The Mysterious Case of Dallas Green

All young baseball fans dream of hitting a walkoff home run to win the World Series like Bill Mazeroski or Joe Carter. It’s a great way to ensure your spot in history. If you played in the major leagues from 1960 through 1967 there was another thing you could do to give yourself a shot at future fame. It wasn’t a guarantee like a dramatic post-season home run, but there was also a lot less pressure. All you needed to do was hit a home run off Dallas Green.

Green is best known for managing the Philadelphia Phillies to the 1980 World Series championship, the first one in franchise history. What many people don’t know is that Green was also a major league pitcher. In a career that spanned eight seasons and 562 innings, Green won 20 games and gave up 46 home runs to just 33 different players. Quite a select fraternity and membership has its privileges. How so?

If you were a National League hitter in the ’60s and homered off Green, you had nearly a 50/50 shot of either being a Hall of Famer or managing a major league team. Of the 33 players who took Green deep, 16 of them either made the Hall of Fame or managed in the big-leagues.

Green signed as a free-agent in 1955 out of the University of Delaware and made his big-league debut on June 18^th, 1960 against the San Francisco Giants. In his second outing, five days later, he faced the Chicago Cubs at Connie Mack Stadium and gave up longballs to Don Zimmer and Ernie Banks.

An Impressive List

Before he retired after the 1967 season, Green had given up home runs to the following Hall of Famers: Banks, Ron Santo, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente, Willie McCovey, Duke Snider, and Henry Aaron. Future skippers included Zimmer, Bob Skinner, Billy Martin, Joe Adcock, Joey Amalfitano, Felipe Alou, Bill Virdon and Pete Rose.

The final two are perhaps the most interesting. Virdon hit his 81^st career home run off of Green and later managed against Green in the 1980 NLCS. Rose hit the only Grand Slam of his career off of Green and then played for Green on the 1980 Phillies.

The Rose and Virdon stories are just two ties to the 1980 season. Willie McCovey played his last game in July of 1980, Snider was elected to the Hall of Fame in January of 1980, Virdon, Zimmer, Martin, and Amalfitano were all managers in 1980 and on September 21^st, 1962, Green gave up a home run to a Houston rookie outfielder named Rusty Staub, who was still active in 1980.

But Green’s remarkable home run history doesn’t end there. In the first game of a doubleheader on June 23^rd, 1963, Jimmy Piersall hit the 100^th home run of his career. To celebrate, he famously ran the bases while facing backward. That home run came off none other than Dallas Green.