Bobby Cox, the Hall of Fame manager who turned the Atlanta Braves into a 1990s powerhouse, died on Friday in the United States at the age of 84, coaches and former players confirmed over the weekend, leaving Major League Baseball stars mourning a man they say shaped their careers and their lives far beyond the dugout.
Questions from fans about how Cox died have so far gone largely unanswered. The reports and tributes that followed on Friday focused on his age and towering baseball record rather than specifying a medical cause of death. With no formal announcement from family or team officials about the circumstances, the precise cause remains unconfirmed and should be treated with caution until an official statement is released.
Legendary MLB manager and Hall of Famer Bobby Cox dead at 84 as tributes pour inhttps://t.co/TZFOEbxHiL
What is not in doubt is the size of the gap he leaves behind. Over 29 seasons as a big‑league manager, Cox amassed 2,504 regular‑season victories, 15 division titles, five pennants and one World Series crown, earning his election to the Hall of Fame and a place among the most successful managers in MLB history.
Freeman's memories are unusually vivid, which is often the case when someone has shaped the beginning of a career. He recalled Cox giving him more at-bats than his record really justified during spring training in 2009, then dissolving the tension before his major league debut on 1 September 2010 with a line that cut through the nerves at once. 'What took you so long to get here?!'
That warmth stayed with him. Freeman said he keeps an autographed Cox jersey in his Atlanta home bearing the inscription, 'To Freddie keep on hitting.' It is a small detail, but an unusually telling one. In baseball, where hierarchy can be rigid and memory can be transactional, players do not tend to preserve those objects unless the relationship truly mattered.
Longtime Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox, a Hall of Famer who won a World Series and more than 2,500 games in his storied career, has died at 84, the team announced Saturday.More:https://t.co/NcUKKdLea4pic.twitter.com/z7qRDq7eMy
Freeman, now a veteran first baseman with the Los Angeles Dodgers after 12 years with the Braves, said parts of Cox's code still live in him. He spoke about never wearing a hat backwards and keeping sunglasses on the back of his cap, habits that sound almost trivial until you realise they were part of a wider standard.
Cox expected his teams to look right, act right and respect the uniform. There was no music blaring in the clubhouse. Hats faced forward. Even batting practice had rules.
That might sound severe. It probably was, at times. They paint a manager whose strictness made sense to players because it sat alongside obvious loyalty. Freeman put it plainly when he said Cox was a Hall of Fame manager 'who relentlessly had our backs.'
Source: International Business Times UK
