticing in the
minor leagues
, Blades reached the Cardinals in 1922. Hampered by a severe knee injury, he appeared in over 100 games only three times ? from 1924 to 1926 ? but he hung on as a spare outfielder for ten major league seasons (1922?28; 1930?32), all with the Cardinals, and
batted
.301 lifetime. In his finest season, 1925, he hit .342 in 462
at-bats
. He appeared in three
World Series
(1928, 1930 and 1931). Beginning a transition to a management career, he was a playing coach for the Cardinals from 1930 to 1932.
Manager, coach and scout
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]
Blades was known as a ferocious competitor with a terrible temper, and he carried that reputation with him as a manager in the Cardinals’
farm system
. He managed at the top level of the St. Louis organization with the
Rochester Red Wings
and
Columbus Red Birds
from 1933 to 1938 and was named skipper of the Cardinals in 1939.
Upon his appointment, he prohibited alcohol drinking among his players. In his first season, the Cards responded to Blades’ tough regimen, winning 92 games and improving from sixth to second place in the
National League
. But the Cardinals slumped in the early weeks of 1940, winning only 14 of their first 38 games and plunging back into sixth place. On June 7, Blades was fired and ultimately replaced by
Billy Southworth
, who would lead the Cardinals to two world championships in the decade.
He then coached in the National League for the
Cincinnati Reds
(1942),
Brooklyn Dodgers
(1947?48) and
Chicago Cubs
(1953?56), in addition to a one-year return to the Cardinals (1951). He managed again in
minor league baseball
, spending two non-consecutive years (1941 and 1943) as skipper of the
New Orleans Pelicans
and three seasons (1944?46) at the helm of the
St. Paul Saints
, which then was one of the Dodgers' two top-level farm teams. He also worked in Brooklyn's farm system as a managerial consultant (1949?50) and scouted for the Cubs from 1957 into the early 1960s.
After 1940, Blades never managed again full-time in the big leagues, although during his tenure with Brooklyn he and a fellow coach,
Clyde Sukeforth
, turned down the job as acting manager of the
1947 Dodgers
after the suspension of
Leo Durocher
for the season. Rickey, by then president of the Dodgers, ultimately turned to
Burt Shotton
, one of the team's scouts, and under Shotton Brooklyn won the
1947
NL pennant. During the following year,
1948
, Blades served as interim Dodger pilot for a single game, when Durocher left Brooklyn for the
New York Giants
job, and Shotton succeeded him a second time. The Dodgers won Blades' one game at the helm, 4?2, on July 16, 1948, against the Reds. His final record as a big-league manager was 107?85 (.557).
Ray Blades died in
Lincoln, Illinois
at the age of 82 in 1979.
See also
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References
[
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]
- The St. Louis
Star-Times
, 1938.
- J. G. Taylor Spink, ed.,
The Baseball Register
, 1956 edition. St. Louis: C.C. Spink & Son.
External links
[
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]