Morgan Magic: From Snowplows to the Red Sox Dugout, Joe Morgan Was a Baseball Lifer

There are some people in baseball whose names immediately make you think of one team.

Joe Morgan?

Well, that’s a little complicated.

No, not that Joe Morgan — the Hall of Fame second baseman who played for Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine. This Joe Morgan was a New England baseball lifer, a former major league infielder, minor-league manager, coach, scout and, eventually, the man who became the unlikely hero of one of the most improbable stretches in Boston Red Sox history.

Joe Morgan died Saturday at the age of 95.

And for Mets fans, there is a pretty significant reason to remember him.

Morgan was sitting in the Red Sox dugout in 1986 when the Mets and Boston met in one of the greatest World Series ever played.

He just wasn't the manager.

John McNamara was.

Morgan was a member of McNamara's coaching staff, serving as Boston's bullpen coach during that magical 1986 season before moving to third base coach the following year. He had a front-row seat as the Red Sox won the American League pennant and then watched the Mets rip their hearts out in October.

You know the rest.

Game 6.

Bill Buckner.

Game 7.

Mets championship.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that was Joe Morgan, a baseball man who had spent decades trying to get to the top of the profession.

Eventually, he would.

And when he did, he created a little magic of his own.

Morgan was born November 19, 1930, in Walpole, Massachusetts. He attended Boston College and was actually a hockey player as well as a baseball player before signing with the Boston Braves.

He eventually reached the major leagues, appearing in 88 games between 1959 and 1964 with the Milwaukee Braves, Kansas City Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Cardinals.

He hit .193 with two home runs and 10 RBIs.

Those numbers aren't going to get anybody into Cooperstown.

But baseball careers aren't always measured by batting average.

Sometimes they're measured by longevity, relationships, knowledge and the ability to recognize talent.

And Morgan had plenty of all four.

He began managing in the minor leagues in 1966 and eventually landed in the Red Sox organization, taking over as manager of the Triple-A Pawtucket Red Sox in 1974.

He stayed there until 1982.

Nine years.

That's an eternity in minor-league baseball.

And while he was there, Morgan helped develop a generation of players who would become major pieces of the Red Sox — including Wade Boggs, Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, Bruce Hurst, Rich Gedman and others.

Morgan wasn't flashy.

He wasn't necessarily the guy everybody in baseball was talking about.

He was just really good at baseball.

As Wade Boggs later put it, Morgan was incredibly baseball-smart and relied on his instincts rather than statistics.

Morgan eventually returned to the Red Sox major-league staff.

And then came July 1988.

The Red Sox were 43-42 at the All-Star break and nine games behind Detroit in the American League East.

John McNamara was fired.

General manager Lou Gorman turned to Morgan as the interim manager while the organization searched for a permanent replacement.

There was just one little problem.

Joe Morgan didn't seem particularly interested in being temporary.

According to accounts of the time, when Gorman told Morgan he would manage while the Red Sox looked around for someone else, Morgan essentially told him:

Don't look around.

You're looking at him.

And suddenly, Boston started winning.

And winning.

And winning some more.

The Red Sox won Morgan's first 12 games as manager.

They won 19 of their first 20.

They won 24 consecutive games at Fenway Park.

And somehow, some way, the team that had been nine games out of first place wound up winning the American League East.

Boston had discovered “Morgan Magic.”

The Red Sox went on to face the Oakland Athletics in the ALCS, where Oakland swept them.

But nobody could take the magic away.

Morgan's first season wasn't a fluke.

In 1990, he led Boston to another American League East championship.

Again, the Athletics were waiting.

Again, Oakland swept the Red Sox in the ALCS.

Baseball can be cruel like that.

Morgan finished his major-league managerial career with a 301-262 record over 3½ seasons, all with the Red Sox.

Two division championships.

Two trips to the American League Championship Series.

And a permanent place in Red Sox history.

He was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2006.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Joe Morgan wasn't the wins.

It was the man.

He was a baseball lifer in the truest sense of the phrase.

He worked offseason jobs to make ends meet, including driving a snowplow on the Massachusetts Turnpike. He also worked as a carpenter, bricklayer, oil deliveryman, census taker, substitute teacher, truck dispatcher and mail sorter.

That's not exactly the resume you expect from a major league manager.

But maybe that's precisely why his players connected with him.

He understood working for a living.

He understood failure.

And he understood baseball.

Morgan wasn't an analytics guy.

He managed by instinct.

By feel.

By knowing his players.

By watching the game.

He had his own language and his own way of doing things.

And he wasn't particularly interested in apologizing for it.

“I'd be dynamite,” Morgan once joked when asked how he would do as a manager in the modern game.

He managed his hometown team.

He took over a team that looked like it was going nowhere.

And he turned it into a division champion.

But here at KinersKorner,com, we can't let Joe Morgan's passing go by without remembering the other side of the story.

Before there was Morgan Magic, there was Mets magic.

Morgan was there in 1986 when the Red Sox won the American League pennant and came to Shea Stadium and Fenway Park to play the Mets for the championship.

He saw the Mets win.

He saw the Red Sox lose.

He saw one of the most unforgettable collapses in World Series history unfold from the Boston dugout.

And then, two years later, he got his own chance to run the show.

That's baseball.

The guy who was part of the team that lost the 1986 World Series eventually became the manager who helped Boston fans forget about it — at least for a little while.

Joe Morgan spent nearly four decades in professional baseball.

He played.

He managed.

He coached.

He scouted.

He taught.

He developed players.

He drove snowplows.

He told stories.

And, for a few glorious months in 1988, he performed one of the greatest managerial magic tricks baseball had ever seen.

Not bad for a guy who was originally supposed to be the interim manager.

Rest in peace, Joe.

And somewhere, I'm guessing, somebody is still looking around for the permanent manager.

Joe Morgan would probably tell them:

Don't look around.

You're looking at him.

And then he'd probably go out and win 12 straight.