Goodbye to Steve Boros, Bonus Baby, Computer Guy a

Steve Boros, who died Wednesday at 74, spent half a century in baseball. He was a bonus baby, a major league infielder, a minor league M.V.P., a manager, a coach,cheap Texas Rangers Hats, a scout and a quiet pioneer, rarely with a high profile and sometimes at odds with what baseball expected.
Boros had just concluded a season as a third-team All-American second baseman at Michigan when he signed with the Detroit Tigers in June 1957. At 20,Milwaukee Brewers Hats sale, he was immediately a major leaguer. Under baseball’s rules of the day – that era’s effort to prevent big-revenue teams from stockpiling the best talent – Boros’s signing bonus forced the Tigers to keep him on their major league roster for a year.
Dozens of players in the 1950s fell under that rule, which at one point required two years on the major league roster. Because they were young and undeveloped,New York Yankees Hats, they rarely played (one player, Tom Qualters,Cheap New York Yankees Hats, pitched in a single game one season). A few succeeded anyway, like Sandy Koufax,Philadelphia Phillies Hats, Harmon Killebrew and Al Kaline. Boros,DC shoes hats Sale, like most of the rest, did not.
When he was eligible, Boros went down to the minors, where he became a capable batter – in 1960, he was the American Association’s most valuable player while playing in hitter-friendly Denver – but he never hit in the major leagues. Over seven seasons, only three in which he was a regular,Minnesota Twins Hats, Boros hit .245 with 26 home runs.
He became a minor league manager and a major league coach with a specialty in base running; Boros used a stopwatch on the field, a rare practice at the time. But when he became the Oakland Athletics’ manager in the 1980s,Chicago Cubs Hats, he upset his erstwhile pupil, Rickey Henderson,Montreal Expos Hats, who said after Boros was fired in mid-1984 that the manager had tried to make him more of a power hitter than a base stealer.
Boros did march to his own drumbeat. He had studied literature at Michigan and had an educated demeanor somewhat at odds with baseball at the time. He and the A’s were forerunners in introducing computers into the clubhouse in an effort to gain a competitive edge. This was in 1983, long before “Moneyball,” but some things were the same in Oakland even then; when the A’s concluded they were not getting their money’s worth from the computer, which was reported to cost nearly $100,000 a year, they scrapped it.
Boros replaced Billy Martin with Oakland. He replaced Dick Williams (three days into spring training) with the San Diego Padres and was succeeded there by Larry Bowa. In two full seasons and part of a third, he never had even a .500 record. He kept getting fired and kept being called too nice to succeed.
“Sometimes the nice-guy label can have a bad connotation,Famous Hats Sale,” Boros told The New York Times after Oakland fired him. “I’ve been clubbed to death with it. To some baseball people, it means you can’t handle players, make tough decisions or stir up a team.”
Still, he stayed in baseball. In 1989 he was the Los Angeles Dodgers scout credited with writing the report that tipped off Kirk Gibson about when A’s closer Dennis Eckersley tended to throw a late-breaking slider. You know what Gibson did with that slider in the World Series.
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