So, with the Cardinals hanging on to the second NL Wild Card slot and Chris Carpenter back on the mound, I’m already making plans to attend the victory parade down Market Street after the Cards pull off another World Series upset.
In the unlikely but awesome event this happens, the Cards will have won back-to-back championships under two different managers (LaRussa retired last year; Mike Matheny is in his first year as a big-league manager). I imagine this is rare in any sport. It’s hard enough to repeat as champions with all the same personnel. How much harder must it be with new leadership? And the Cards lost not only LaRussa but also pitching coach Dave Duncan and of course Albert Pujols. If they manage to win…wow!
So, do you have any examples of a pro team in any sport winning the championship in two consecutive years with two different head coaches/managers/whatever?
(I don’t hang out in the Game Room much, so my apologies in advance if this is has been disucssed recently. I didn’t turn up anything similar by searching.)
College football is extremely difficult to pull it off. Last time it happened was 1898 Harvard (W. Cameron Forbes) and 1899 Harvard (Benjamin H. Dibblee). Then before then, Yale did it three times in a row between 1886-1888 - but at that time, the coach was the team captain (at least for the first two years).
Honorable mention to the Boston Celtics, who won the championship 8 straight years under Red Auerbach, lost in the playoffs their first year under player-coach Bill Russell, and then won two more championships under Russell.
Wow. How did they run through five separate coaches in five years? Did they keep firing them even though they won the championship, or did they just have five coaches leave of their own accord coincidentally year after year?
The Dallas Cowboys ALMOST did it. They won the Super Bowl in 1993 and 1994 under Jimmy Johnson, lost in the NFC finals under Barry Switzer in 1995, then won the Super Bowl under Switzer in 1996.
The Pittsburgh Penguins did it in 1991 and 1992, coached by Bob Johnson and Scotty Bowman, respectively. The Montreal Canadiens did it in 1968 (Toe Blake) and 1969 (Claude Ruel). So did the Detroit Red Wings in 1954 (Tommy Ivan) and 1955 (Jimmy Skinner)
It wasn’t five different coaches. Luis Carniglia won two and Jose Villalonga won two. Miguel Munoz won the other. They went through managers quickly because Bernabeu (the team chairman) was a colossal prick, AIUI, and they kept leaving to take international jobs.
Well, I stand corrected. I was remembering an interview with Puskas and he was saying how they kept going through coaches and it didn’t matter since the players ran the team anyway. I thought he said it was one a year, but I guess I was reading into it.
They did change managers five times during the period; Carniglia was replaced by Munoz for half a season because of kidney failure, then came back, then was replaced by Munoz permanently. Maybe that’s what Puskas meant.