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Baseball Great Don Zimmer Dies At 83
ResumeFormer Red Sox manager and baseball great Don Zimmer died yesterday in Florida. He was 83.
Zimmer's decades-long tenure on the baseball diamond started in 1949 when he was 18. He was signed professionally for the first time to the Brooklyn Dodgers organization and in 1955 played on the Dodgers' World Series winning team.
Zimmer came to the Red Sox in 1974 as a third base coach and in 1976 took over as manager.
He was blamed for the 1978 debacle in which the Sox lost a 14-game lead over the Yankees, ultimately losing in a one-game playoff. Zimmer later went on to be a bench coach for the Yankees from 1996 to 2003, when the team won four World Series.
At the time of his death, Zimmer was still working in baseball as a senior adviser to the Tampa Bay Rays.
Guest
Glenn Stout, sportswriter and author of "Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year." He tweets at @GlennStout.
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The Boston Globe: Don Zimmer Was Truly A Baseball Man
- "I never met anyone who was more pure baseball than Don Zimmer. 'Never drew a paycheck outside of baseball,” he loved to say. He did have a go at a regular summer job once. Zimmy turned in his stuff at lunchtime and never looked back. After that it was baseball, baseball, and more baseball until he died Wednesday night at the age of 83.'">
This segment aired on June 5, 2014.