Major League Baseball Hall of Fame Manager
Baseball legend Joseph McCarthy wasn’t born in Buffalo, but he always claimed the City of Good Neighbors as his home. Although he made only a brief appearance in Buffalo, playing for the Buffalo Bisons in 1914-15, the Germantown, Pennsylvania native married a local girl and became a longtime Buffalo resident.
Considered by many to be the greatest major league manager of all time, the late McCarthy coached the National League Chicago Cubs for several years and the American League New York Yankees for another 15.
When Marse Joe, as he was nicknamed by a Chicago writer, made his major league managerial debut in 1926 with the Cubs, he took over an eighth place team and produced a pennant winner in just four years – losing in the 1929 World Series to the Athletics of the American League. After an unsuccessful campaign in 1930 to avenge this World Series loss, he was fired by Cubs’ owner George Wrigley. McCarthy next landed in 1931 with the New York Yankees, where he would win eight pennants and seven world championships. Marse Joe often admitted the secret to his incredible success was simply to “get the players and keep them happy.”
Perhaps his sweetest World Series win came in 1932, when Marse Joe’s New York Yankees swept the Chicago Cubs just two years after the National League team let him go. When McCarthy won the National League pennant in 1929 with the Cubs, he had become the first manager in history to win a pennant without major league playing experience. In 1932, when he won the American League flag with the Yankees, he had become the first manager in history to produce a pennant winner in both leagues.
In all, Marse Joe led his teams to nine pennants and seven World Series championships while compiling an astounding .614 winning percentage. In 1957, Marse Joe McCarthy was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. McCarthy was 90 when he died of pneumonia in 1978 in suburban Buffalo.