Davey Johnson, the All-Star second baseman who won two World Series as a player with the Baltimore Orioles and managed the New York Mets to their dramatic victory in the 1986 World Series, has passed away, according to longtime Mets public relations representative Jay Horwitz. Johnson was 82.
A slick-fielding cog on the dominant Orioles teams of the late 1960s and early ’70s, Johnson won three Gold Glove awards before embarking on a decorated managerial career that saw him take four different franchises to the postseason. He was one of the game’s premier skippers of the 1980s and ’90s, winning Manager of the Year honors in both leagues -- with the Orioles in 1997 and the Washington Nationals in 2012 -- and finishing more than 300 games over .500 (1,372-1,071) over the course of 17 seasons as a manager.
Johnson’s greatest triumphs as a manager came with the Mets; when he took the reins in 1984, they had not won a pennant since 1973. The mustachioed, opinionated Johnson was a central figure at the helm of the swaggering, character-filled Mets teams that in many ways epitomized the late ’80s, featuring stars like Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden and Gary Carter.
The Mets turned into a perennial winner under Johnson’s leadership, with Johnson becoming the first National League manager to win at least 90 games in each of his first five seasons. From 1976-97, no team won more games in a season than the ’86 Mets’ 108 victories.
"I treated my players like men,” Johnson told writer Bob Klapisch for the 1993 book The Worst Team Money Can Buy. “As long as they won for me on the field, I didn't give a flying **** what they did otherwise.”
Johnson’s Mets won 100 games and another division title in 1988, though they lost in the NL Championship Series to the Dodgers. Johnson was dismissed early in the 1990 season, the result of a feud with general manager Frank Cashen. Johnson’s 595 wins with the club remain the most by a manager in Mets history.
After that, Johnson made a pattern out of inheriting promising young clubs and turning them into winners. He took over the Cincinnati Reds 44 games into the 1993 season, turned them into a first-place club in strike-shortened ’94 and won the division title the following year.
Johnson then returned to Baltimore in 1996 to manage the O’s, for whom he made three All-Star teams as a player in the late ’60s and early ’70s. As a manager, he led the Orioles to their first postseason berth in 13 years in his inaugural season and captured the AL’s best record in 1997. Both campaigns, however, ended in dramatic playoff defeats.
Additionally, Johnson managed the Los Angeles Dodgers from 1999-2000 and the Washington Nationals from 2011-13, notably steering Washington to its first postseason appearance in 2012. He also thrice managed Team USA in international competition: a disappointing seventh-place finish in the 2005 Baseball World Cup, a bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics and a fourth-place finish at the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
Born into a military family in Orlando, Fla., on Jan. 30, 1943, David Allen Johnson was raised in San Antonio, Texas, and played for Texas A&M before signing with the Orioles in 1962. He made his MLB debut in '65 and spent much of the next eight seasons as the club’s starting second baseman, contributing to World Series titles in ’66 and ’70.
Johnson was sent to Atlanta as part of a six-player trade in November 1972, then set a new single-season record for home runs by a second baseman by slugging 43 in his first season with the Braves. He’d never hit more than 18 home runs in a season previously and never topped 15 after that, retiring as a player after the '78 season.
Johnson’s playing career also included a two-year stint in Japan, when he became the first non-Japanese player to suit up for NPB’s Tokyo Giants from 1975-76.
Johnson was considered one of the game’s most intelligent tacticians, a keen strategist with a thirst for data-driven information long before it became commonplace in the sport. He earned a mathematics degree from Trinity University while managing the Nationals in ’12, decades after making headlines in 1969 for using a graduate computers course at John Hopkins University to devise the Orioles’ optional batting order.
“I don’t know whether to tell [Orioles manager Earl] Weaver,” Johnson said at the time. “But the sixth worst lineup was the one we used most of the time last season.”
Johnson remains one of only 15 big league skippers to retire with a record at least 300 games above .500, and his .562 career winning percentage ranks 10th all-time among managers with at least 1,000 victories.
“I never thought I was smart,” Johnson told the Hall of Fame’s Bill Francis in 2017. “But I love to figure out problems. Through my stubbornness and relentlessness, I get to the end.”