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thedrifter
05-10-05, 10:59 AM
Baseball's oldest manager soldiers on
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Baseball's oldest manager soldiers on

By Rod Walker
rwalker@clarionledger.com

Close to 70 years have passed since Wayne Terwilliger sat in his Michigan home as a child writing letters to Major League Baseball players requesting autographs.

One response stands out.

"I still remember getting Connie Mack's autograph," said Terwilliger. "He sent me a white business card and you could tell an old man wrote it."

Little did Terwilliger, a former major leaguer who turns 80 in June, know that his name would one day be used in the same sentence with Mack's. Terwilliger is the oldest manager in minor league history and the second oldest in professional baseball history behind Mack, who managed the Philadelphia Athletics from 1901 to 1950 before retiring at age 88.

Terwilliger's Fort Worth Cats face the Jackson Senators today at Smith-Wills Stadium.

"He's just amazing to watch when he's out there doing batting practice and hitting fungoes," said Fort Worth pitcher Logan Stout. "People always say 'I hope I can do that when I am 80.' We just all hope we can still walk when we're 80."

Terwilliger never seems to slow down, whether he's hitting ground balls before the game or chatting up reporters afterwards.

He stole the nickname "Twig" from a cousin — "you gotta have a nickname in baseball" — and has been involved in more than 5,000 games as a coach or player.

"Looking back on it, the best thing is all the great players I played against," said Terwilliger, singling out Willie Mays as the best.

Twig played nine major league seasons. He batted .240 and hit 22 home runs, including one off the indominatable Whitey Ford at Yankee Stadium.

"Can you imagine the thrill that was?" said Terwilliger Monday after hitting grounders to his infielders. "Whitey probably never hung a slider in his life, but he did that day and it went out. I had one against Jim Bunning and one against Don Newcombe. I didn't screw around."

And there was the game-winning bloop single off Satchel Paige in 1953: "Now how many white guys that are still alive can say they got a hit off Satchel Paige?" Terwilliger said.

Twig won World Series titles as a coach with the Minnesota Twins in 1987 and 1991 but never won one as a player. Bobby Thomson ruined his best chance in 1951 with the famous "Shot Heard 'Round The World" that was "felt" by Twig in the Brooklyn Dodgers' dugout.

In one of the most dramatic moments in baseball history, Thomson's three-run homer off Ralph Branca in the bottom of the ninth gave the New York Giants a 5-4 victory over the Dodgers and won the National League pennant.

"I was sitting there in the dugout thinking, 'The World series pays at least $5,000 for the loser,' " recalls Terwilliger. "I looked out and saw all this commotion and Eddie Stankey jumping on (Leo) Durocher's back and I thought, 'What the hell just happened here.' It all happened so quick. I sat in the dugout until everybody was gone and just watched. I never thought it would be such a big deal and now everybody talks about it."

As a Dodger, Terwilliger was a backup infielder to Hall of Famers Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson, a player he idolized. He coached under Ted Williams when the man some consider the greatest hitter ever managed the Washington Senators.

None of those were his proudest moment in uniform, though.

"I'm more proud of my service in the military than anything that ever happened in baseball and I didn't do a thing but obey orders," said Terwilliger, who served in the U.S. Marines in World War II.

After the military, he played baseball for Western Michigan . His big league career began with the Chicago Cubs in 1949. He retired from playing in 1960 and, save for a brief stint when he owned a bar in Michigan in the early 1970s, he's coached or managed in the majors or minors ever since.

This is Twig's third season with Fort Worth, and he's asked often how much longer he'll continue.

"I will be 80 next month, so I can't really say," said Terwilliger, who has his own Web site and has spent the past two years completing a book. "I may not live to be 81. I still feel good, though, so we'll see."

His wife, Lin, has heard that before.

"We go through this every year," she said. "By the end of the season he's saying, 'I can't do this another year.' By the first of the year though, him and the long bus rides are like a woman and pregnancy.

"He forgets the season is long and how it makes his back sore and he's ready to do it again. This is what he really enjoys. To give it up, I think he has asked himself several times what will he do. This is still his love."


Ellie