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  • The Wizard of Waxahachie: Paul Richards and the End of Baseball as We Knew It
  • Daniel R. Levitt
Warren Corbett . The Wizard of Waxahachie: Paul Richards and the End of Baseball as We Knew It. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2009. 430 pp. Cloth, $24.95.

Often characterized as a tall, tough, silent Texan, Paul Richards spent much of his sixty years in baseball confounding this epithet. In his fascinating, well-researched biography of Richards, Warren Corbett admirably captures Richards's life in and away from baseball. An experienced writer, Corbett engagingly chronicles the many ups and downs of Richards's long career. After twenty-five years as a player at nearly all levels of organized baseball and several as a minor-league manager, Richards received an opportunity to manage the Chicago White Sox in 1951. It was as a manager and general manager that Richards earned his well-deserved legacy as an ornery trendsetter.

Richards the innovator introduced an oversized catcher's mitt to catch knuckleball pitchers. He was one of the first managers to use pitch counts to protect his pitchers and on-base percentage to judge hitters. While not at the forefront of racial integration, he generally played players on merit and treated his charges equally. Corbett ably contrasts Richards's on-field innovation with his narrow-minded, remote leadership style. In spite of his aloof manner, Richards possessed a peculiar ability to create a surprising level of devotion in some of his players. During his tenure in various major-league front offices, Richards surrounded himself with a close circle of acolytes, consisting mainly of other southerners who had once played or coached under him.

By the time he was seventeen, Richards had grown "to be a lanky six feet [End Page 125] one, with black hair, brown eyes, a prominent jaw, an unusually long neck, and pointed chin," and had become a baseball sensation around Waxahachie, Texas (15-16). At least four major-league teams hoped to sign him, but Brooklyn Dodger scout Nap Rucker won Richards over and nabbed him for a one thousand dollar bonus. The Dodgers farmed Richards to Pittsfield in the Eastern League, and the youngster began his career several thousand miles from home. Richards spent the next twenty-one years as a baseball nomad bouncing up and down between the majors and minors. Corbett nicely provides Richards's career highlights without getting bogged down in the day-to-day minutiae. As a twenty-one-year-old, Richards was converted to catcher, generally regarded as a thinking man's position and one at which he would excel. He was less successful with the bat, however. Despite stellar minor-league statistics, Richards could never break out against major-league pitching: in 1,602 major-league at bats, he hit only .227 and slugged .301; in 5,059 minor-league at bats, he hit .295 and slugged .473. Corbett never really pursues this surprising dichotomy.

Richards's baseball intelligence was recognized at a young age, and in 1938 when he was only twenty-nine, Atlanta (a Southern Association club at the time) promoted him to player-manager. In his first year, Richards won the pennant and the four-team playoff as well. Thirteen years later, Richards received a shot as a major-league skipper, working for general manager Trader Frank Lane with the White Sox. Throughout the book, Corbett does a nice job of explaining Richards's key managerial philosophies. Richards believed in pitching and defense first: "a ballclub that doesn't beat itself is hard to beat" (53). He liked pitchers who could throw strikes, shunned the intentional walk, and made extensive use of the sacrifice bunt. Maybe most importantly, Richards was always teaching, and he drilled his players on the fundamentals harder than most.

Corbett skillfully details how Richards paid particular attention to his pitchers. Richards never adopted the standard four-man rotation; he always felt that an extra day of rest would help his pitchers. On the other hand, Corbett describes with a sense of disbelief the time Richards overused Jerry Walker, a decision that may have ruined Walker's career and clearly went against Richards's thinking on...

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