Leo Durocher knew the highest highs and the lowest lows that baseball had to offer.
Durocher, who died Monday at the age of 86, managed the 1951 New York Giants - the "miracle" team that overcame a 131/2-game deficit in August to win the National League pennant. He also led the 1954 Giants, who swept Cleveland in the World Series after the Indians set an American League record with 111 victories.But Durocher's controversial career included its share of low points as well.
Perhaps the lowest came in 1947, when Durocher was managing the Dodgers and commissioner Happy Chandler suspended him for a year for allegedly associating with gamblers.
There was also the fact that despite 2,008 managerial victories, sixth on the all-time list, he was never voted into the Hall of Fame.
The man who coined the phrase "nice guys finish last" - referring to Mel Ott, whom he later succeeded as the Giants' manager - actually finished last only once in 24 seasons, in 1966 with the Chicago Cubs. True to form, the Cubs rebounded to finish third in the 10-team National League a year later
Durocher died at 1:20 p.m. PDT at Desert Hospital of natural causes, hospital spokesman Randy Bevilacqua said.
Durocher played for 17 seasons, almost all as a shortstop, with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals and New York Yankees, the team he broke into baseball with in 1925.
Yet it was his fiery style as a manager that drew "The Lip" his greatest attention during stints with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Giants, Cubs and Houston Astros.
Durocher guided three teams into the World Series - the 1941 Dodgers, who lost to the Yankees, and the 1951 and 1954 Giants. He left baseball with a winning percentage of .540, but wasn't happy with all the changes he witnessed during his long career.
"I understand it's a different era," Durocher said in the 1970s. "I learned that they do what they please nine times out of 10. It's a different breed. Give them an inch and they take six inches. Give them a foot and they take a yard."
Still, he gave Willie Mays a chance to play though a terrible slump at the start of his career.
"He told me it was too fast for him, that he couldn't play up here, and asked me to send him back to Minneapolis," Durocher said. "I put my arm around him and told him, `Not as long as I have Giants on my uniform. I brought you up here to play center field, and that's where you're going to play."'
After Durocher's retirement, his reputation as a firebrand continued to grow.
"He was colorful, outspoken, inspirational to his players and infuriating to opposing teams," commissioner Fay Vincent said Monday. "He was a magnetic figure right to the end, almost 40 years to the day after his greatest triumph. Personally, I will miss him and baseball has truly lost one of its legends."
Leo Ernest Durocher was born on July 27, 1905, in West Springfield, Mass. He made it to the majors in 1925, playing with the Yankees.
During his rookie year, he was nicknamed "Lippy" by Will Wedge, a baseball writer for the New York Sun. It later was shortened to "The Lip."
That Yankee club featured Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, one of Durocher's favorite teammates.
"He used to protect me 90,000 times from different players that I used to get on when (Tony) Lazzeri was hurt and I was playing second base," Durocher said. "I had a couple of arguments with Ty Cobb and (Bob) Fothergill with Detroit, but Babe always saved me."
Durocher played in the minors in 1926 and 1927 before returning to the Yankees in 1928. He went to the Reds in 1930, the Cardinals in 1933 and the Dodgers in 1938.
Durocher was hired as manager of the Dodgers before the 1939 season and played 116 games that year while also managing. He also was a player-manager in 1941, 1943 and 1945.
He ended his career with a .247 batting average, 24 home runs and 567 RBIs. His 1939 Dodgers finished third, improved to second in 1940, then won their first pennant since 1920 by capturing the NL title in 1941 before losing to the Yankees in five games.
Durocher managed five more seasons in Brooklyn, losing a pennant playoff to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946.
Durocher returned to the Dodgers in 1948, but the team struggled. When Ott quit as manager of the Giants on July 16, Durocher suddenly took the reins of Brooklyn's hated crosstown rivals.
The move created an uproar. Suddenly, those who had loved Durocher at Ebbets Field despised him at the Polo Grounds.
In 1951, Durocher was involved in one of the greatest pennant races ever. His Giants rallied from 131/2 games behind the Dodgers on Aug. 11 to force a three-game playoff.
After splitting the first two games, the Giants won the pennant in the final game on Thomson's ninth-inning home run - the "Shot Heard 'Round the World."
The Giants lost to the Yankees in the World Series that year, but three years later the Giants won the pennant again and Durocher led them to his only World Series victory, a sweep of the Indians.
Durocher left managing after the following season, but returned with the Cubs in 1966. In 1969, he guided the long-time losers to the top of the NL East for most of the year before the Mets overtook them.
Durocher switched to the Astros midway through the 1972 season and managed them again the following season before retiring as manager.
After that, he worked as a coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers and an announcer for NBC-TV.
Funeral arrangements were being made at Forest Lawn Mortuary in Los Angeles.