Coop was born in 1949. To look at his picture you'd think he was born in 1929. Managing a big league baseball team must really take it out of you. Cooper had a long and successful major league career prior to getting into coaching and managing. He was the 6th round draft pick of the Red Sox in 1968 and played for them for 6 seasons (1971-1976). In 1976 he was traded to the Brewers for George Scott and Bernie Carbo. He would play for the Twins until he retired in 1987, after a 17 year career. He had a life time batting average of .298 and was a 5-time All-Star. He also managed to be on the losing side of a World Series with both of the teams he played for.
Cooper was named interim manager of the Astros in 2007 and remained manager in 2008. It is his first managing position. The Astros had a cold-hot-cold-hot season this year. As always you can argue about how much the manager is responsible for something like this. April was cold. May was hot. At the end of May they were 30-27 and 3 games out of first. Then the chill really set in. By the All-Star break they were 46-51 and 6 games back. Then they got hot again and by September they were in the wild-card race going 40 and 24 after the break. They didn't get eliminated until the last weekend of the season.
Here's the latest map. My next stop of any interest is Taylor Texas which is a long way away. So far I've traveled 93.64 miles in 6 hours and 2 minutes. All without leaving my family room.
4 comments:
I always liked Cecil Cooper (actually, he was traded to the Brewers, not the Twins). He always seemed to be smiling -- which makes his '08 card seem so odd. Apparently he's a good signer, too.
I love maps to keep track of where you have been. I am on a site called fitenessjournal.org. The map of my fourth trip across the country can be found on my confessions site. It really gets you going that last little bit.
I am enjoying the tour. I wonder where I would go....
What is the status of Randy Wolf with those Astros? I know he did pretty well once he got over there, much better than he was doing in San Diego.
Night owl, thanks for the correction. Somehow every time I see MIL as the team on baseball-reference.com I read it as MIN. I fixed the post.
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