On August 12, 1950, Rigney replaced Eddie Stanky at second base after Stanky had been ejected from a game against the Phillies for repeatedly waving his arms while Andy Seminick was batting. Seminick was still irritated, and after he reached base on an error in the fourth inning, he slid hard into second base, crashing into Rigney and causing him to fall over. A nearly ten-minute brawl erupted between the teams, which required police intervention and resulted in the ejection of Seminick and Rigney from the game. The Phillies went on to win 4–3.[2][3]
As a big-leaguer, Rigney was a .259 career batsman with 510 hits, 41 home runs and 212 runs batted in over 654 games.
Manager of three MLB clubs
Giants
Following his MLB playing career, Rigney was named manager of the Giants' top farm club, the Triple-AMinneapolis Millers, in 1954–1955. He led the Millers to two playoff appearances, a 170–135 overall record, and the 1955 American Association and Junior World Series championships. He then was promoted to skipper of the parent Giants in 1956, succeeding his mentor, Leo Durocher. Despite the presence of Hall of Fame center fielderWillie Mays, the Giants' final two seasons in Upper Manhattan, 1956 and 1957, were dismal: they lost 87 and 85 games, respectively, finished in sixth place in the eight-team National League both years (a combined 52 games out of first place), and their attendance fell below 700,000.
But upon their move to San Francisco in 1958—and rejuvenated by young players such as Orlando Cepeda, Jim Davenport, Felipe Alou, and, later, Willie McCovey—the Giants returned to the first division and contended for the NL pennant into the final regular-season weekend in 1959. The 1960 Giants moved into new Candlestick Park and were expected to again contend for the league title. They got off the mark quickly, winning 20 of their first 29 games. But then they stumbled, losing 16 of their next 29, and were coming off a three-game series sweep at home by the eventual world champion Pittsburgh Pirates when, on June 17, Rigney was fired. At 33–25, his club was in second place, four games behind Pittsburgh, when Rigney was dismissed. Tom Sheehan, the veteran scout who replaced Rigney, fared even more poorly, however, going only 46–50 as the Giants plummeted into fifth place by season's end.
Angels
Rigney in 1964
Rigney was not unemployed for long. He became the first skipper in the history of the expansionLos Angeles Angels of the American League in 1961. Gene Autry and Robert O. Reynolds, the Angels' owners, originally wanted to hire future Baseball Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel, a resident of nearby Glendale who had been fired by the New York Yankees after the 1960 World Series. But Stengel declined all managerial offers and spent 1961 in temporary retirement. Then Durocher, out of uniform since leaving the Giants in 1955 and working as a broadcaster, campaigned for the Angel job. Like Stengel, he had become a permanent resident of Southern California—he lived in Palm Springs—and was a future Hall of Fame pilot. But Autry and Reynolds bypassed him and chose Rigney instead, believing that he would have the patience to develop an expansion team's younger players.
While the Angels' maiden edition lost 91 games and finished eighth in the ten-team AL, the 1962 team, paced by young pitchersDean Chance and Bo Belinsky, stunned baseball by finishing in third place with an 86–76 record during their second season of existence. As a result, Rigney was named Manager of the Year by The Sporting News.
During Rigney's eight full years with the Angels, the club played in three home ballparks—Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and Anaheim Stadium—and also compiled winning records in 1964 and 1967. But 1969, Rigney's ninth season, proved catastrophic. The Angels started the year 11–28 and were mired in a ten-game losing streak when Rigney was fired on May 27 and succeeded by Lefty Phillips. Later in 1969, Rigney joined the San Francisco Giants' radio broadcast team to close out the season; coincidentally, KSFO, the Giants flagship station, was then owned by Autry and Reynolds.
After serving as a scout for the San Diego Padres and California Angels (1973–1974), Rigney had a second managerial stint with the Giants in 1976, a year of transition between the Horace Stoneham and Bob Lurie ownerships. Rigney's 1976 club went only 74–88 and finished 28 games behind the world champion Cincinnati Reds. Joe Altobelli succeeded him at the Giants' helm on October 7, 1976.[5] Rigney finished with a managerial record of 1,239 wins and 1,321 losses.[6]
In an 18-season managerial career, Rigney posted a 1,239–1,321 record (.484) in 2,561 games. The Twins' three-and-out loss in the 1970 ALCS was his only MLB postseason managing appearance. As a minor league pilot, Rigney won the 1955 American Association championship at the helm of the Minneapolis Millers.
After leaving the Giants at the close of his second managerial term in 1976, he served as a front-office consultant and a radio and television broadcaster for the Oakland Athletics in the 1980s.
The "Bill Rigney Good Guy Award" is given each year to a San Francisco Giant and Oakland Athletic who is most accommodating to the media.[7]
Quotation
Rigney took the reins of the Giants in 1956, succeeding Leo Durocher, for whom he had played from 1948 to 1953. "I learned a lot from Leo Durocher", he said. "I learned about the hit-and-run, about gambling and going against the percentages. You can't play it the same all the time." – Norman L. Macht, at Baseball Library[8]
^Dark, Alvin; Underwood, John (1980). When in Doubt, Fire the Manager: My Life and Times in Baseball. New York: E. P. Dutton. p. 48. ISBN0-525-23264-8.
