The Managers

1943–1954

Five men in twelve seasons held the Blue Sox job, and the list is a fair cross-section of the league itself — hired baseball men, most of them former major leaguers, managing a game that was changing under them. Bert Niehoff (1943–44) and Marty McManus (1945) were the softball-era managers; McManus made the Mahon trade and returned for the first overhand season in 1948. Chet Grant (1946–47), the Notre Dame man whose papers on the club his university keeps, made the move to Playland and the conversion of Jean Faut, the two decisions the rest of the history stands on. Dave Bancroft (1949–50), the Hall of Fame shortstop, managed the tied-best-record club of 1949 and the .500 club of 1950. Karl Winsch (1951–54) won everything the club ever won — the pennant and both championships — and presided over the walkout, the protest and the thin last seasons; he was also the ace's husband, a double fact that runs through the club's last four years like a crack through a bat. One woman belongs on this list by right of the league's own history, though she never managed South Bend: Bonnie Baker, the Blue Sox' catcher for eight seasons, managed Muskegon and Kalamazoo in 1950, the league's only full-time woman manager, before the league barred the experiment.

Sources

2. Jim Sargent, SABR biographies of Faut, Mahon, Baker and Kidd — the managers' tenures as they touch the players' records.
3. University of Notre Dame Archives (MSSP 0014) — Chet Grant's papers; the register's "Donald Grant" on one 1947 roster page is D. C. "Chet" Grant.