Bobby Cox: the best manager of all-time?  Don’t be so quick to dismiss him; at worst, he is on the short list.  Three tenets – regular season record, playoff success, and lasting legacy – are requisites for consideration into this elite cadre, and Cox is preeminent in all three.

The regular season mark Bobby Cox has amassed in his quarter century on the bench is astounding.  What’s even more impressive is his record in his second tour-of-duty with the Atlanta Braves.  After a pedestrian beginning in his first stint as a manager – he posted a 266-323 record from 1978 through the strike-shortened 1981 season for Atlanta – Cox headed north of the border to coach the extremely green Toronto Blue Jays. 

After a 78-84 start (the Jays best record in their seven year existence), Cox turned the ship around, following up back-to-back 89 win seasons with 99 victories in 1987.  Relying heavily on the ebullient Tony Fernandez and the unstoppable Jorge Bell – .308, 111 runs, 188 hits, 32 doubles, four triples, 47 home runs, and 134 RBI that year – Bobby Cox and the Blue Jays fell to ALCS MVP George Brett and the eventual World Champion Kansas City Royals in seven games that year.  In his first two stints as a skipper, Cox posted a solid 621-615 record.

After that season, Cox took a break from coaching, resurfacing shortly thereafter as the Braves General Manager.  Serving in that capacity for five years until the Braves hired John Schuerholz as GM, Cox oversaw and nurtured the talent that would soon blossom into a plentiful garden of major league ball players.  On June 22 of that season, Cox descended permanently to the field, holding both positions until season’s end.

His amazing run of successive division titles began the next year, in 1991, when the seeds he had planted at GM rapidly matured.  Led by young verdure epitomized by outfielders Ron Gant and David Justice and a trio of pitchers that would bring stability, respectability, and a wealth of success to the franchise for the first half of the decade, this Braves squad lost to the Twins in that exhilarating World Series. 

This original triumvirate of Steve Avery, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz compiled a superb record of 180-108 from 1991-94.  In 1993, reigning Cy Young award winner Greg Maddux abandoned the perpetually listless – or, as their fans spin it, ‘loveable losers’ – Chicago Cubs to join the chic and successful Braves squad.  After Avery’s untimely demise, this nouveaux trio won five Cy Youngs – only Montreal’s Pedro Martinez in ’97 managed to temporarily break the streak – in posting a dominant record of 248-114 (.685) through the completion of the 1999 campaign.

Other managers, of course, had similar runs of success over a couple of years.  But for nearly a decade and a half?  Never.  And we are not just talking about posting consistent 82-80 seasons with a few 94-win campaigns sprinkled in; no, Bobby Cox’s legacy begins and ends with this incredible statistic: 14 consecutive division titles (an average of 97 wins per season) – and counting.

Certainly, one could argue that the core of players – including the likes of Gant, Justice, the Jones Boys (Andruw and Chipper), Glavine, Maddux, and Smoltz – that Cox has coached over the last 15 seasons has made him the manager he is and played a disproportionate role in the wins he collected.  The last three seasons’ success, however, belie this theory.

Beginning with the surprising departures of both Gary Sheffield and Javy Lopez after the 2003 season, a massive emigration from Atlanta has seen the likes of Vinny Castilla, J.D. Drew, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and even the über-talented Rafael Furcal abandon the land of the Tomahawk Chop.  Yet the Braves just keep on winning. 

Using retread – and, in some cases, all but abandoned – pitchers such as Paul Byrd, Jared Wright, John Thomson, and most recently Mike Hampton to anchor their staff, Bobby Cox – avec the sage tutelage of pitching coach Leo Mazzone – has seamlessly blended aging veterans (Brian Jordan and Edgar Renteria) with talented homegrown youngsters such as Ryan Langerhans, Jeff Francoeur, Brian McCann, Adam LaRoche, and the gifted Marcus Giles to produce winning results. 

Like Bismarck in turn-of-the-century Europe, a lesser strategist or talent could not have juggled the personnel nor attained the success Cox has wrought.  With just a nucleus of consistent talent – only a few choice ingredients – the Atlanta skipper has culled a complex and delicious recipe for continued and, so far, uninterrupted success.

Bobby Cox would be the first to admit, though, that his on-field accomplishments are not without regret.  In the last eight years of his National League East reign, the Florida Marlins – once upstart expansionists now principle division rival – have won two World Series, twice as many as the Atlanta Braves.  Even before the advent of the Wild Card, making it to the Fall Classic has been difficult for Cox. 

His lone triumph came in 1995, the year after a strike cancelled the World Series for the first time in the game’s history.  In that series, the Braves defeated another previously marred franchise, besting in six games the Cleveland Indians, an organization whose own championship drought dates back to 1948 – a six game triumph, ironically, over the Boston Braves. 

In 1991, after outlasting Barry Bonds and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Atlanta Braves fell to the Minnesota Twins in one of the greatest postseasons of all time.  The following campaign, after again getting past the Pirates, Joe Carter and the Toronto Blue Jays got the better of them in six games.  After winning it all in 1995, they Evil Empire asphyxiated them in 1996 and again in 1999.

At the mention of their beloved Bronx Bombers, I have no doubt that Yankees fans’ collective ears perked up and are more than willing to chime in on Joe Torre’s eight consecutive division titles (they tied with the Red Sox last season) and four World Series rings – two of which came at the expense of Cox himself.  And they’d be correct, to a point. 

But before they get too comfortable atop their proverbial soapbox, it is my solemn duty to remind them that the New York has not won the big one since the 2000 Subway Series, losing a 3-2 series lead in ’01 thanks in large part to Mariano Rivera’s mental gaffe before getting shutout in the House that Ruth Built by Josh Beckett two years hence.  And I won’t even mention the fact that this so-called dynasty is the only team ever to blow a 3-0 series advantage.  Ever. 

