Rocky Bridges, a journeyman infielder for seven major-league teams, including the Washington Senators, who was one of baseball’s all-time great characters, with a quip for every occasion, died Jan. 28 at a hospice in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He was 87.
Bridges managed the Everett Giants in 1984. Bridges led the Giants to a 36-38 record and a fifth-place finish in the Northwest League.
His death was first reported by the Spokesman-Review newspaper of Spokane, Wash. The cause was not disclosed.
Feisty, glib and hardworking, Bridges was a utility player who warmed benches for most of his career. But he also became renowned, as Sports Illustrated noted in 1964, as “one of the best stand-up comics in the history of baseball.”
He made his big-league debut in 1951 with the Brooklyn Dodgers, backing up Hall of Fame infielders Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. He then played (or, mostly, sat) for four years in Cincinnati — “It took me that long to learn how to spell it” — before arriving in Washington in 1957.
As the starting shortstop for a last-place team, Bridges managed to become the Senators’ lone member of the American League’s All Star team in 1958.
“That surprised everybody,” he later said. “They were close to launching an investigation.”
In his 11 years in the major leagues, from 1951 to 1961, Bridges had a pedestrian batting average of .247, with 16 home runs. He assessed his place in the sport in 1959, after being traded to the Detroit Tigers: “I’m in the twilight of a mediocre career.”
He stood a squat 5 feet 8 inches, took the field with a huge chaw of tobacco stuffed in his cheek and made the most of his limited skills. He won a loyal following among the fans.
“Rocky Bridges undoubtedly has been one of the most popular men ever to wear the Washington uniform,” Washington Post sports columnist Bob Addie wrote in 1958. “He’s an example of what ‘hustle,’ ‘desire,’ and ‘spirit’ will do.”
Bridges was hitting .300 during the first half of the 1958 season when New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel chose him for the All Star team.
“I never got in the game,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1985, “but I sat on the bench with Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Yogi Berra. I gave ‘em instruction in how to sit.”
In his first time at bat after the All Star Game, Bridges was hit by a fastball from the Tigers’ Frank Lary. He suffered a fractured jaw, which kept him out of action for much of the remainder of the season.
“I was no longer just a pretty face,” he said of his craggy mug, which seemed to be made for a baseball card.
Besides the Dodgers, Reds, Senators and Tigers, he played for the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Angels.
“I’ve had more numbers on my back,” he said, “than a bingo board.”
Bridges continued in baseball for decades as a big-league coach, minor-league manager and first-class raconteur.
When one of his pitchers gave up seven runs in the first inning, he strode to the mound and said, “Give me the ball.”
He looked at it, said, “Dang thing is still round,” then handed the ball back to the pitcher and returned to the dugout.
Some players were so inept that the only kind thing to do was to suggest another line of work.
“The other day,” Bridges said in 1964, “my left fielder saw some guys rob a liquor store near the ballpark and chased them until he got their license number. Afterwards, he told me that he’d always wanted to be a cop. ‘Don’t give up hope,’ I said.”
Between major-league stints as a coach with the Angels and San Francisco Giants in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, Bridges managed more than 2,800 minor-league games in such cities as Vancouver, Honolulu, El Paso and Phoenix. During his rookie season as a manager with the San Jose Bees in 1964, he coined a lament that has become part of baseball lore: “I managed good, but boy did they play bad.”
Everett Lamar Bridges was born Aug. 7, 1927, in Refugio, Tex., and grew up in Long Beach, Calif. He signed his first professional contract in 1947 and played in the Dodgers’ minor-league system.
An announcer in South Carolina gave him the nickname Rocky because, he said, “You simply don’t look like an Everett.”
The highest salary Bridges earned as a player was $12,500. He worked in the offseason cleaning furnaces, making soap and running a jackhammer.
“I was digging ditches all winter for a pipe-laying outfit in Long Beach,” he said before his 1958 All Star season with the Senators. “I ain’t too proud to grab a shovel for $2.81 an hour. Can’t say I liked the work, but put it this way, I couldn’t afford to dislike it, either.”
He was married in 1952 to Mary “Buddy” Alway, who died in 2008. Survivors include four children and 11 grandchildren.
Since 1970, Bridges had made his home in Idaho, but as a minor-league manager, he sometimes lived at the ballpark, where he seemed to be happiest.
He always told his teams that baseball was meant to be fun: “The umpire says ‘Play ball,’ right?”
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