George Lee "Sparky" Anderson (February 22, 1934 – November 4, 2010) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player, coach, and manager. He managed the National League's Cincinnati Reds from 1970 to 1978 and the American League's Detroit Tigers from 1979 to 1995. Anderson managed the Reds to two World Series championships in 1975 and 1976, then added a third title in 1984 with the Tigers. Anderson was the first manager to win the World Series in both leagues. His 2,194 career wins are the seventh-most for a manager in Major League history. In his 26-year career, Anderson had only five losing seasons as manager. His 1,331 wins with the Tigers are the most for any manager in team history. Anderson was named American League Manager of the Year in 1984 and 1987. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.
Anderson was born in Bridgewater, South Dakota, on February 22, 1934. He moved to Los Angeles, California, at the age of eight. He was a batboy for the USC Trojans. He attended Susan Miller Dorsey High School in Los Angeles. Upon graduating, he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent in 1953.
Anderson's American Legion team won the 1951 national championship, which was played in Briggs Stadium (Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.
Anderson married Carol Valle on October 3, 1953. They had first met when each was in the fifth grade.
Anderson began his playing career with the Santa Barbara Dodgers of the Class-C California League, where he was primarily used as a shortstop. In 1954, he was moved up to the class-A Pueblo Dodgers of the Western League and was moved to second base, where he played the rest of his career.
In 1955, Anderson was moved another step up the minor league ladder, playing for the Double-A Fort Worth Cats of the Texas League. A radio announcer gave him the nickname "Sparky" in 1955 for his feisty play. Although his friends and family continued to call him George, Anderson's baseball moniker would remain Sparky for the rest of his days.
In 1956, he moved up once more, this time to the Triple-A Montreal Royals of the International League. In 1957, he was assigned to the Los Angeles Angels of the open-classification Pacific Coast League. The next season, after the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles, he returned to Montreal.
After five minor league seasons without appearing in a Dodger uniform at the MLB level, he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies on December 23, 1958, for three players, including outfielder Rip Repulski. The Phillies gave Anderson their starting second base job, and he spent what would be his one full season in the major leagues in 1959. However, he batted only .218 in 152 games, with no home runs and 34 runs batted in, and returned to the minor leagues for the remainder of his playing career.
He played the next four seasons with the Triple-A Toronto Maple Leafs in the International League. After watching several practices, Leafs owner Jack Kent Cooke observed Anderson's leadership qualities and ability to teach younger players from all backgrounds. Cooke immediately encouraged him to pursue a career in managing, offering Anderson the post for the Leafs.
In 1964, at the age of 30, Anderson accepted Cooke's offer to manage the Leafs. He later handled minor league clubs at the Class-A and Double-A levels, including a season (1968) in the Reds' minor league system.
During this period, he managed four pennant winners in four consecutive seasons: 1965 with the Rock Hill Cardinals of the Western Carolinas League, 1966 with the St. Petersburg Cardinals of the Florida State League, 1967 with the Modesto Reds of the California League, and 1968 with the Asheville Tourists of the Double-A Southern League. It was during the 1966 season that Anderson's club lost to Miami 4–3 in 29 innings, which remains the longest pro game played (by innings) without interruption.
Anderson also briefly managed in Venezuela, piloting the 1964–65 Navegantes del Magallanes; he was fired and after a 3–14 start, and replaced by Chico Carrasquel.
He made his way back to the majors in 1969 as the third-base coach of the San Diego Padres during their maiden season in the National League.
Just after the 1969 season ended, California Angels manager Lefty Phillips, who as a Dodger scout had signed the teenager Anderson to his first professional contract, named Anderson to his 1970 coaching staff.
Within a day of being hired in Anaheim, he was offered the opportunity to succeed Dave Bristol as manager of the Cincinnati Reds. His appointment reunited Anderson with Reds' general manager Bob Howsam and player development director Sheldon "Chief" Bender, for whom he'd worked as a skipper in the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati minor-league organizations between 1965 and 1968. Anderson was named the Reds manager on October 8, 1969. Since he was a relative unknown in the sports world, headlines on the day after his hiring read "Sparky Who?" At the time of his hiring, Anderson was, at 35, the youngest skipper in baseball. Nonetheless, Anderson would become the third manager to lead a team to 100 wins as a rookie manager, doing so by leading the Reds to 102 wins and the National League pennant in 1970, where they lost the 1970 World Series in five games to the Baltimore Orioles. During this season, the Reds came to be widely known as the Big Red Machine, a nickname they carried throughout Anderson's tenure.
After an injury-plagued 1971 season in which the team finished fourth, the Reds came back and won another pennant under Anderson in 1972, beating the Pittsburgh Pirates in five games in the NLCS, but losing to the Oakland Athletics in seven games in the World Series. They took the National League West division title again in 1973, but lost to the New York Mets in the NLCS, a hard-fought series that went the full five games.
After finishing a close second to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1974, in 1975 the Reds blew the division open by winning 108 games. They swept the National League Championship Series and then edged the Boston Red Sox in a drama-filled, seven-game World Series. They repeated in 1976 by winning 102 games, sweeping the Phillies in three games in the National League Championship Series, then going on to sweep the New York Yankees in the Series; the only time that a team swept the League Championship Series and World Series since the start of division play. Over the course of these two seasons, Anderson's Reds compiled an astounding 14–3 record in postseason play against the Pirates, Phillies, Red Sox and Yankees, winning their last eight in a row in the postseason after beating the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 1975 World Series, and then winning seven straight games in the 1976 postseason. They remain the only team to sweep the entire post-season since the inception of the league championship series in 1969.
During this time, Anderson became known as "Captain Hook" for his penchant for taking out a starting pitcher at the first sign of weakness and going to his bullpen, relying heavily on closers Will McEnaney and Rawly Eastwick.