Perhaps emanating from these failures – and undoubtedly fostered then festered by the Petri dish that is the New York media market – Torre’s teams have never been the same in the postseason.  Despite his four rings, Torre no longer seems to enjoy the requisite chutzpah nor wield the pure strategic brilliance that Cox exudes.

Despite having an owner willing to do anything – and pay any amount – to win, Joe Torre has struggled to keep his Yankees on the baseball mountaintop, let alone anywhere near its peak in the last six years.  Meanwhile Cox, whose team’s pockets are much thinner and whose GM actually has a budget, just keeps on winning in a league – and division – generally on par or stronger overall than the dual-hegemony that is the American League East.        

As the National Pastime, baseball has always helped to define the American epoch.  As such, when measuring Bobby Cox against baseball’s past, not only his record but his legacy should be examined.  Obviously, Cox record of 2,101-1,611 (.566) speaks for itself.  Delving deeper into these wins and losses, one excavates numerous prestigious accolades held by Cox. 

Throughout the entire history of the Braves organization – from Boston thru Milwaukee to Atlanta – no one has stockpiled more wins than Cox.  In addition to becoming the first to bring a world title to the city of Atlanta, he has been named Manager of the Year by the Sporting News a remarkable seven times – four more than any other coach since the magazine started its balloting in 1936. 

After his Herculean worst-to-first managerial effort in ’91, he became the first skipper ever to earn Major League Manager of the Year honors from the Associated Press in both leagues.  (In 1985, he won it with the Blue Jays.)  During his most recent tenure with the Braves, he has won more games (1,471) in the past 15 plus years than any other club in baseball.  His 2004 first place finish was also the fourteenth in a row for Cox in seasons in which he has managed since Opening Day, including his near-pennant winning Toronto team in 1985. 

Most importantly, he is only the second manager in history – Yankees great Joe McCarthy is the other one – to win more than 100 or more games in six different seasons.  This record includes three straight seasons (’97-99) and two other successive years (’02-’03) where he finished with at least 101 victories.

Currently seventh – he passed legendary Brooklyn (and later Los Angeles) Dodgers  skipper Walter Alston last year – on the all-times wins list, Cox’s .566 winning percentage is better than all but two (McCarthy’s .615 and the legendary John McGraw’s .586) of the six managers ahead of him. 

With 25 more victories he passes McCarthy; with 57, the venerable Bucky Harris – leader for over 30 years of five clubs, including for most of his tenure the Washington Senators and Detroit Tigers – will also be in his rearview mirror.  And sometime early in 2007, look for the cagey Sparky Anderson, currently fourth on the managerial totem, to also be surpassed.

Included in these six skippers is Cox’s most poignant foil, a contemporary who dwells to this day in the very same league: Tony LaRussa.  Now managing the St. Louis Cardinals, LaRussa rose to prominence first on Chicago’s Southside with the White Sox in 1979 before making it big in Oakland with the Athletics in the late 1980s. 

Remarkably, he has stayed at each stop at least eight years, managing the pale hose from 1979-1986, the A’s from ’86-’95, and the Cardinals from 1996 to the present.  Through Monday’s games, he has amassed 2,225 victories including already 12 this season alone.  Currently third all-time, he trails just John McGraw and Connie Mack in victories for major league managers. 

Many believe Mack, with 3,731 victories, will never be caught.  McGraw, meanwhile, has 2,763 wins – a figure definitely attainable in another five typical LaRussa campaigns.  Eerily similar to Cox, though, LaRussa has failed to win multiple titles, despite four pennants to his name.

Including 2004’s sweep at the hands of the Boston Red Sox, the current St. Louis Cardinals skipper has taken his teams to four World Series, coming away victorious only in 1989 when he swept his Bay Area brethren, the San Francisco Giants, in the series marred by the infamous earthquake. 

What, then, is Bobby Cox’s legacy?  More poignantly, what is Cox’s lasting impact on the game?  Unlike football and, to a lesser extent, basketball, young successful managers are rarely tutored at the foot of successful skippers.  With the recent exceptions of New York Mets manager Willie Randolph – who should have gotten hired years ago – and nascent Florida Marlins skipper Joe Girardi, few from Joe Torre’s vaunted staff have ever been promoted to manager.

The Braves, meanwhile, not only feature Cox but also had Leo Mazzone, the best pitching coach in the league for the last decade.  In resurrecting latent arms seemingly every season, Mazzone was integral to his team’s success before moving to Baltimore in the off-season.  Unlike other active managers, Cox’s legacy is secured not only by his incredible record but by his judicious ability to pass on this knowledge of the game. 

Ned Yost, a bullpen and third base coach under Cox for 12 years, embodies this teaching.  Entering his fourth year at the helm of the Milwaukee Brewers, Yost has turned around a moribund franchise, making great strides in reversing what many in the Midwest have dubbed the Curse of Paul Molitor – a reference to the Hall of Famer’s unceremonious exodus from the only town where he had ever played.  Since his shocking departure following the 1992 season, the Crew has failed to finish at .500 until last season, when they finished 81-81. 

Yost, though, has changed the entire mentality of the club.  Preaching patience with his players in games while instilling in them his implicit trust, he abjectly refuses to offer up extra bases – intentional walks in Atlanta are also a rarity – or give extra outs in the field.  This discipline has brought a professional, optimistic, and – most important – winning attitude to Milwaukee.  In doing so, he has validated – more than any numbers could – the legacy of the greatness of his mentor, Bobby Cox.